Despite the furore over loans, today’s university students are a privileged lot. As recently as the 1980s, we were locked inside our halls of residence at night, had to share bathrooms and make do without the luxury of even a landline telephone.
I was in one of the first years of women at my college, but I didn’t notice any concessions being made on account of the growing intake of girls. I was surprised to find that there wasn’t even a wash basin in my room, let alone an ensuite shower just about big enough to swing a cat in. If something got damaged you were heavily fined – as I discovered, when I did eventually get a wash basin, and hung my smalls up to dry on the towel rail underneath – which was cleverly positioned over parquet flooring.
I vaguely remember an inventory of items allocated to each room. It probably read something like this:
1 Bed
1 Desk
1 Chair
1 Anglepoise lamp
1 Book shelf
1 wardrobe
1 Armchair (some rooms only)
1 coffee table (if you were lucky)
I’ve stayed at college on a couple of occasions in recent years, and it seems that quite a few of the rooms still share bathrooms (shower rooms, actually) – though they’re gradually being upgraded. Almost all rooms now have their own fridge and, of course, are fully wired for internet access. There are new rules and regulations too – mainly to do with recycling, and making sure you don’t slip over on a wet floor. There are also energy saving light bulbs that give off a gloomy, Dickensian-sepia glow. The furniture looks much the same, but my latest room had two armchairs – and, curiously, an Anglepoise minus its lamp.
Of couse all those ercol easy chairs and stag wardrobes that seem to fill every institution are worth a fair bit to retro collectors these days, and even all the fixtures and fittings are fully in vogue as being ‘industrial’ style
I guess ‘industry’ is worth getting all nostalgic about Worm. Though it won’t help students get jobs… I’m surprised there aren’t more inventive solutions to furnishing student accommodation, especially as young designers are coming up with some great ideas themselves.
The light from the pioneer energy-saving bulbs is going to be one of the touchstones of our time: stockpile them if you have them, as TV and film companies are going to be shopping for them down the track. It won’t quite compensate for the half hour’s gloom and depression before they get going…
LOCKED IN!? What? Where? Do you mean by rules or actual locks, because that might just represent a Triangle Shirtwaist scenario…
I remember a lot of Austerity furniture. All solid as a rock and ugly as sin: newer furniture tended to be even less comfortable and prone to come apart when you jumped on it. But it was the Austerity furniture that had the telling wartime pinched feel to it: wardrobes not deep enough for your clothes, drawers that stuck, desks you couldn’t get your legs under.
There were older pieces around, and a fierce black market for them: I once traded, in the dead of a moonless night, an oaken cupboard for a coffee table. Rumour had it that every time a staircase was modernized, the dons took their pick of the old furniture.
If these photos are anything to go by, it’s either the start of term (gazes dismayed at low hard bed, skinhead-finish carpet and yes, the Bedside Lamp) or students no longer raid eastern shops for the throws and lampshades that made the whole thing look less like a scene from Keep the Aspidistra Flying.
I think being locked in at night was standard practice for women’s colleges in the sixties. We had a hard time getting into the swinging scene. Curfew time was 10pm Sunday to Friday, 11pm on Saturday with two midnight passes per term. We had reasonably comfortable rooms and even wash basins but the battles for bathrooms looked like scenes from Camulodunum.
The corralling of the student population whilst not at their a’studying has oft perplexed the authorities and indeed seriously stressed the budgets. From the housing of the Oxbridge mob in freezing and draughty Nat Trust look alike hutches to the sky scraping battery hen pattern sixties stuff, from such are rude awakenings born. Kitting out the empty spaces done on the ‘whoever offers the largest volume for the smallest amount’ principle, nowadays referred to as contract furnishers.
Loners who prefer not to mix with the proles of course can be seen, as we speak, prowling the corridors of Ikea with a parent or two in tow, placky cards in hand, shock and awe on face.
Robbie and Lucy starting the trend in post utility furnishing that led to the styles shown in your post Susan, hubby of course, even as he was lowered into the earth, claiming ownership of that god-awfull tubular chair, the missus claiming that she invented screen printing as she raised two fingers in the general direction of Warhol.
As usual an absorbing post Susan and how have you all been doing, in fine fettle I hope.
(Relieved to find it’s locked into a COLLEGE and not into a room or a building…)
Perhaps one of the best things about being an Open University undergraduate, as I was, is that one never had to suffer the joylessness of student accommodation, except during summer school weeks at York, Bath, East Anglia, etc. Almost thirty years later, the memory of cold grey breeze blocks and concrete lingers on.
Ah, James, you’ve spotted the deliberate mistake. The college gates were locked – I seem to recall at midnight (though perhaps that was just Saturday nights, Monix). And I think the walls were around 12 feet high. Possibly higher – but just about scalable with a bunk up (if that’s the term for a helping hand beneath one’s foot?) High heels came in handy.
The photographs show a room vacated for the holidays ( so reduced to its barebones components), as inspired by the Days – thanks for that, Malty… and it’s great to have you back. We’ve been jolly well behaved dabblers in your absence.
60 going on 16 – Hadn’t thought of avoidance tactics with respect to the accommodation issue – hope the Open University is trading upon it’s competitive advantage?
It was communal washbasins in my halls, and that was in the 90s. Luxury compared to the dive I rented in the second year though. We used to find that skips were a good source of free furniture.