A college for women?: Newnham's history

Newnham College was founded in 1871 and was originally in a house for students. "Lectures for Ladies had been started in Cambridge in 1870 and such was the demand from those who could not travel in and out on a daily basis, that the philosopher Henry Sidgwick, one of the organisers of the lectures, risked renting a house in which young women attending the lectures could reside" (Newnham College website).  The demand increased and eventually the university received a land grant where they built the beginnings of Newnham in 1875.  Women remained interested in attending the College and it was gradually  extended to include labs, three halls, and a library.
At first these women were ignored by Cambridge and they had to negotiate with each examiner to be able to take their exams.  Eventually, in 1881, permission was granted, but there was another problem.  The women's degrees were not being recognized. Protests broke out across the university and the first attempts at attaining recoginition failed.

The women of Newnham fought long and hard, and finally in 1948 their efforts were rewarded when they received full admission into the univeristy. However, Cambridge still retains the right to limit the number of women that attend.
Virginia Woolf was a strong advocate for women's education.  She mentions the College in A Room of One's Own.  She refers to it as Fernham, but it is apparent through her descriptions that she is actually talking about Newnham.  "The gardens of Fernahm lay before me in the spring twilight, wild and open, and in the long grass, sprinkled and carelessly flung, were daffodils and bluebells...The windows of the building curved like a ships' windows among generous waves of red brick..." (Woolf, 17).