Girton College Feast 2020

Welcome to Feast Online - a page of reflection on the traditions that have informed your time at Girton, and that you, in turn, have shaped. Although ‘The Feast’ is for those currently coming to the end of their studies, it is not a leaving or graduation party (these are for later). It is rather a longstanding and important moment in the college calendar that always occurs just before (most) exams get under way.

As we are not serving food tonight, and all drinks are BYO, why not start by conjuring up a Girton Cocktail or Mocktail - Le Bas-Blue (or Le Faux Bas-Blue), recipe here - and chilling out with this ‘lockdown’ performance by the Gir-ten of Jock McKenzie’s bluesy-dowoppy ‘Creature’s Comfort’.

The Feast: What is it all about?

Girton’s feast commemorates the admission of women to degrees within the University of Cambridge, which occurred for the first time in 1948. The event and the College Songs that traditionally follow (see below) are not only a celebration of your impending graduation but also of Girton’s pathbreaking role in securing higher education for women. In recognition of the 80 years during which members of the College were not awarded degrees and given full admission to the University, gowns are not worn…

The Chapel Choir attends the Feast each year, and it is traditional for them to sing grace. Here, for those who wish to observe the grace, or enjoy the choir, is a setting of the Pater Noster by Gareth Wilson, Girton’s Director of Chapel Music.

Pater Noster by Gareth Wilson 

• Listen to audio file (opens in new window/tab)

Degrees for women 70 years on

Many of you will have been members of the College in May 2018 when the day of the College Feast was chosen to mark the 70^th anniversary of the achievement of Girton’s foundational aim, the admission of women to degrees. The successful vote took place in December 1947, and in October 1948, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth (the late Queen Mother) became the first woman ever to receive a degree from Cambridge University. This set the scene for Girton to expand its vision for inclusive excellence. 

The theme of our 70^th anniversary celebration was 'Share the Past, Shape the Future': you can view the programme and use it as a guide to the round-up of events presented next, which will give you a flavour of what the Feast is all about.  

This slide show is accompanied by the Chapel Choir, with Queen Victoria’s Consort, singing Ethel Smyth's March of the Women. Composed in 1910, this became an anthem of the suffrage movement, to which Girton's founders and members were also linked.

The song may never have been sung in Hall before, possibly because Girton leaned more to the suffragists than to the suffragettes with whom this song is most closely associated. However, as 2018 was also the centenary of the first votes for women, the time seemed right, and it was performed for the Feast. The version posted here was made during the Girton150 Festival in July 2019.

We also sang ‘Triumphal Ode’ from the Girton Songbook written by former Mistress Muriel Bradbrook in 1948 to celebrate the fact that, finally, the students of Girton College, Cambridge, were recognised as full members of the University, and could at last wear their gowns!

If you are wondering who won the prize during that afternoon for a short (400 second) presentation that best connected to the history and traditions of the College, look no further than our own Secretary to Council, Dr. Caroline Shenton. Here she is, talking about: ‘New Dawn’.

Finally, on the subject of ‘sharing the future’, our panel discussion on this theme, led by the then-JCR and MCR-presidents, a former CUSU President and one of our early career fellows, and chaired by Life Fellow and former Mistress, Professor Dame Marilyn Strathern, set the scene for Girton’s new round of strategic planning.  

No Feast is complete without a speech from the Mistress (and for Feast-goers this year, a message from a special guest)

We’ll always have 2019!

‘Play it again Sam’ is the most famous line never uttered in the 1942 classic ‘Casablanca’. One the other hand, the phrase ‘We’ll always have Paris’ definitely was said, and it has come to signal a glance back at some precious moments that will stay with us forever. In that spirit the next item is a collection of highlights from our 150^th anniversary celebrations - a tremendous programme which everyone at the feast this year will have helped create and enjoy.

It is tough that we are not together today, and that we have no idea when that will change. But we are Girton, and we’ll always have 2019 - a spectacular and enjoyable celebration of the life and times of this College, and of the part all of you have played in creating it.

The soundtrack to this slide show is ‘The Girton Pioneers’, again sung by the Girton College Chapel Choir. It is one of our best-known College songs, written in 1873 by ‘several students at Hitchin’. It is set to a dance tune dating from at least the early 17^th century that is best known today as the marching song ‘The British Grenadiers’. The ‘Pioneers’ referred to in the title are three of Girton’s earliest students Rachel Cook, Louisa Lumsden and Sarah Woodhead - the first three women ever to sit the Cambridge tripos (unofficially of course).

Note especially the following lines from verse two - ‘Their memory goes before us/ To raise our courage high/ They made old Cambridge wonder/ Then let us give three cheers…’ Three cheers in fact for all of those, at every stage in Girton’s history, who have shown that you cannot know what excellence is until you have everyone on board. A special shout-out here to the work our JCR committee and members have been doing on BME and LGBTQ+ histories and futures at Girton.

• Listen to audio file (opens in new window/tab)

A musical interlude

Dear Feast-goers, your time at Girton has been peppered with anniversary events, offering a rare opportunity to glance back to the values that founded our College and look forward to all that might mean for Girton’s future and for yours. We have had the good luck, in that time, to team up with Queen Victoria’s Consort playing period music on period instruments. Here, during a break in proceedings, are some highlights from one of their Girton150 Anniversary Concerts.

In case you missed it, we have also been marking the 30^th anniversary of the establishment of the Austen and Hope Pilkington Fellowship in Music at Girton. In this lovely slide set you can see - but sadly not hear - some heartwarming past performances.

View our Flickr album below:

Degrees for women 50 years on: As is your due

An astonishing event occurred on July 4 1998, fifty years after the decision to award women their degrees and admit them to Cambridge University. The brainchild of Juliet Campbell, Mistress of Girton at the time, over 900 women aged between 67 and 96, who had studied Girton or Newnham before 1948 returned so that their achievements could be honoured in a special ceremony at Senate House.

A documentary made at the time, which includes filming of the actual event and interviews with participants, can be viewed on Vimeo, under the title 'As is your due'. So many women returned on this occasion that three sessions in Senate house were needed. Here is the first of them, together with a link to the others in case you would like to see more. You may still spot some people you know…

^{As Is Your Due (Part One) 1999 from Lucy Thane on Vimeo.}

• You can view Part Two here, and Part Three here.  

Finale: The College Songs

The first Girton feast took place on 18 May 1948. The College flag was in full flight as it is today, and there were sprigs of laurel on the tables. Emily Davies’ portrait looked down on sparkling glass and cutlery, glistening white damask, bowls of fresh flowers, and the cheerful inflow of feasters in their ‘gay colours and elegant new looks’.

You will not be surprised to know that this first feast established a number of new traditions. Some have not endured! However when, at the end of that first remarkable evening, a cross-section of revelers got together with a selection of senior members, climbed to the top of the tower and, by light of moon and torch, sang a medley of College songs, there was no going back.

Over the years, the song book has expanded substantially. It now highlights many aspects of the history and life of the College: sports (the golfing song, the cricket song, the swimming song, and the hockey song); student societies and institutions (including the fire brigade and the pig club); and new buildings, though it should be noted that space remains for anyone wishing to come forward with the Ash Court Chant, the Swirles Court Serenade, the Duck Pond polka or similar.

The main reason for singing some College songs at the feast, however, is that they underline the monumental struggles that Girton - as an institution, and in the shape of the individuals who make it what it is (ie you) - has engaged in over the years in the interests of excellence, inclusion and an ethic of care.

So there are songs, like the ‘The song of degrees’, that tell of the prejudices the early women students faced, and others like ‘The search for an examiner’ that note how difficult it was to get anyone from the University to lend credibility to their studies. In keeping with that tradition and to round off Feast Online, here are two more College songs sung by the Girton College Chapel Choir. The words are provided, so please do join in…

‘Ye Gracious Senate’ was written by botanist and OG Ethel Sargent in 1884. Sung to the tune of ‘The Vicar of Bray’ it marks the moment in 1881 when women, having so far only been allowed to sit the Tripos by vague courtesy of the examiners, finally, thanks to the influence of an important petition demanding it, as well as the spectacular success of a Girton mathematician (C. A. Scott), had the right to enter university exams. Miss Scott, by the way, was almost caught by the tumbling chimney of 1881 that is mentioned in the Mistress's speech.

Ye Gracious Senate - Girton College Chapel Choir

• Listen to audio file (opens in new window/tab)

Finally why not round off your evening with a rousing chorus of  ‘The Hockey Song’ written by M. E. Barwell in 1894, four years after the Girton Hockey club (currently celebrating its own 130^th birthday) was established. It refers to the Girton v. Newnham hockey match - a most important feature in the College sporting calendar for many years. The song is sung to the tune Wot Cher, the words, a play on a popular British music hall comedy, the fact that Girton wins has nothing to do with it.

The Hockey Song - Girton College Chapel Choir

• Listen to audio file (opens in new window/tab)

Puddings: Design, and win, the Girton (degrees for all) dessert 

Feasts at Girton have moved on from the days when the Head Chef believed that ‘anything is edible if chopped finely enough’. However the archives show an interesting trend. In 2001, the Mistress’s speech was accompanied by a handwritten note that reads: six courses, toasts, speech. By 2005, this had changed to: four courses, toast, speech. By 2010 the norm had become three courses! Perhaps the fact that we have reached the year in which there are no courses at all is not as unexpected as we think?

To resist this trend, you are invited to mount a rescue campaign for the finest course in any feast: pudding. The Head Chef challenges you to design a new confection, the Girton (Degrees for All) Dessert. In consultation with the Mistress, he will award a prize for the recipe that best captures the spirit of Girton, looks extravagant, tastes delicious, and is most appropriately named for our 2020 final year students.

It is well worth entering this competition because when we next meet as a group, we will endeavour to serve the winning desserts to your year. Send entries by email, subject ‘Pudding’, to juniorbursar@girton.cam.ac.uk before the end of term!  

Further information and links:

If Feast Online has whetted your appetite for news about the traditions and ambitions of our College, you may like to browse the following:

The Rising Tide:

• https://www.cam.ac.uk/TheRisingTide

In this fascinating exhibition you will find an engaging, accessible and scholarly overview of Girton’s breathtaking role in securing women’s full membership of, and inclusion within, the University of Cambridge. Curated by historians Dr Lucy Delap (Murray Edwards College) and Dr Ben Griffin (Girton College) this landmark exhibition is named after a Cabinet Office report on women’s advancement in science, engineering and technology chaired by Girton Life Fellow and founding Director of the Women in Science and Engineering Initiative, Dr Nancy Lane Perham.

This is a 30-minute journey through Girton’s history in words, music and light. It was created for our 150^th Anniversary festival in July 2019, and includes an array of messages from alumni and friends.  

A Girton timeline:

• https://girton150.com/

Review at leisure some of the landmark moments in the history of the College, together with some key facts and figures as they change over time. As well as documenting developments in buildings and estates, the timeline profiles Fellows and alumni who have made an impact in the world, takes a look at student experience, and describes how our professional, administrative, support and service staff have, over the years, kept the College operating smoothly.  

The Anniversary Event Archive

• https://girton150.com/events/event-archives/

This is what is says - a fascinating repository of all the events and activities that we enjoyed in 2019. It is still expanding, and many of the videos can now be found on the College's YouTube channel here.