Testament of Youth
As war breaks out, Vera Brittain comes up to Somerville to read English. She leaves off her studies for several years to work as a VAD nurse. Brittain goes on to write Testament of Youth, one of the best-known accounts of the war written from a woman’s perspective. You can read more about Vera Brittain's legacy at Somerville in our Eminent Somervillians page as well as the Library's 'Somerville in Literature' page.
The 3rd Southern General Hospital
The War Office takes over Somerville’s site for use as a military hospital and the college relocates to St Mary Hall Quad (aka 'Skimmery') in Oriel. When Somerville returns to its Woodstock Road site four years later, a notice is discovered in Maitland Hall: ‘Officers are requested not to throw custard at the walls’.
'Very Much Like Paradise'
1916 Siegfried Sassoon is a patient at the Somerville Section, 3rd Southern General Hospital. He later recalls that ‘to be lying in a little white-walled room, looking through the open window onto a college lawn, was for the first few days, very much like Paradise’.
Midsummer Night's Mischief
The so-called 'pickaxe incident' recalls a memorable summer night in 1919, at the end of Somerville's four-year stay in Oriel College (1915-19). Several members of the Oriel JCR, wishing to celebrate a bumps victory, endeavoured to pickaxe their way through the wall dividing themselves and the women of Somerville so as to express their mixed emotions at the women's imminent departure. Many of Somerville's JCR members were attempting to sleep on the lawn due to the heat, and ran indoors in great consternation at the sudden appearance of several drunk and happy rowers. Informed of the incident, Miss Penrose, the redoubtable principal of Somerville, sped to the scene in her second-best hat, and summoned the Provost of Oriel, there to reprimand him. She and the other tutors in attendance then guarded the hole against any further intruders for the remainder of the night, with Miss Penrose whiling away the time with a copy of the 'Oxford Book of English Verse'. The incident was recorded in both prose and verse by Vera Farnell, who cast Miss Penrose as Thisbe and the Provost of Oriel as Pyramus as they conversed through the wall (‘I’ll go at once and send my men to bed…’). Miss Penrose's copy of the 'Oxford Book of English Verse' was later presented to the Somerville College Library by Dr Cicely Williams, while the pickaxe, taken as a trophy by the Somerville women, was returned to the workman who had been missing it. Its memory, however, lived on: Somerville's next boat - a sculler - was named 'Pickaxe'