Beale

Beale is one of College’s two newest senior houses, built in 1984 in the grounds of Sidney Lodge. Its name recalls College’s most famous Principal, Dorothea Beale. The other house is called Cambray in memory of the original Cambray House, where College first opened in 1854. The two houses, constructed of brick and Cotswold stone in keeping with Sidney Lodge itself, form a single quadrangle, linked to the old house but with a low roof-line which makes them remarkably inconspicuous from outside the grounds. As the Housemistress of Beale observed in 1985, they were designed ‘with an architectural cunning which forcibly reminds visitors of a luxury cruise liner’. The architects were Dyer Associates.

The Houses offer a standard of accommodation similar to university. 

When Beale and Cambray were built they joined St Hilda’s and Elizabeth as senior boarding houses, which until that time had been for second year Sixth-Formers only. Since 1985, however, girls spend both their Sixth Form years in a senior house.

HOUSEMISTRESSES

1985 Mrs S Amos
1990 Mrs S Dickerson
1997 Mrs A Churchill
2004 Miss C Ralph
2011 Mrs F Storey
2013 Dr A Seele
2015 Mrs J Wintle
2017 Miss H Munro
2018 Miss K Fleming
2021 Miss G Archer