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St Mary's College is a college of the University of Durham in England. Following the grant of a supplemental charter in 1895 allowing women to receive degrees of the university, St Mary's was founded as the Women's Hostel in 1899, adopting its present name in May 1920.

Contents 1 History 2 Facilities & Traditions 3 College shield and arms 4 Alumni 5 External links

St. Mary's was original location was at 33 Claypath with six students before moving into Abbey House and then on to Palace Green next to Durham Cathedral. This is now occupied by the Choristers School. It is one of the Hill colleges on Elvet Hill and its founding stone was laid in 1947 by Her Royal Highness Princess Elizabeth site opened in 1952. Of all the Hill colleges, St Mary's is the only college to have been originally founded in the 19th century. For several decades there had been debates about St Mary’s continuing as a single-sex college within the University, and it had been originally mooted in the 1970s that it should go mixed. The MCR (Middle Common Room), which consisted of postgraduate students, went mixed in the early 1990s. St Mary's was the last of Durham's colleges to become entirely mixed when it took in both males and females at undergraduate level in 2005, ending over a hundred years of being a female-only college, although the college still provides single-sex accommodation in the Sheppard’s wing of the Ferguson building. This was despite a vociferous protest from the student body against the College going mixed. These protests included a march on the University Offices at Old Shire Hall in 2000 by members of the College over the proposed plans.

The College is centred around two main buildings: the Fergusson and Williamson Buildings. The former of which houses the college's dining hall along with three computer rooms the College library and the Chapel. The Chapel is located on the top floor of the East wing, although prior the 1960s it was situated at the basement level of the College, where after it was redesigned and moved by the architect George Pace to its present location. The Fergusson building also contains the three student common rooms and music rooms. The College also has a two dual-purpose tennis and netball courts.

The College requires the wearing of gowns at formal dinners, which are held between two and three times a term and on the first and last Sunday of each term. Further to this the College requires gowns to be worn at JCR meetings and Matriculation

The college arms are blazoned as "Argent a Cross Formy Quadrate Gules a Chief Azure thereon a Durham Mitre Or between two Lilies proper."

The college's motto is "Ancilla Domini" and can be translated to "the handmaid of the Lord."

• Olive Sinclair - Politician
• Christiana Odulana - Educationalist
• Biddy Baxter - Children's TV presenter and radio host
• Ann Burdus - Veuve Cliquot Business Woman of the Year Award
• Jane Griffiths - Politician
• Jenny Willott - Politician
• Tracy Langlands - World Championship bronze medallist rower

• St Mary's College official website
• St Mary's College JCR student organisation

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