Mansfield and the University Tests Acts Helen Mountfield QC, Principal of Mansfield and Stephen Blundell, Professorial Fellow in Physics
Through the centuries, Oxford colleges have been founded by aristocrats, bishops, cardinals, monarchs and wealthy philanthropists. But the foundation of Mansfield was quite different. It was based on a desire to fulfil a specific purpose: to bring the highest level of education to people who had been traditionally excluded from Oxford. Established firmly in the dissenting tradition, Mansfield has perhaps found it easier than some to question the status quo and to maintain a strong voice advocating educational change in Oxford. Mansfield was founded in 1838 as Spring Hill College in Birmingham, to train men for the Congregationalist ministry, but the passing of the University Tests Acts in 1852 and 1871 was the impetus for its move to Oxford.
After the 1852 Act, dissenters could matriculate and proceed to bachelor degrees and, what is more, the Vice Chancellor was empowered to open up private halls. As Roy Jenkins put it in his biography of William Gladstone, the original idea was ‘to let the core colleges continue to be mostly the preserve of the rich, but let there be a periphery around them through which those of more modest means could get an Oxford degree and participate (to some extent) in the life of the University’. It was only after the 1871 Act that Prime Minister Gladstone warmed to the idea of a Nonconformist college in Oxford. The passing of the 1871 Act and Gladstone’s suggestion that there should be a dissenting college in Oxford led the staff at Spring Hill to begin to discuss among themselves
Spring Hill College, Birmingham c1870
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possible future opportunities for the College in one of the country’s major universities. In 1883, RW Dale, chairman of Spring Hill’s Board of Education, suggested that the College should relocate to Oxford or Cambridge, motivated by his belief that a Christian community needed in it a ‘fair number of men of great theological learning’.
‘ It was based on a desire to fulfil a specific purpose: to bring the highest level of education to people who had been traditionally excluded from Oxford.’
