100 years of learning

Women’s Christian College brings out a coffee-table book to commemorate its centenary

Tracing the history of a 100-year-old institution is no easy task. But a labour of love by the staff, students and alumnae of Women’s Christian College (WCC), Chennai, which turned 101 last year, has yielded a worthy tribute to their institution in the form of a new coffee-table book.

Volunteers collecting material for the commemorative edition pored over back issues of the college magazine over the decades, sifted through hundreds of photographs, rung up friends requesting pictures from private collections and even travelled across continents to source information.

This month, when WCC’s alumnae association celebrated its centenary, the book —

Women’s Christian College: A Hundred and Counting — went on sale.

“It was an adventure,” says Sarita Deepak, WCC’s public relations officer, describing the feverish time spent getting the visual and textual content ready.

Principal Ridling Margaret Waller recalls the days spent at libraries abroad. “We found boxes and boxes of documents, all stored so carefully at Andover-Harvard Theological Library in the US,” says Waller.

The adventure continued for Waller when she visited Westfield College, University of London, where Eleanor McDougall, WCC’s founding Principal, worked before she came to India.

To her surprise, Westfield College no longer existed, but had merged with Queen Mary University of London. “Nevertheless, they were very helpful and gave us access to material on Miss McDougall,” she says.

There were surprises to be had closer home as well. WCC’s oldest building — Doveton House built in 1798 — revealed a bit of history in the most offhand of ways.

A volunteer, sifting through material in an old cupboard, found a pen-and-ink sketch of the campus chapel signed by its architect, Reginald Dann, in 1922. A copy of the yellowed parchment has been reproduced in the book.

A few tactile features of the book are rather evocative. The surfaces of the first two pages of the book have a brick-like finish, rough to the touch and reminiscent of some of the college’s strong walls. Another page is cut to resemble the lattice work in wood on the arches of Doveton House.

Copies of the book, priced at ₹1,000, are available at the college.