Newnham was founded as a women’s college in Cambridge in 1871. Its students would not be entitled to use the University Library for over half a century, until 1923. In the interim, the Yates Thompson library was constructed to house growing collections and provide the students with a space to study. It was the College’s first purpose-built library and remains home to a core part of the working collection today.

Prior to the construction of this building in 1897, books were stored in various rooms around the College. The collection was developed steadily by a discerning and purposeful Library committee. This committee began meeting in 1882, one year after a vote to admit women to University examinations, and its establishment demonstrates the College’s determination to prepare its students to compete with other members of the University.  Early records of the Library committee include repeated requests for more book grants, alongside frequent petitions for further shelf space and increasing discernment in accepting donations. Multiple reading rooms were filled, and the card cabinets were soon overflowing with catalogue records.

In response to the constant demand for more space, the College commissioned a new library. The Yates Thompson Library was designed by Basil Champneys (1842-1935) in the “Queen Anne” style, with distinctive red bricks and white sash windows. The project was overseen by Librarian Katharine Stephen (1856-1924) and Principal Eleanor Sidgwick (1845-1936); it was funded by Henry Yates Thompson (1838-1929) and his wife Elizabeth (1855-1941). The first phase of the Library building was completed in 1897, with an extension constructed in identical style in 1907.

Henry was a book and manuscript collector, and his passion for early printed books is evident in the printers’ marks that decorate the Library. The blue, barrel-vaulted ceiling is adorned with plasterwork panels depicting the emblems of thirteen printers: the Parisians Phillipe Pigouchet, Antoine Vérard, and the Estienne family; Richard Pynson and Julyan Notary of London; the Saint Albans Printer; Peter Schoeffer of Mentz; William Caxton of Westminster; the Venetian Aldus Manutius; Christophe Plantin of Antwerp; Andreas de Torresanis de Asula; Johannes Froben of Basel; and Cambridge University Press.

These elevated architectural decorations were balanced with a desire for practicality. Yates Thompson advised the College to avoid busts of eminent “ladies […] to represent literature in the library” in favour of lockable glass cupboards to “hold I suspect all the books you are like to warrant such accommodation for”.

Newnham College gained a rare books room – the Katharine Stephen room – in 1982 and the adjoining Horner Markwick Library in 2004. Today, books are continually added to the open shelves of the Grade II* listed Yates Thompson Library, its carrels still provide a much-loved study space to new generations of students, and its glass cupboards are filled with the College’s special collections.