Official Archive of the Master and Fellows of Gonville and Caius College in the University of Cambridge

The College is a corporate body consisting of the Master and Fellows; in addition to which are the members of the College, the scholars, research students and exhibitioners. The College is part of the University of Cambridge, but was founded as, and remains, a distinct and autonomous body in its own right.

The College was founded in 1348 by Edmund Gonville, Rector of Terrington, under the authority of letters patent from Edward III. In 1353 his executor, William Bateman, Bishop of Norwich, consolidated Gonville's foundation, providing endowments and statutes, and moved it from its original site, now part of Corpus Christi College, to a site adjacent to his own foundation, Trinity Hall. Bishop Bateman renamed it the Hall of the Annunciation of the Blessed Mary the Virgin, though it continued to be commonly called Gonville Hall. The original community of Gonville Hall, consisting of a Master, Fellows and a small number of other students, gradually acquired endowments to support itself and buildings to house its work. The College's buildings, including a chapel, a hall and a library as well as accommodation for members of the College reflected its functions as a place for a common life of study and prayer.

After a period of decline, the College was refounded in 1557 by John Caius, M.D., a former student and Fellow of Gonville Hall, as Gonville and Caius College, under the authority of letters patent from Philip and Mary. Dr Caius provided further endowments for fellowships and scholarships, as well as extending College buildings. He also laid down a new set of statutes for governing the College, and a scheme for corporate record-keeping. By 1630 the College had expanded considerably, having about 25 fellows and 150 students, but during the unsettled times that followed, numbers declined and did not recover their 1630 level until 1840, after which expansion was rapid. Expansion made extension of College buildings a necessity - a larger Hall and a new Library were built 1853-4, and new residential buildings in 1868-70, 1901-4, 1934 and 1962. Between 1860 and 1926, the College's endowments and statutes were reformed as a result of government appointed University Commissions; while teaching and research became specialised, professional pursuits. In 1979, the College admitted women to its fellowship and student body for the first time.

Since the foundation of Gonville Hall, the College has preserved its records of its foundation, its statutes of governance and deeds relating to its endowments and entitlements. The records of the College's assets, their administration and use in support of the foundation, form the bulk of the Archive's contents.

The main series of administrative records, such as accounts, Bursar's books, annals, gesta, sealings and matriculation books, were identified by Dr Caius in his statutes; and in one form or another were kept in largely continuous series from the seventeenth century to the present day.

At some stage, bursarial and estate records became separated from the most important old administrative records, which were sent for safekeeping to the College Library. Hence, Dr Caius' annals and statutes are still in the College's manuscript collection; while in other volumes, which have since been reunited with the Archive, there is a red or black number which shows that they were stored in the Library until at least the late nineteenth century.

Record-keeping procedures were elaborated during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and administrative tasks were increasingly delegated by College Officers to a growing number of administrative staff working in specialised departments. The types of record kept also diversified. In addition to the traditional registers and ledgers, minutes, personnel files (for fellows, students and staff), project files, correspondence files, working papers, and plans and photographs are now also kept.

(See J. Venn et al., Biographical History of Gonville and Caius College, 8 volumes (Cambridge, 1898-1998) for a list of College members, a description of College history, selected archival records, descriptions of College offices and estate and building histories. C.N.L. Brooke, A History of Gonville and Caius College, 2nd edition (Boydell Press, 1996) is the most modern general history of the College)

The contents of the College's official archive reflect the major functions of the administration of a resident academic community which have remained largely constant throughout the College's history. Allowing for changes over time in certain job titles and particular responsibilities, the main contents of the Archive of the College are classified as follows:

overall management and policy-making (GOV & MAS)

alumni relations and development work (AD)

student admissions (ADM)

library and archive management (ARC & LIB)

finance, investment and estate management (BUR)

musical and religious provision (PR & CH)

information technology provision (COMP)

building and domestic services (DOM)

tutorial administration (TUT).

Access policy is currently under revision to comply with the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Currently, records produced by the College in the course of its business more than thirty years old may be opened to public access at the discretion of the Archivist, except:

- records containing personal information about present and former members of the College, and academic and non-academic members of staff, which shall be closed for 99 years.

- records containing exceptionally sensitive information, the disclosure of which would be contrary to the College interest, which shall be closed for 99 years.

- records containing information supplied in confidence, the disclosure of which might constitute a breach of good faith, which shall be closed for 99 years.

Closure periods will not apply to information already in the public domain, such as class of degree and examination record.

Please cite as Gonville and Caius College Archive, Cambridge, Official Archive of the Master and Fellows of Gonville and Caius College in the University of Cambridge, GCC

The personal papers of individual Caians (see Section IV) often contain migrant College records which have been held as part of private filing systems rather than official series. Given the role of the College Library in the safekeeping of certain corporate records, it is worth checking M.R. James, Catalogue of Manuscripts (1907) for archival records which have remained part of the College's manuscript collection.

- See also Cambridge University Archive, for materials relating to the participation of the College and its members in the University as a whole.

Revised by Gemma Bentley, Caius Archivist, October 2003.