Durham, Durham University, St Aidan's College

Building Notes

Sir Basil Spence and Partners were invited to design St Aidan's College for Durham University in 1960. The College had been created from the St Aidan's Society, an all female body of students. The Campus was planned as residential and social, rather than as a teaching facility.

The campus is located on a site overlooking the city's cathedral and Norman castle. The buildings are arranged around three sides of an interior courtyard. The main block, located to the north, accommodates the common rooms, kitchen and servery, the principal's apartment, 12 guest and study bedrooms. At the centre of the block there is a double height refectory with a gallery. The north block is linked to the east by administrative accommodation. The east wing is a staggered residential block of two and three storeys, and the west wing is a concave curving two-storey block.

Spence employed the same vaulted arch motif that he used in several projects such as Sussex University, Hyde Park Cavalry Barracks and Glasgow airport on the exterior of the central bay. All buildings are constructed with a combination of reinforced concrete and load bearing brick.

Although the campus was occupied from September 1964, the official opening of the College buildings took place on 18th June 1966.

Archive Details and Summary

The Sir Basil Spence Archive holds 18 presentation drawings including perspective views of the development. There is also one manuscript file for this project which contains correspondence relating to plans for an extension to the college to provide additional accommodation in 1968-69.

The manuscript material in the Archive outlines the difficulty in finding a suitable site for expansion. One option was a site that was occupied by a small group of brick built staff cottages, which had been erected shortly after the other blocks, when the decision to expand the site was initially abandoned. The Archive material also shows that another proposed site had, in Spence’s original plans, been earmarked for a chapel, however financial restrictions meant that this was never built.

The Spence, Glover and Ferguson Collection, also held at RCAHMS, contains a further 13 photographs and 39 colour slides for the project.

This text was written as one of the outputs of the Sir Basil Spence Archive Project, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, 2005-08.