THE CAMPUS TRINITY TODAY of sandstone was deemed prohibitive. Hence, Bishops’ and subsequently Clarke’s (1887), the laboratory (1886) and Kitchens (1891) would be constructed in neo-Gothic style using dark Hawthorn brick interspersed with Waurn Ponds sandstone features. Building then stopped. Student growth was limited to the available rooms, and from the late 1880s until the end of World War I, Bishops’ and Clarke’s remained the only residential accommodation. Well, almost. Warden Leeper’s advocacy for women’s right to a tertiary education resulted in the founding of the College’s women’s hostel in 1886, which would eventually become Janet Clarke Hall (1891), a female-only residential wing of Trinity. War then intervened and after four decades at the helm, Leeper recognised that a post-war college would require a different set of hands – a ‘younger man’ who could steer Trinity through the expected increase in university numbers and associated accommodation demand that the end of hostilities would bring. Such predictions proved correct as returned servicemen swelled College numbers to an all-time high in 1919. A new master plan was consequently drawn up by Blackett and Forster and was approved in October 1920. Extensions were recommended to begin immediately. Against this backdrop, students cautioned against the risks of a ‘big college’. Blackett’s building scheme, while impressive and hinting at a return to the planned uniformity of Terry’s design, was ambitious … and ultimately unobtainable. The second warden, John ‘Jock’ Behan, would spend his first 16 years in office chasing funds to realise just one additional residential wing. It was fitting, for the personal effort that had been expended, that when the new sandstone building opened in 1935, it was named Behan. ‘Stone is the only material appropriate to buildings of this model,’ Behan advised the College at the time. In an effort to ward off any suggestion of returning to brick, he proposed establishing a fund with the sole purpose of defraying the cost difference between brick and stone’.1 Whether Behan did create such a fund is unclear, but by the time the next residential wing was built two decades later under the next warden, brick would inevitably be the material of choice, as it has been for every new College building since. WAR STRIKES AGAIN World War II brought the same challenges as its predecessor: a reduction in student numbers followed by a boom. In 1947, the College proposed that the next residential building would commemorate the 600 former collegians who had served during the recent war, particularly the fallen. The Memorial Building – commonly known now as ‘Jeopardy’ – was finished a decade later, opening in 1958. By the mid-1950s, the number of young men in residence hit 126. Combined with the female students at the hostel, there were 209 residential students. The existence of Jeopardy meant 172 men could theoretically reside at Trinity, but numbers were capped at 162 ‘to prevent too great an influx of freshmen’.2 Even with the cap in place, the impact of increasing numbers didn’t go unnoticed. The students called it first, observing wryly in the Fleur de Lys the following year, ‘that with drastically increased numbers, detrimental changes in some guise or another are inevitable’. Administratively, it took two years for these so-called adverse effects of growth to ease, but the rhythms of life in a larger group soon became the norm. ANOTHER EXPANSION The dust had barely settled on the construction of Jeopardy when the first stage of Cowan commenced in 1962. The Dining Hall had already been lengthened eastward in 1955 to cater for rising numbers, and kitchen facilities were also renovated and expanded. Student numbers rose by a further 40 with the construction of Cowan, bringing the total to 200. Students voiced hesitation. Firstly, there was an administrative issue, as student growth hadn’t been matched by 1935 1958 1962 2016 18