The University of Cambridge celebrated its 800-year anniversary in 2009, making it the second oldest university in the English-speaking world. However, the colleges of Cambridge are not as old as the university itself. We take a look at one of the university’s significant constituents, Homerton College.

The college is located on the south side of the city, near the railway station, in spacious grounds. It has an elegant Victorian building at its heart and is surrounded by modern accommodation blocks.

The college has played a strong part in the education of women. In 1903, Mary Miller Allan was the first woman to head Homerton and was responsible for Homerton’s national reputation in training female teachers. During the Second World War, the college was bombed.

Homerton was accepted as an Approved Society within the university in 1976. With around 1,200 students, it has more than any other college in the university. Until 2001 Homerton only admitted Education Studies students but has since broadened its intake, but an emphasis in Education still remains. It now accepts applications for all courses except Architecture, Medicine and Veterinary Medicine.

When the students are not around, the college is still busy with hosting events and conferences. Large windows mean it has natural daylight and the spacious rooms with IT and audio-visual facilities are often a popular choice for people wanting to hire a venue for conferences and meetings.

Alumni of the college, or ‘Homertonians’, include television presenter and comedian, Nick Hancock, who hosted television show They Think It’s All Over for ten years and also presented Room 101 in the 90s. He was a founding member of the Homerton Blaggards.

Cherie Lunghi, who played Guinevere in the 1981 film Excalibur and was also the face of a string of Kenco coffee commercials also graduated from Homerton College.

Also an alumnus is Jan Ravens, actress and impressionist famous for her voices on Spitting Image and notably her representation of newsreader Fiona Bruce on the sketch show Dead Ringers. Jan studied Drama at Homerton and was the first female president of Cambridge University Footlights Club, an amateur theatre institution, which has its own theatre in the centre of town.

Homerton has a strong emphasis on the drama scene and offers the only Drama course in Cambridge, the BA in Education Studies with Drama and English. Students are also active within ‘HATS’, the Homerton Amateur Theatrical Society.

The college is thriving with clubs and societies for students and has been classified as ‘the friendliest College in Cambridge’. Probably one of the college’s largest clubs is the sports club. The Griffins Club organises social events as well as overseeing football, cricket, rugby, aerobics, tennis swimming and many more. They are a part of the Homerton Union of Students and deal with practically every sport besides the Boat Club.

Homerton has an interesting sporting history. In 1881 former students of the college who were members of Glyn Cricket Club formed a football section to help keep players in shape during the winter months. This football section continued to grow over the years and is now Leyton Orient Football Club.