| Since Queen Victoria presided over the grand opening ceremony of Royal Holloway College on 30 June 1886, the College has continued to grow in size and status to become one of the top research-led university institutions in the country. Today, Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal, the present Chancellor of the University of London, to which Royal Holloway was admitted in 1900, is regularly welcomed as a distinguished guest, maintaining the College\’s privileged association with royal families past and present. Royal visits through the years are highlighted on our Royal Connections timeline. Elizabeth Jesser Reid, a pioneering social reformer, founded Bedford College in 1849 as the first college in Great Britain for the higher education of women. Its location in Bedford Square was expensive and restricting, and the struggle to provide suitable accommodation for a continually expanding but financially under-endowed establishment led to a number of moves in central London, before finding a base in Regent\’s Park in 1913. The College remained there until the time of the merger with Royal Holloway College in 1985. Bedford College was the very first institution to play a leading role not only in the advancement of women in higher education, but also in public life in general. As soon as the University Degree examinations were opened to women in 1878, Bedford College produced graduates in both the Arts and Sciences. Thomas Holloway was a self-made multi-millionaire whose fortune had been made in patent medicines. He founded Royal Holloway College in 1879 after initiating a public debate inviting suggestions as to \’How best to spend a quarter of a million pounds or more\’. It was his wife Jane who suggested a college for women as the means by which Holloway\’s money might effect \’the greatest public good\’. Holloway\’s first great philanthropic enterprise, the Sanatorium at Virginia Water opened in 1885. The second, Royal Holloway College, largely inspired by the Chateau Chambord in the Loire Valley, was opened by Queen Victoria in 1886. Built around two quadrangles, today it continues to impress as much by its size as by the exuberance of the roofline with its many towers and turrets. As solid as it is extravagant, it epitomises the wealth, optimism and spirit of philanthropy so characteristic of the Victorian age. It continues to provide a home for the the Royal Holloway Collection — a Picture Gallery of Victorian paintings by Millais, Frith and Landseer among others — that was the final touch to Holloway\’s generous endowment. In 1900, both Bedford and Royal Holloway were admitted as Schools of the University of London, when it was constituted as a teaching university. Today, the University of London is made up of 19 institutions and offers the widest range of higher education opportunities in Britain. Both Bedford and Royal Holloway admitted male undergraduates for the first time in 1965, but their commitment to women\’s education remained. The 1982 partnership Agreement between the two colleges, signed as a result of severe cuts in government spending on higher education, paved the way for the merger in 1985. The newly merged Royal Holloway and Bedford New College was inaugurated in 1986 by Her Majesty The Queen as a ceremony in the College Chapel. The merger provided more academic diversity and strength as well as greater financial security. It also preserved the pursuit of innovation and excellence which characterised the Founders of the two parent colleges. In 1992 the College Council, on the recommendation of a group established to look at the College identity, endorsed a proposal that the College should present itself under the shorter name Royal Holloway, University of London, but that the full name should be retained as the registered title. The adoption of Royal Holloway, University of London as the College\’s everyday title does not, however, mean that we have lost sight of the unique contribution made to education by Bedford College, and the Bedford heritage is commemorated in many ways, including the Bedford Library . The Celebration Year 2000 — marking the Bicentenary of Thomas Holloway\’s birth — provided an opportunity to both look back to Royal Holloway\’s beginnings and to make future plans. A major programme of new building and renovation, an investment of £100 million, between 2003 and 2008 has delivered state-of-the-art facilities both for teaching and for improving the campus as a living environment.
The academic year 2010-11 marks 25 years since the merger of Bedford and Royal Holloway Colleges and is to be marked with a series of celebratory events. The College has grown substantially in the last 25 years, and today we have a student population of over 8,000 and a worldwide network of alumni which is some 40,000 strong.
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