25 years of Cumberland

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1980s, 1990s, 2000s, Cumberland

Part of Cumberland in 2014, showing both 1910s and 1940s wings of the building. Image courtesy of Cumberland College.

This year Cumberland College celebrates 25 years of existence. It is now a well-established home for over 300 students, but it didn’t get off to a very auspicious start – it was set up at the last minute in a building about to be demolished!

The building which is now Cumberland was originally the Dunedin Hospital Nurses’ Home. Designed by old Dunedin architectural firm Mason and Wales and built by Fletcher Brothers, it opened in 1916 to cater for the growing staff of the growing Dunedin Hospital. This was an era when all nurses lived on the premises and, as many had come originally from out of town, the hospital board wanted to make this a real “home” for them. The nursing journal, Kai Tiaki, gave the new building a rave review. It had “bedrooms of a sufficient size and healthy and comfortably furnished for each nurse, a large, well-lighted and ventilated dining-room, delightful sitting-room for the nurses in training, for the sisters and for the Home sister, a lecture room and library. There is a fine kitchen and its various adjuncts and rooms for the maids at the Home.” Particular features included the “handsome doors with stained-glass” and the “beautiful New Zealand wood with which the Home is panelled throughout.” The windows were “very large and let in all the sunshine which, especially in winter, is so much appreciated in Dunedin.” The wide balcony would overlook “a nice lawn and garden,” yet to be finished, and tennis courts and a croquet lawn were planned.

The future Cumberland College when it first opened as the Dunedin Nurses’ Home in 1916. Image from Kai Tiaki, October 1916, courtesy of Papers Past, National Library of New Zealand.

For decades the building served its original purpose as nurses’ home, with extensions in the 1940s to cater for the still expanding Dunedin Hospital staff. By the 1980s, though, the hospital’s need for staff accommodation had greatly reduced as most nurses lived out. The 1916 building was becoming decrepit, and the Otago Hospital Board decided in April 1988 to demolish it and use the space as a car park, rather than spend the millions of dollars required for upgrading and converting the building for another use.

Meanwhile, the University of Otago, with its rapidly expanding roll, was desperate to find more residential accommodation for students. It was already leasing the old Wakari Hospital nurses’ home from the Hospital Board (this served as Helensburgh House residential college from 1984 to 1991) and had bought the former Aquinas Hall, re-opened as Dalmore House in 1988. It now offered to lease the old Dunedin Nurses’ Home from the board and pay for its upgrade to meet current fire and seismic standards. As the Helensburgh experiment had shown, a former nurses’ home was ideal for student accommodation, requiring no alterations to the existing floor plan. The board, which would receive more income from this than a car park, agreed in September 1988 to the lease of the old part of the building, initially for five years. The board’s chair Michael Cooper, who also happened to be Professor of Economics at the university, noted that “it means one institution helping another to both bodies’ advantage.”

The Cumberland elephant, c.1996. It came from the Bowling Green Hotel (then Zouga Ballantynes), to the Dunedin Hospital creche, still located in the newer wing during Cumberland’s early years. It then became the Cumberland mascot. Image by Peter Walker, courtesy of Cumberland College.

After some very quick work and scrambling around for furniture, Cumberland House opened its doors to its first 145 residents and staff in February 1989. Warden Joy Bennett commented in her first annual report that it “started its year under extreme difficulties with building work incomplete, no kitchenette facilities and rooms requiring some or all furniture.” During the year snow brought down guttering and fascia boards, leading to urgent repairs, and residents sometimes ended up with cold showers as the old water heating system struggled to cope with demand.

Despite these difficulties, she noted that student morale was high in 1989. The residents may have been selected from the accommodation office’s “pool” of those not accepted by other colleges, and were generally of “average” academic ability, but they weren’t short of energy. Their student council was “extremely enthusiastic which led to a very successful social calendar for Cumberland House,” reported Bennett. The old tennis courts and lawn provided a great venue for ball games, and sports of all sorts became an important part of Cumberland life. Perhaps the best known former resident is Jamie Joseph, who played for the All Blacks in the 1990s and is now coach of the Highlanders.

Making good use of the tennis courts in 2013. Image courtesy of University of Otago Marketing and Communications.

In its early years, Cumberland was well down the popularity list for residential colleges. It didn’t have the history and reputation of the older colleges, and its facilities were rundown. But as renovations and improvements continued, its reputation grew better. The university purchased the building from the Otago Area Health Board, also taking over the newer wings. Cumberland was “considered quite presentable” by the late 1990s, noted a 2009 review! The turn of the century brought a new dining room and kitchen (meals had been produced off-site before that), leading to more satisfied residents. In 2005 the college took on responsibility for some of the university flats further along Cumberland Street, even closer to the main Dunedin campus. These became Cumberland Court.

Like all colleges, Cumberland has its own traditions. Residents take part in Colour Wars Day, 2014. Image courtesy of Cumberland College.

The historic building has created its fair share of headaches for Cumberland over the years. Though it was strengthened just before the college opened in 1989, a careful review of university buildings in the wake of the Canterbury earthquakes revealed it to be the most vulnerable major building on campus, at just 19% of new building standards. It was first priority for further strengthening, carried out over the summer of 2011/2012. But an old building also has character, and Cumberland College is not short of that. In 2011 its dining room was transformed into Hogwarts to celebrate the opening of the final Harry Potter film. The college also boasts its own ghost, though not everybody welcomes that – the university chaplain and a kaumatua were called on to calm residents after sightings of the “Grey Lady” in 2012.

Do you have any memories to share of Cumberland’s action-packed first 25 years?

Masterchef, Otago style

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1910s, 1920s, 1940s, 1950s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, Abbey, Aquinas, Cumberland, Dalmore, food, Hayward, Helensburgh, Knox, St Margaret's, Studholme, Toroa

St Margaret’s residents, complete with crowns, at a special patriotic dinner to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953. Photograph courtesy of Dorothy Page.

This week the University Link hosted a quintessentially 21st-century event: a cooking contest, complete with mystery box, compulsory ingredients, celebrity judges and audience. This was not just any old cooking contest, but Otago’s fourth annual Residential College Chef of the Year event. Wade Kennard and Owen Newbould of Abbey College took top honours with their two plates: scallops with fondant potato, pea mash and red pepper sauce, and scallop ceviche; and rabbit braised in cola (the compulsory ingredient), served with Peking duck pancakes, salad and chilli caramel sauce. The Studholme College team came second and Cumberland third. Bragging rights went to Cumberland in 2010 and 2012, and to Toroa in 2011. The contest, organised by Otago’s College Catering Manager Gary McNeill, is designed to demonstrate the skills of these “unsung heroes” of student life, responsible for producing 2.5 million meals a year.

Everyday fare in residential colleges is, of course, not usually quite this lavish, but it has progressed a long way from earlier years. Producing good food for three meals a day for a large group on a tight budget is never easy, and until recent decades it could be very difficult to find an experienced and trained cook willing to take on the task. Studholme was opened in 1915 to provide a residence for home science students, and also to provide a venue for those students to gain practical training in institutional management. Whether or not this made its food superior to other colleges I don’t know!

College chefs have varied enormously in skill, and some regular dishes became notorious. In 1950 residents of St Margaret’s campaigned for the abolition of jam roll, composed of “flour & water & apricot jam”. The Sunday roasts under one particular St Mags cook were known as “cardboard and string”. In 1928 Knox residents voted that “the unsavoury indigestible unpalatable compound of dough immersed in fat plus bacon be excluded, banned and barred forever from the breakfast menu. Likewise the equally indescribable Yellow Peril.”

These days there is a wide variety of dishes on offer, but monotony was a real feature of the “plentiful but plain” food of the past. To a large degree this reflected New Zealand’s wider food culture, and many students came from homes which also served up the same basic dishes of “meat and 3 veg” at every dinner. Dinner at Knox in the early to mid-twentieth century usually included meat and vegetables, with a boiled pudding to follow. The only choice was between beef and mutton, and between rice and potatoes. During the 1940s rationing reduced food choices even more. From 1944 to 1948 meat was rationed, but by value rather than volume, meaning colleges relied heavily on cheaper cuts of meat, particularly sausages, to feed the hungry hordes.

Sometimes students were more conservative about food than their cooks. Many Knox residents were suspicious of innovations like muesli and yoghurt, introduced to their menu by new catering manager Sue Stockwell in the 1980s; they dismissed salads as “rabbit food”. Other residents appreciated the greater choices. By the 1990s they could select between one vegetarian and two meat options at every dinner, with a five-week recurring menu. Some of the colleges also added halal options to cater for the needs of Islamic students.

Some of the food choices at the older colleges may have been unpopular, but at least the food was freshly cooked. The new institutions of the 1980s and 1990s – Helensburgh, Cumberland, Hayward and Dalmore (the re-opened Aquinas) – had their meals cooked at the University Union via the cook-chill system. After Cumberland installed a full production kitchen and expanded and renovated its dining room for 2001, it was able to report “a more satisfied resident”.

Various colleges have developed traditions of special dinners – annual dinners, valedictory dinners, founders’ dinners, and the like. At a time when most students lived in their college for several years, St Margaret’s held a special joint 21st birthday dinner. And then there are the special dinners for one-off occasions, such as the coronation of 1953. Quite why Knox felt it necessary to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar in 2005 I am uncertain, though it did provide a good excuse for a party! These are occasions when the college catering staff have a chance to shine, and today they show a little more flair than they did in the mid-20th century, when the most likely choices for a special dinner were a roast with trifle or pavlova to follow. Still, the cooks of the past did not completely lack imagination – at the St Mags coronation dinner all the food had a patriotic theme, including the red, white and blue coconut ice!

Do you have any stories to share of memorable college cooks or memorable college meals?

The vanishing hall of residence

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1980s, 1990s, Aquinas, Cumberland, Dalmore, Hayward, Helensburgh

Helensburgh House, from the University of Otago accommodation brochure, c.1989

Abbey, Aquinas, Arana, Carrington, City, Cumberland, Hayward, Knox, St Margaret’s, Salmond, Selwyn, Studholme, Toroa, University … these days there are 14 residential colleges associated with the University of Otago. The colleges (known as halls of residence until 2006, when the remaining ‘halls’ and ‘houses’ were renamed ‘college’) have played a vital role in a university where the majority of students come from out of town.

Each college has its own distinctive and interesting history, from the first, Selwyn College (established 1893), to the most recent, Abbey College (established 2008). For this historian, though, the most intriguing residential colleges – and also the most difficult to research – are those which no longer exist! One which might easily be forgotten because of its distance from the university campus is Helensburgh House, home to over 100 Otago students each year from 1984 to 1991.

Helensburgh was an ‘instant’ hall of residence, created at short notice in response to a crisis. Student numbers at Otago declined slightly in 1981 and 1982. Some of the colleges reduced their capacity and Aquinas closed. Meanwhile some old privately-owned student flats were demolished. When student numbers grew again, accommodation became very tight and in early 1984 the university accommodation office had 300 prospective students without a place to live. To avoid losing all these potential students, the university arranged to lease the former nurses’ home at Wakari Hospital from the Otago Hospital Board. Within weeks Helensburgh House was a fully functioning hall of residence, though the absence of a large kitchen meant residents’ meals had to be transported from the University Union.

Critic was concerned that Helensburgh House would provide “a bleak introduction to life in Dunedin” for students. The big problem, of course, was that it was so far from campus – several kilometres, up and down hills. Fees were kept lower than in other halls to compensate for residents’ transport costs. There were some advantages – the rooms were large and the grounds attractive – but the distance factor would always keep Helensburgh well down the list of most popular halls of residence.

In 1984 the university accommodation officer reported that demographic statistics suggested the current high level of first year university students was unlikely to persist for more than 5 or 6 years – it seemed unwise for the university to invest major capital into new student accommodation. Instead, the university continued to lease Helensburgh House from the Otago Hospital Board. By the late 1980s it was becoming evident that the demographic predictions of 1984 were inadequate, as an increasing proportion of school leavers wanted to attend university. The number of ‘EFTS’ (equivalent full-time students) at Otago doubled from 7000 to 14,000 between 1983 and 1993. In 1988 the university bought the former Aquinas Hall and re-opened it as Dalmore House (later renamed Aquinas). In 1989 the university also took on the lease of the oldest Dunedin Hospital nurses’ home building, previously earmarked for demolition. Thus Cumberland House came into being – like Helensburgh it opened at very short notice in response to a rapidly rising demand for accommodation.

Helensburgh House ended its life as a student residence at the end of 1991. It would have continued for longer had the Otago Area Health Board not wanted its facility back. In 1992 Cherry Farm Hospital – the board’s major mental health facility – closed and some of its services were shifted to Wakari Hospital. Fortunately for the university, the board had other accommodation available thanks to the move of its maternity services into the main Dunedin Hospital ward block. The former Queen Mary Maternity Hospital was converted into a new student residence, Hayward Hall, which opened in 1992.

It may not have had the bucolic charms of Helensburgh House, but Hayward was much more conveniently located close to the university campus. Glenys Roome (formerly Low), who was warden at Helensburgh throughout its career as a student residence, became warden of the new Hayward Hall, presumably transferring some of the atmosphere of Helensburgh to Hayward. In 1989 she reported that over the years Helensburgh had “maintained a very close-knit community with a friendly family atmosphere which is appreciated by students. Every year we have a problem at the beginning of the year with students wanting to leave because of the distance from campus, but once this is overcome the majority are very happy to be at Helensburgh and are very loyal.”

Are you one of that rare breed, a former resident of Helensburgh House? I’d love to hear more about life at this ‘temporary’ hall of residence!

Helensburgh House, from the University of Otago accommodation brochure, c.1989