History of the Junior Common Room

1906
The earliest mention of the Teddy Hall JCR in the Teddy Hall archive is a photograph from 1906, which includes the Principal and Vice-Principal pictured with the student body, described as ‘St Edmund Hall Common Room’.

1910
Our oldest JCR Minute Book dates back to spring 1910. General common room meetings appear to have preceded a meeting of the various clubs, and business was sparse! The first recorded meetings tended to deal with just a single issue – such as introducing a members’ subscription to buy newspapers in the Common Room.

1911
A proposal was made that the JCR should have a president as well as a steward. A suggestion that the senior man should be ipso facto president led to ‘a long and heated discussion’ and the first President, Mr Akam was chosen by a ballot. The minutes of the following meeting, however, record that he was not in residence, so C.D. Martyn  was appointed as President in his stead, and it is his name that heads the list of JCR Presidents on the board in the Well Bar.

1915
JCR relocated from the ground floor of the Cottage (now the College Office) to Staircase II.

1921
The Well Bar formed part of the physical Junior Common Room from 1921 until 1970, when the present JCR was completed.

1970
After the JCR moved to its current location in 1970 the Buttery was knocked through into the Well and the two-way bar installed.

1980
The academic year 1980 to 1981 saw the first JCR President’s report in the Magazine, written by Jonathan North; previous issues merely list the JCR office-holders. Jonathan remarked on the arrival of women at the College and the following year, JCR President Mark Bishop’s report noted the election of the first female JCR official: Judith Beresford as Social Secretary.

1984
David Reed narrowly won the presidency by beating a vacuum cleaner by two votes.

Since then, the Committee has grown considerably, in line with the size of the overall student body, but the spirit of the JCR has remained much the same – sometimes raising some serious issues with the Governing Body but often enacting democracy with tongue firmly in cheek.