These wonderful mugs feature drawings by Quentin Blake of Newnham women and Newnham history.
Quentin Blake was commissioned to draw a series of cartoons illustrating key moments and individuals in Cambridge University’s 800-year history, two of which depicted Newnhamites Dorothy Garrod and Rosalind Franklin. The artist very kindly drew the third – The Storming of the Clough Gates – especially for Newnham, inspired by events of October 1921, when the question as to whether women should be allowed to receive their degrees from the Vice-Chancellor in the Senate House was again put to the vote. The decision went against women and a crowd of male undergraduates marched to Newnham and grabbed a coal trolley which was used as “a battering-ram to smash down the Clough Memorial Gates”. In Quentin’s painting, the crowd races towards Pfeiffer Arch. Beyond the gates the Principal, Blanche Athena Clough, faces them – strong and brave but isolated. She is symbolic of Newnham’s determination to ensure that women would insist, quietly yet surely, on the right to be treated equally.