had academic schools, lecture theatres, seminar rooms and halls of residence. Each college had a master, who was responsible for student welfare within their college. In chronological order of construction they were:
The university also has an associate college named Chaucer College.
There was much discussion about the names adopted for most of the colleges with the following alternative names all in consideration at one point or another: for Eliot: Caxton, after William Caxton; for Keynes: Richborough, a town in Kent; Anselm, a former archbishop of Canterbury; and for Darwin: Anselm (again); Attlee, after Clement Attlee, the post-war Prime Minister; Becket, after Thomas Becket, another former archbishop (this was the recommendation of the college's provisional committee but rejected by the Senate); Conrad; Elgar, after Edward Elgar; Maitland; Marlowe, after Christopher Marlowe; Russell, after Bertrand Russell (this was the recommendation of the Senate but rejected by the council); Tyler, after both Wat Tyler and Tyler Hill on which the campus stands. The name for the college proved especially contentious and was eventually decided by a postal ballot of members of the Senate, choosing from: Attlee, Conrad, Darwin, Elgar, Maitland, Marlowe and Tyler.
(Both Becket and Tyler were eventually used as the names for residential buildings on campuses and the building housing both the Architecture and Anthropology departments is named Marlowe.)
Each college had residential rooms, lecture theatres, study rooms, computer rooms and social areas. The intention of the colleges was that they should not be just Halls of residence, but complete academic communities. Each college (except Woolf) had its own bar, all rebuilt on a larger scale, and originally its own dining hall (only Rutherford still had a functioning dining hall; Darwin's is hired out for conferences and events; Keynes's was closed in 2000 and converted into academic space, but in 2011 Dolche Vita was expanded and became the dining hall for Keynes students in catered …
