Ashburne Hall Alumni Association

The origins of Ashburne Hall began in 1899, when a public meeting was held at Manchester Town Hall to discuss the growth in the number of female university students and the lack of accommodation for them. It was decided that a hall of residence for women should be established and a constitution was drawn up. Ashburne House, located in Victoria Park, near the modern day Dalton-Ellis, was opened for this purpose on 27th January 1900.

The Hall moved to the present site in Fallowfield in 1906 when Edward Behrens and his wife Abigail left their house The Oaks to the University on Edward’s death, now known as Behrens House. 

The purpose built Halls were placed to the east of The Oaks. The first to be constructed was the Mary Worthington Wing. It was officially opened on the 22nd October 1910, making it one of the earliest women's Halls of Residence in the country. Mary Worthington was the daughter of a Derbyshire mill owner and a great contributor to the cause of education for women; she regularly donated money following the establishment of the Women’s Department of the University. 

When the Liberal politician Lord Morley of Blackburn, University Chancellor 1908-1923, died in 1923, he bequeathed his book collection to Ashburne Hall. The Central block was erected in 1924 to include a library which housed this collection and also a large dining hall; this was opened on the 20th May 1925. Ward Wing was built at the same time. The entrance lodge, Ashgate was added in 1926. It was built in a style to match Behrens House.

Lees wing was constructed in 1933, replacing the ‘tin tunnel’; which was a makeshift hallway which connected Behrens House to the other buildings. The addition of Lees necessitated the creation of new openings to connect this block with Behrens House and the Mary Worthington wing.

The most famous resident of Ashburne Hall was the noted children’s author Alison Uttley who in 1906 became the second woman to graduate with honours in Physics at the University.  

Thank you for the invite to speak at the Founders Day Dinner.

As a theme I intend to talk briefly about Lord Morley of Blackburn. The Library in the Main Building is named after Lord Morley as he donated his personal library to the hall. I will also say a little about the history of Ashburne Hall & Sheavyn House.

John Morley was a leading Liberal politician of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. He was also a distinguished journalist, newspaper editor and writer. Originally from Blackburn he sought election to Parliament to represent the town but failed. In 1883 he was elected in a by-election to represent Newcastle-upon-Tyne and quickly moved through the Liberal Party ranks as a prominent supporter of the leader, William Gladstone. He became a Cabinet Minister in 1886 as Chief Secretary to Ireland. Gladstone had recently decided to answer the Irish question by the introducing Irish Home Rule. This was a controversial policy and Gladstone was defeated a few months later and Morley lost office. He continued to be prominent in politics and returned to the position after Gladstone won the 1892 General Election. The question of Irish Home Rule remained very divisive and the Government was short-lived falling within 3 years.  At the 1895 General Election Morley lost his own seat but returned a year later at a by-election on Montrose. During the 1895-1905 period, when the Liberals were out of power, a key area Morley was involved in was opposition to the South African War. He believed it would increase the power of the State by requiring greater taxation. He was often described as the last great nineteenth century Liberal believing that laissez faire economics was the key to prosperity. In 1902 he received the Order of Merit and in the Liberal landslide of 1906 he returned to the Cabinet as Secretary of State for India. He held the office for nearly six years and during that period he adopted firmness and sanctioned extreme measures for dealing with opposition whilst combining this with democratic principles by adopting two distinguished native Indians to his Council. In 1908 he left the House of Commons having been raised to the peerage as Viscount Morley of Blackburn. From 1911 to the outbreak of World War One he held the post of Lord President of the Council and resigned from the Government in opposition to the decision to enter World War One. Following this he largely retired from politics but would intervene from time to time.

In retirement, one area he concentrated on was his role as Chancellor of the University of Manchester. A post he held from 1908 until 1923. This brings me to a little of the history of Ashburne & Sheavyn. Ashburne Hall had been founded at the end of the nineteenth century by Samuel Alexander, C.P. Scott and Alice Cooke as a Hall of Residence for female students. It was initially located at Ashburne house in Victoria Park which had been given by R.D. Darbishire. It moved to the current site in 1908 after Edward and Abigail Behrens donated their house for the continuing education of women. Now called Behrens House it was originally called ‘The Oaks’. Ashburne began to grow with the first wing, Mary Worthington, completed in 1910. During World War One building plans stopped. The Central Block which houses the Dining Room, the Library and Ward Wing was completed in 1924 just after the death of Lord Morley who had bequeathed his Library to the Hall. In 1933 Lees Wing was built replacing what was called ‘The Tin Tunnel’ which was a makeshift tin hallway that connected Behrens to the rest of the buildings. Following a decision of the University in the early 1990s to construct new en-suite accommodation Sheavyn House was built. Sheavyn is named after Ashburne’s third Warden Phoebe Sheavyn who in 1912 had been given a seat on the University’s Senate. In 2000 Ashburne admitted its first male students with postgraduates moving into Ward Wing and from 2008 male undergraduates have also been living in Ward Wing. The three blocks in Sheavyn House now bear the names of some of the founders of Ashburne Hall, Darbishire, Alexander and Stephen. Helen Stephen was the first Warden of Ashburne Hall.

Although this has been a brief history I hope that when you are studying in the Morley Library over the coming year you will have a better idea about the life of the person who bequeathed the Library to the Hall and you will have a better idea of the history of Ashburne Hall and Sheavyn House. I hope that you have a tremendous year living here and take away happy memories and friendships that last a lifetime.

Ashburne 1899 – 2019

This year we celebrate the 120^th year of the founding of Ashburne – though the world is rather a different place now.  Ashburne has, of course, always been open to change but the pace of change seems to have accelerated greatly recently; however, I feel that despite all the changes, the spirit of Ashburne continues.  Hall life seems to be vibrant under the new ‘warden’, Caitlin Clifford, and members can read about activities elsewhere in the newsletter.  This is thanks in no small way to Sheila Griffiths’ watchful eye and her promotion of the Association and traditions of Ashburne, and to Hilary Wightman looking after the library.  I encourage all Ashburnians to help in whatever way they can to support them and to keep the Association running.

The up-coming 120^th anniversary set me reminiscing.  Not only do I often think about all the undergraduate and postgraduate students and tutors who lived in Ashburne (however many have there been?) during those 120 years and made Ashburne what is it is, but it is evident that Ashburne has meant much to a wide range of others too. Though I left 14 years ago I still see former staff around the university as well as the occasional student, and it is remarkable that they all say how much Ashburne meant to them. In the summer I was greeted by someone from Portugal who, for many years, used to stay in Ashburne with her, then young, daughter over the summer months to improve their English. Jeanette who used to work in Reception is now building supervisor in University Place and her husband is part of the house services team in the Samuel Alexander Building (probably known to many of you as the Arts Building), so I seem them quite often and get updates about other people such as Shirley who also worked in Reception and the office, and then moved to Accommodation office.  Quite often I  meet people on the bus or in the hairdresser or in the street;  just before Christmas I bumped into Maureen Armstrong and her husband in Didsbury. Maureen used to look after Behrens House mostly during our former Warden, Dr French’s, time; sadly though she told me that her sister Agnes Doohan, who took over from her and looked after me (as well as the rest of Behrens house), had died earlier in year. The other day the locksmith who used to work for ‘Bob the lock’ spotted me and reminisced for a while as did Jack the gardener who retired in 2008; security staff still greet me on campus!  Ashburne certainly seems to mean a lot to a wide variety of people.   Please help to keep it that way by sending us your memories, however small or large – each one contributes to the Ashburne story and if you can spare an hour or two to help on a regular basis that would be splendid.

The whole residential sector is so different now and focuses on the wider student experience rather than being an extension of academic life as it was when I began my wardenship 30 years ago.  Things are done more centrally and the day-on-day business of halls is in the hands of three fulltime senior Residential Life Officers.  Hall wardens, or rather Residential Life Officers, often have several halls under their care and their job is rather different from when I was warden and Head of Residence. Nevertheless, traditional Halls continue to have a role and the University has said that it recognises that the distinct character of traditional catered halls still appeals to some students and that halls such as Hulme, Dalton Ellis, St Anselm, Ashburne and Woolton  (Needham, Langdale and Allen Hall have long gone) will continue to provide this sort of accommodation. However, it is with no little dismay that I report that St Gabriel’s Hall (now the only all-women’s hall) will close at the end of this academic year because the lease on the building has expired and for various reasons was not able to be renewed. The university has pledged to create additional female only accommodation in other halls (and hopefully Ashburne will be able to help), but separate accommodation is only part of the issue –the particular type of community that St Gabriel’s was able to provide, that cannot simply cannot be recreated in other halls and I feel that this needs to be flagged up. 

On a much happier note, I am sure you will all join me in congratulating our editor, Dr Jenny Rainbow (nee Sloan), on the birth of twins (a boy and a girl) in December. Inevitably they are already part of Ashburne, and some day may even be members of  the Hall!

I hope that many of you will be able to come to the Reunion on 22^nd June and join in the celebrations of Ashburne’s 120^th anniversary. If you can spare some time to help either at the Reunion or on a more regular basis please contact Sheila Griffiths.

Floreat Ashburnia

Elizabeth Healey

President of the Ashburne Association and Warden and Head of Residence and 1989-2006.

Overview

The Alison Uttley Bursary is awarded to the applicant with the strongest academic attainment at A level (or international equivalent).

Applicants who are not first-year students must also have achieved at least a 2:1 in the previous year of their degree programme.

Value 

 £1,000

How to Apply 

To apply, please submit the following:

• A 300–500 word application emailed to: ashburneandsheavyn.reslife@manchester.ac.uk
• COPIES of academic certificates demonstrating your qualifications.

What to Include in Your Application 

Your written submission should provide:

• A brief description of yourself
• An overview of your university career so far
• A reflection on your stay in Ashburne & Sheavyn
• Details on how you would use the bursary

Eligibility

• Applicants must meet the academic criteria listed above.
• Students who have already received the University scholarship limit (£3,000) are not eligible for this bursary.

Overview

Overview

Thanks to the Ashburne Travel Bursary, I was able to take a two week trip across Italy, exploring many of the major artistic and cultural centres. I hoped to discover more about the life and works of Michelangelo in particular, but I came away with a new appreciation for many other 16th-century Renaissance artists, after seeing a plethora of their works first-hand. I marvelled at the smooth skin on Caravaggio’s figures, the striking quality of the gold paint used in many paintings (something that can only be fully appreciated up close), and the sheer quantity of ‘Madonna and child’ creations. Some of my favourites were Sebastiano Ricci’s Ascension, with its vivid depiction of grief and Cosimo Rosselli’s Santa Barbara with its defiant female figure standing on top of her own father. This reminded me particularly that Renaissance paintings refuse to be defined as just one thing. Yes, there are a lot of angels, biblical figures, and peculiar floating cherubs, but in amongst all this hubbub of grandeur and opulence and religious conformity, there are playful moments of cunning, hilarity, and genius which make this era of art creation so remarkable. In Florence I homed in on my exploration of Michelangelo, from seeing his tomb in the Sante Croce, to visiting his ancestral home Casa Buonarroti, where some of his sketches and smaller sculptures are on display. However, seeing his David in the Academia was the real
highlight for me. The shaping of each individual muscle, bone, and sinew, I couldn’t help but believe there was a beating heart inside too.

Now that I have detailed some of the sights that captured my mind, here are some recommendations for the body (food) and soul (sunset spots). In Rome, venture to Regoli in the Esquilino district to try the local speciality of Maritozzi. In Florence, go to Piazzale Michelangelo for the most glorious sunset with a view across the city, try
a Lampredotto with salsa verde in the Mercato Centrale, and take a cosy afternoon nap on a plush armchair in the Giunti Odeon cinema bookshop. In Bologna, go to Trattoria Bolognese to enjoy their eponymous dish amongst the company of locals, in a humbly decorated restaurant, that if you’re lucky, may show an Italian-dubbed Little House on the Prairie episode as an accompaniment. In Milan, leave and go to Bergamo for the day. The panoramic view from the Città Alta is spectacular at sunset, and there’s a plethora of beautiful
churches and eateries that can offer solace and sustenance. In Como, well I didn’t have much time to gather recommendations here, but I can say that the 24 hour Carrefour has some excellently crunchy apples, and once the Brunate funicular is repaired, I’m sure the view at the top will be splendid. Finally in Venice, I can pass on
some advice that a friend once gave me, walk around without a map or an agenda, and just get lost. Wander along the canals and over the bridges, taking in its mystical majesty. It would be a bonus if you do this at night.

My trip across Italy was nothing short of spectacular. I would like to thank the Ashburne Alumni for making this experience possible for me.

Ahmed Arshad Sharif,  Law Student
Go Greener Islamabad: A Personal Journey to Raise Awareness and Support Flood Victims

Receiving the Travel Award from Ashburne & Sheavyn was an incredibly meaningful opportunity for me, both personally and academically. It allowed me to return to my home city of Islamabad and carry out a project that reflects my deep connection to the place where I grew up.

Having lived in Islamabad since 2005, I have personally witnessed the transformation of the city over the years. What was once known for its greenery, open spaces, and natural beauty has gradually changed into a more urbanized landscape filled with expanding infrastructure and tall buildings. While development brings progress, I have always felt a strong attachment to the natural character of the city, and it has been difficult to see the loss of green spaces and the increasing environmental challenges that now affect everyday life. These personal experiences became the motivation behind my project.

With the support of the Travel Award, I spent approximately 15 days in Islamabad organizing and delivering an environmental awareness and fundraising initiative. I organized the project myself with the support of close friends and collaborated with local organizers hosting a community Padel Tournament, which allowed us to reach a wide and diverse audience.

Developing the Climate Awareness Presentation

A central part of my project involved creating an educational presentation titled:

“Climate Change, Urbanization, and Floods in Islamabad: An Analysis of Risks and Resilience (2000–2024)”

This presentation reflected not only academic research but also my own observations of how the city has changed over time. Using publicly available data and visual materials, I highlighted several key environmental trends, including:

• Rapid urban expansion, significantly increasing built-up areas across Islamabad.
• A steady decline in forest cover, reducing the city's natural flood protection.
• Increasingly intense rainfall patterns, linked to global climate change.
• The impact of human activities, such as fossil fuel use, deforestation, and industrial growth.

The presentation also explained how these factors contribute to flooding, particularly through overwhelmed drainage systems and increased surface runoff caused by expanding urban development.

To make the information widely accessible, I created printed handouts and generated QR codes that allowed people to instantly access the presentation on their phones.

Community Engagement Through a Padel Charity Event

To encourage participation and engagement, the presentation and supporting materials were displayed during a Padel Tournament, organized in collaboration with local event hosts. With the support of friends and local organizers, we successfully integrated climate awareness into a lively community event.

The event included:

• Around 50 active participants, along with spectators attending the matches
• Multiple posters displayed around the venue, encouraging support for flood victims and raising awareness.
• QR codes positioned around the venue, enabling attendees to access the presentation digitally.
• Printed presentation materials, which attendees could take away and share with others

This approach proved very effective. More than 35 individuals scanned the QR code, and several attendees took printed copies with them to share the information further, helping extend the reach of the project beyond the event itself.

Fundraising and Supporting Flood Victims

Supporting flood-affected communities was a major focus of this initiative. Having witnessed the devastating impact of flooding in Pakistan, this aspect of the project held deep personal significance for me.

Through community participation and support during the event, we successfully raised:

Over PKR 40,000, which was donated to support families affected by flooding.

In addition to fundraising, we displayed awareness posters highlighting the struggles faced by flood victims. This allowed participants not only to learn about climate change but also to actively contribute to helping those affected by its consequences.

Leadership, Collaboration, and Personal Growth

Organizing this project independently, while working alongside friends and local organizers, was a highly rewarding experience. It required careful planning, communication, and teamwork to ensure everything ran smoothly.

This initiative helped me develop important skills in:

• Leadership and independent project management
• Community engagement and public communication
• Research and data presentation
• Collaboration with local organizers
• Adapting plans to real-world challenges

More importantly, it allowed me to transform personal concern into meaningful action, contributing positively to a community that means a great deal to me.

Reflection and Gratitude

This project was more than just an academic or extracurricular activity, it was a deeply personal journey. Growing up in Islamabad, I have always appreciated its natural beauty and peaceful surroundings. Seeing those features gradually change motivated me to take action, however small, to raise awareness and support those affected by environmental challenges.

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Maximillian Gibbs and Ashburne & Sheavyn Bursary Team for providing me with the opportunity to organize this initiative. Their support made it possible for me to turn an idea into reality and create an event that combined education, community engagement, and charitable action.

Without their generosity, this project would not have been possible. I am truly thankful for the trust and encouragement they placed in me, and I hope this initiative reflects the positive impact that their support enables students to achieve.

Future Goals

This experience has strengthened my commitment to environmental awareness and community engagement. In the future, I hope to expand similar initiatives, collaborate with environmental organizations, and continue promoting sustainable practices wherever possible.

Most importantly, this project has shown me that even small efforts, when supported by a strong community, can contribute to meaningful change.

We are very sorry to have to report that our former Warden, President and Vice-President Emerita of the Association, Dr Lisa French, died on 10^th June 2021, aged 90.

As well as being a very influential warden she was also a well-known archaeologist and after leaving Ashburne became director of the British School (of Archaeology) in Athens. Members may have seen some of the obituaries in the Times, Telegraph and Guardian as well as one from the BSA.

We have also have some more personal memories from Jill Hughes who was Dr French’s first senior student, Caroline Hartley then a member of the JCR committee and now our treasurer, and a passing recollection from Dr Brendon Jones, then an undergraduate but now Residential Life Manager, as well as from Professor John and Dr Kay Prag, close colleagues and friends and finally from her daughter Ann.

Tributes

From Jill Hughes, Senior Student 1976-77

In my first meeting with Lisa (LF as I called her) on her arrival as Warden at Ashburne Hall I met a force of nature and a woman who shaped and influenced my life from that moment.  At that meeting she informed me of two things: first, in her predecessor’s report I had been described as a ‘rough diamond’, Lisa said to me with her twinkle and mischievous smile ‘I’m entrusting myself to the diamond’, and followed with ‘You will tell me when I’m going wrong and work with me to make this work’.  And we did. I learned a diplomacy I never knew I had, smoothing out ruffled feathers as she left casualties here and there!  I have brought that skill to meetings all over the world.

She brought an energy and vision to Ashburne that it needed at that time, she built on the good and brought change to what had become stuck.  Hall thrived.  There were some really difficult events in that first year which she steered us through with care and understanding for the student body.

Lisa could be brusque and demanding, yet in all these years I have known her she was always fair and ready to listen to a different view.  She brought cashmere sweaters, gazpacho and sophistication to my world. The last time I went to Cambridge to see her in 2019 (not knowing we would be unable to travel through most of 2020) she was older, slower, whiter of hair – and sharp, demanding and interested – her trademark screwed-up-face-smile as I left her getting her hair cut in the ‘salon’ - is imprinted on my mind’s eye.

Thank you, LF

From Caroline Hartley

Dr French was a very different warden for Ashburne – when she first arrived, the JCR Committee were invited for supper in her flat – I remember her Circassian chicken being the most exotic meal I had ever tasted! I admit to being terrified of her but she showed great kindness and understanding to me in my somewhat complicated family circumstances.

Lisa was very supportive of the JCR committee and guided us through negotiating modernising changes in Hall life.

Her support continued with the Ashburne Association, which was struggling financially in the 90’s. Lisa secured additional funding for the Association, in the form of the Uttley Fund, in her usual efficient way. Without this, we would have found it difficult to continue publishing Yggdrasill.

In 1999 Lisa asked me to act in a professional capacity for ASTENE, an archaeological charity of which she was Trustee – and over the next 20 years I met some of her fellow archaeologists and understood how highly respected she was throughout the academic world.

Over the past 40 years, Lisa French has been a role model for us all in combining a professional career with a family. For me personally, she was always kind, supportive and interested in what I and the family were doing.

From Brendon Jones Residential Life Manager

I remember her as Warden when I was a first year undergraduate living at Woolton in 1987-88. Woolton and Ashburne were twinned as you will recall. I also had a friend studying Politics and Modern History who lived in Ashburne. I distinctly remember going to her room with another male student who lived in Owens Park one Monday afternoon to prepare a seminar paper and Dr French passed by looked in and said something like two men in your room Rachel on a Monday afternoon! Anyway very sad news though 90 is a great age and I am sure a life well lived.

Dr French from a non - Hall perspective by Dr Kay (KP) and Professor John Prag  (JP)  life time colleagues and friends

Elizabeth (Lisa) Bayard French, PhD (London 1961), FSA (London 1979), Hon. PhD (Athens 2004), was born in London on 19 January 1931 and died aged 90 on 10 June 2021 in Cambridge. She was the only child of Helen (née Pence), an American with a degree in classics, and Alan Wace, an archaeologist with important interests in Greek textiles. Like her father, Lisa was to have a life-long involvement with the legendary site of Mycenae in Greece. Wace excavated at Mycenae from 1920-1923 and from 1950-1957; Lisa herself participated in almost every season from 1950, and then following his death, collaborated on further excavations and study seasons at Mycenae with Lord William Taylour and the Archaeological Society of Athens from 1959 to 1969. Her involvement did not stop there, for she wrote her doctoral dissertation on the small terracotta figurines found in the excavations, but above all, her major contributions were to the study of the Bronze Age pottery from Mycenae, a number of related publications, and the organisation of the final reports with which she was involved for the rest of her very eventful life.

In the 1958/59 season she became a student at the British School at Athens, and spent 1959/60 on a Fellowship which supported her work in Greece. In 1959 she married David French, an archaeologist who developed a formidable reputation for his field work in Turkey, and became director of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara in 1968. There Lisa spent the following years and accompanied him with their two small daughters on many long journeys while he studied the Roman road systems in Turkey. While there she continued to work on Mycenae. After a divorce in 1976 Lisa became Warden of Ashburne Hall and with her daughters Ann and Catharine moved to Manchester, where she continued a very active academic life, teaching in the University of Manchester, organizing conferences and research projects and producing publications.

Lisa was then appointed Director of the British School at Athens, a post held by her father in 1914-1923, she in 1989-1994, becoming its first female director.  Following this very active period, she retired to her home in Cambridge, but her archaeological work continued to the end of her life.

Lisa was a generous teacher and very loyal friend. She presented a formidable image, often initially negative to ideas, but once thought about she worked selflessly to carry them out. Many people have grateful memories for such help received in their careers and projects, and many happy times in Greece.

KP

I first met Lisa in 1965 when I joined Lord William Taylour’s excavation team for a study season on the finds from Mycenae. Lisa’s formidable reputation had preceded her, but the smiling face that first welcomed me from the top of the stairs in the dig’s house in Nafplion scattered that to the winds. I encountered a formidable organiser and an excellent teacher, but you did not make the same mistake twice. She never could accept that while I loved Classical Greek pots her beloved Bronze Age pottery tended to leave me lukewarm, but in no way did this lamentable failing on my part affect our friendship or our working relationship, which blossomed when she came to Ashburne in 1976. Neither of us quite fitted into the university’s academic structure – I was a keeper at the Manchester Museum, she warden of a hall of residence – and both of us enjoyed the scope this gave us for working outside the box and collaborating with other disciplines. This was not necessarily an approach shared by one’s colleagues at the time, and Lisa brought a welcome and irresistible wind of support. 

Together we began teaching evening classes which grew into day-schools and eventually (thanks to the suggestion and then sponsorship of Vivi Kanaris of Delta Travel) to a very successful series of annual study-tours to different parts of the ancient Greek world. All these are now routine elements in teaching and outreach, but at the time they were ground-breaking and they needed someone of Lisa’s strength of purpose to help carry them through. Her suggestions and her wide-ranging contacts were invaluable, quite apart from her input as a speaker, but we knew each other well enough never to try to lead a tour together. I became very familiar with Lisa’s first reaction to a suggestion – a firm and often scathing rejection – but I also learned that within a very short time not only would she have come round to it but would already have set the wheels in motion.

When Lisa moved to Athens as Director of the British School she brought all her local knowledge and negotiating skills to bear on our tours – and our groupies loved it, just as they loved seeing Greece through Lisa’s sometimes challenging but always immensely knowledgeable eyes. More importantly, the School flourished under her firm but solicitous leadership. Just as in Manchester, many of the students as well the staff benefitted enormously from her guidance (including a former senior student from Ashburne), though maybe not all them always appreciated it until long afterwards. When I was working on facial reconstructions of remains from excavations in Greece with a small group of colleagues Lisa first viewed our efforts with slightly bemused scepticism but quickly came round to giving us her whole-hearted and support, and but for her backing I doubt whether we would have had such ready access to the skulls from the Grave Circles at Mycenae. Working as Visiting Fellow at the School under her directorship was a dream come true for me; I think she enjoyed having me there too. In Manchester Lisa had taken a very active role in collaborating with the Chemistry Department on the chemical analysis of pottery and in Athens she was a firm supporter of the Fitch Laboratory while also introducing the extensive use of computers, organising the digitisation of the library catalogue, and bringing order to the School’s archaeological collection. Typically, Lisa also took in her stride the explosion of two car bombs close to the School in 1990 that shattered over 30 panes of glass in its buildings. She was also very proud of the watering system which she developed for the garden and which relied on local groundwater sources that were no longer fit for drinking long before such practices became the ‘green’ norm. Some of these actions raised eyebrows in the School’s Managing Committee, but she was justifiably and staunchly proud of them.

When it became clear to her that she needed more than just the comfortable sheltered accommodation that her Cambridge flat provided she took up the suggestion that she should move to a care home in Manchester enthusiastically. It was a prospect to which her Manchester friends looked forward with happy anticipation, but sadly it was not to be. With her passing we miss a loyal friend, a stimulating colleague, a person who was never dull or boring. Working with Lisa kept you on your mettle – and it could be great fun: so many of her friends and her students remember week-end parties on the beach and happy picnics under the trees as a break from the weekday discipline of the dig.

JP

And from her daughter Ann

Catharine and my introduction to Ashburne Hall was a postcard in the post – a photograph of Behrens House – with the warden’s flat indicated with arrows in biro by our mother.  Even now, I can feel her relief to be employed with a job that provided accommodation and meals.  It meant a great deal to her, and enabled her to rebuild her life and career after a painful divorce.

Catharine and I were, however, more ambivalent.  Apart from our boarding school, we had never spent any significant time in the UK.  Manchester of the 1970’s was a considerable shock.  It was cold, it was damp, the food was unspeakable to our Mediterranean palates

not to mention negotiating the alien buses, and the Arndale Centre.  We actually spent little time in Ashburne as our visits were confined to half terms and some holidays.  We escaped to Greece whenever we could.

Ashburne, however, did eventually become a useful source of income for us both.  Mother put us on the wage roll as soon as we reached sixteen and had acquired a national insurance number.  We laid the tables under Betty Davey’s exacting eye for the annual Christmas dinner, served at table and then helped wash up.  It was an amazing introduction to the formidable ladies who kept the place clean and the students fed.  They gave us no quarter and we certainly learnt how hard they worked.  Manning the telephone and welcome booth on the other hand was far less fun – the incoming calls could be really weird. 

As we grew up, we realised what Ashburne achieved for my mother.  It gave her stability, income and allowed her to maintain her archaeology.  It seems so odd now that getting a job as a divorced woman could be so difficult, but it was.  Her Ashburne years, therefore, held a very special place in my mother’s heart.

In 1957 Sheila Griffiths (neé Chapman, History 1954-57) and Sylvia Crummett (neé Millington also History 1954-57) went to their first reunion, and both were persuaded to take over the running the Association! Sheila as  Secretary, and Sylvia as Editor of Ygdrasill, our newsletter and magazine. Both have continued to be involved in Ashburne ever since.  Sylvia has ensured, through thick and thin that Ygdrasill appeared annually The Tree of Life: Cataloguing the Ashburne Hall Collection.  Sheila was inspirational. She spent a morning in Hall  every week (and often more), not only to run the Ashburne Association and to make sure that the bequests are well used, but also to enable Hall traditions to be handed down to present students. She has also supported no less than six or seven wardens, and I know that I couldn’t have managed without her support, wise words and guiding hand.  She has been the instigator of many physical improvements too – the design of our crest, the Honours boards in the Dining Hall, improvement to the entrance hall, the library, to name only a few.  She has also almost single-handedly organised Ashburne’s unique and very extensive archive Rylands Blog, The Ashburne Hall Archive dating back to our foundation in 1899.

Sadly, Sheila died in 2021, but it is largely because of Sheila’s and Sylivia’s careful nurturing we are still able celebrate the spirit of Ashburne. 

In 1953 Sheila Chapman, a bright grammar school pupil from the south of England, hoping to read History at Oxford or Cambridge, suffered a disappointment when her chosen colleges decided not to offer her a place. Her next move, surely, was to head for the University of London, but she was eager for a change of scene and hungry for the experience of living away from home, and so she took the advice of a young man she met at the school Christmas dance: why not think of the University of Manchester? In the early 1950s, more black stone than red brick, this institution had, like the murky metropolis of the north which had given birth to it, an austere style of its own; Manchester’s history school, which demanded even of undergraduates a small piece of original research, was no pale imitation of Oxford’s or Cambridge’s. Adventurously, Sheila set out from Euston to explore the world north of Watford and Potter’s Bar. The Clean Air Act lay several years in the future and she encountered a city of legendary fogs and industrial illth, but soon found it more homely and manageable than the vastness of London. It was a place of dramatic contrasts, with imposing university buildings resembling an alternative town hall erected round a quadrangle, and the grim suburb of Moss Side creeping up to the walls of the Arts Faculty building. 

A Victorian civic university was a far cry from Oxford or Cambridge. But, a couple of miles south of the University, close to the premises of Manchester’s famous grammar school, there was an oasis, which Sheila soon discovered and visited when prospecting. This was the oldest residence for women students, Ashburne Hall, once described as a younger sister of Newnham and known more derisively to macho youths and misogynists as the Virgins’ Retreat, where young women’s virtue was allegedly guarded by dragons in the shape of wardens and tutors.  As she was soon to learn, it was more than a hostel and, though in many senses collegiate, it differed from a college in the Oxbridge tradition. It had a fine dining room, a library, gracious gardens, a degree of student democracy (within limits), many societies, rituals, ceremonies and a high table. It had no chapel or chaplain and, like the university itself no bond with any particular religious denomination, though many of its residents were far from irreligious. But, although some of its wardens and tutors were university lecturers and it kept a close eye on residents’ examination results, it did no teaching on its own account. The Hall confined itself to the pastoral care of its residents, though this was more closely related to their academic progress than to any emotional or psychological problems they might suffer. For moral support one relied on friends, and Ashburne was good at promoting friendship.

Sheila’s loyalty and affection for Ashburne would last for the rest of her life. The History Department and the Faculty of Arts were somewhat forbidding places, where students were heavily lectured to (sometimes forming a mass of two hundred note-takers), faced (as she put it) ‘death by a thousand exams’ and submitted to the ordeal of essay classes in which ‘no quarter was given’. But at Ashburne the process of making friends began when the Hall authorities carefully paired off students in different disciplines to share rooms in their first year: Sheila’s mate was a law student from the north of England with whom she soon felt at home. There were communities within the larger community, and the most important was the ‘Ashburne family’, the little group of intimate friends (there were seven in Sheila’s circle) who often kept in close touch with each other long after leaving the University. No doubt young women, not too keen on discipline and academic work, could enjoy far greater freedom by living, say, in lodgings in Whalley Range, though they could also encounter indifferent and parsimonious landladies. Ashburne (as did men’s and women’s colleges in Cambridge in those days) kept a close watch on its residents’ movements after dark: late leaves were required by anyone wishing to return to base after eleven o’clock and anyone who overran them faced a reproving interview with her tutor. Ashburne offered structure, order, protection, taking the place of parents for girls under twenty-one and giving their actual parents some reassurance that their daughters were being looked after and defended against the temptations of city life.

Ashburne had its regular ceremonies, reminders of the social hierarchy, especially in the ‘formal halls’ held three times each week, when students processed into the dining hall in pairs (instead of walking in on their own and sitting down where they chose) and awaited the solemn entry of the Warden and her colleagues, though the high table was also a little like the captain’s table on a liner and students were invited in rotation to ‘walk in with the Warden’, and dine on the dais, and learn the art of polite conversation. Most were in awe of the Warden, who was then Miss Gough, a Quaker, a vegetarian and a part-time lecturer in the French Department, a very tall woman who had  (surprisingly) spent one summer vacation exploring Turkey on the back of a donkey – an austere, dignified figure who, however, ‘could be very kind and warm when she needed to be’.

The premises were chilly and the food neither sumptuous nor plentiful. The thick scarves which were emblems of student status were also essential items of thermal survival kit. But, as Sheila remembered in 1998, her generation expected no luxuries and had a strong sense of their own good fortune and privilege in being members of a reputable university, of gratitude for the state or county scholarships which helped to finance their careers.  Later generations, from the 1960s onwards, were perhaps more inclined to regard access to higher education as a right to be demanded rather than a privilege to be valued, to be highly critical of dull lectures delivered by haughty academics untrained as teachers, to protest with a touch of exaggeration against ‘the authoritarian structure which still rules their lives’. In 1970 Mrs Barbara Lees, the Warden of Ashburne, told the elderly author Alison Uttley, one of the Hall’s most distinguished alumnae, ‘of the queer, hard girls who now, [in] the last few years,  go to College, and the goings on at Owen’s Hall next door’. ‘Paternalism’ (did that include matriarchy?) became a student swear-word. But Sheila, though always ready to move with the times  and no diehard, nostalgic conservative, always remembered what the Hall had done for her and became anxious to do something for the Hall, though the opportunity did not present itself immediately, for life after graduating was too hectic.

In Sheila’s third year at the University, she had met her future husband, Frank Griffiths, who had just completed National Service in the RAF and was working for Unilever in the city. After graduating with Honours in History, she planned to take a course in industrial and personnel management.  Since her fiancé was tied to Manchester, she decided to do this, not at LSE, but by heading ‘up the road’ to the Tech., the Manchester College of Science and Technology, which would later become UMIST. No longer was she among her own kind, for a woman in the corridors of the Tech was then a rare and rather startling sight, and Sheila was one of only two women enrolled on her course, surrounded by a large and varied body of male students:  this included ex-army officers being equipped for civilian life and some mature students sponsored by trades unions. Practical work took her for a year to the premises of Fothergill and Harvey, a mill situated at Todmorden. Since the rules did not allow students to spend a fourth year in Ashburne, she moved into a comfortable flat in Didsbury with an old school friend who was taking a four-year degree in Modern Languages.  She and Frank settled in the Manchester region and for twenty-five years she taught in a large comprehensive school. Always enterprising and intellectually curious, she realised one of her old ambitions by holding a school-teacher’s fellowship at an Oxford college in 1985 and going on to Cambridge the following year. In Oxford she met one or two of her old tutors in the History Department, who, after serving an apprenticeship in ‘what are quaintly called the provinces’, had returned to Oxford as fellows. She remembered helping to console Oxford’s maverick Professor of History, Norman Stone, for the melting away of his lecture audience.

For about ten years she had little contact with Ashburne. But then she was in a toyshop ‘with an infant under my arm’, and encountered an Ashburne contemporary, similarly equipped, who said ‘Why don’t we go to a reunion?’ This they did, and Sheila became a member of the Old Students’ Committee, and then began to represent it on the Hall’s committee of management. For many years she was a devoted member of this body, which drew heavily not only on the Hall officers and senior students, not only on academics and registrars, but also on the wisdom and experience of women active in the Manchester community, particularly in education, volunteers devoted to the interests of the Hall. She became, to mention her official titles, Secretary of the Ashburne Association of Past and Present Students, archivist of the Hall, and an Honorary Companion of the University. Her official function was, above all, to keep old students in touch with each other and their ‘Ashburne families’, to invite them to reunions, and to keep Ashburne Past informed of events in Ashburne Present with the aid of the house magazine, Yggdrasill, named after the ash tree of Norse legend.  But, beyond that, she was a source of sound advice and support to the Wardens of her time. She was essential to the management of one awkward transition, when a trio of young tutors, one very popular with students, seemed unable to accept the authority of an incoming Warden, whom Sheila, who had helped to appoint her, loyally supported with great kindness and understanding.  She never lost her conviction of the importance of a relatively small, intimate, visibly humane community in mediating between individual students and a vast university in some danger of becoming impersonal and intimidating.

Educated in the Manchester History School, dedicated to remembering what other people forget, Sheila wrote an illuminating account of ‘Manchester University Women’, for the lavishly illustrated Portrait of the University of Manchester published in 2007. Her article includes a splendid photograph of early Ashburne residents, ca. 1900, in which the serene Warden, a small grizzled dog on her knee, seems, unlike her more solemn and earnest charges, on the verge of a quizzical smile. In 2019 Sheila completed a miniature masterpiece, a study with historical background of this almost forgotten woman, Helen Stephen, entitled ‘Guardians of Propriety: the women who protected the status of early women undergraduates’. She presented her as one whose social distinction and natural reserve sometimes exposed her unjustly to charges of aloofness and lack of sympathy, but who contributed much to shaping a new and rather hazardous profession  - that of looking after  girls in university towns, in transition between adolescence and adulthood, without creating the atmosphere of a boarding school. At Ashburne she had one notable critic in the shape of Alison Taylor, later Alison Uttley, whose later fame as an author made it likely that her words would be remembered. She believed ‘that she had not been given such a good room as the other girls and had thinner blankets on her bed’. Miss Stephen had been born into the late Victorian intellectual aristocracy, was the daughter of a distinguished judge, herself educated at Cheltenham Ladies College, sister of a Principal of Newnham and an aunt of Virginia Stephen (afterwards Virginia Woolf). There may have been about her a certain patrician aura which intimidated the prickly young woman born on a Derbyshire farm and was mistaken for coldness. When Miss Stephen left Ashburne to take charge of a bigger and more turbulent institution, Alexandra Hall in Aberystwyth, she became, through no fault of her own, the target of a student revolt against the discipline which the university, not given to consulting female student opinion, obliged her to enforce. As Sheila pointed out, Miss Stephen was wholly exonerated by a subsequent inquiry into the affair. And when she died in 1908 a moving obituary in the handwritten Ashburne magazine described her as ‘a good, true woman. One did not carry trivial misfortunes to Miss Stephen. But in big trouble it was always good to be with her.’

Sheila herself did not suggest this, but fans of Virginia Woolf may wonder whether thoughts of her Aunt Helen contributed in any way to the conversation about Manchester, perhaps a satire on southern ignorance of the north, which takes place in a Chelsea drawing room at the start of Woolf’s 1919 novel, Night and Day  (one gentleman does at least know that Manchester has a university where one might learn Persian).  ‘A cousin of ours has married and gone to live in Manchester’.  ‘I should think there would be no-one to talk to in Manchester.’ The novelist Mr Fortescue (Henry James?) depicts ‘first the horrors of the streets of Manchester, and then the bare, immense moors on the outskirts of the town, and then the scrubby little house in which the girl would live, and then the professors and the miserable young students devoted to the more strenuous works of our younger dramatists who would visit her, and how her appearance would change by degrees, and how she would fly to London…’ But neither Helen Stephen nor Sheila Griffiths fled back to the London they had left. Sheila was one southerner who found the greatest satisfaction in Manchester life. She gave everything she could to the institution which had put her at her ease in the north and to the task of maintaining the friendships, the Ashburne family, which she and other women students had formed within its protective walls, under a dignified Warden, the upright Miss Gough,  who possibly had something in common with Miss Stephen.

Professor Brian Pullan  November 2021