Denman College, which is in private land within Marcham village, offers students the chance to experience the pleasure of short-term residential learning. Apart from the day-to-day chores being left behind students can relish the fact that they can enjoy learning outside the course room, in companionship with like-minded people. Some 6,000 students come on courses each year, with a maximum of 72 attending one of five - six courses running at one time. Denman also welcomes some 3,000 WI members and non WI members on Day Visits during the year.
In mediaeval times the land surrounding the College belonged to the Abbey of Abingdon. After the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII the estate was sold and in about 1705 it came into the possession of a member of the Elwes family. In 1803, when the old farmhouse on the site was burnt down, George Elwes built the present house.
He had an only child, Emily, a wealthy heiress, who eloped to Gretna Green to marry Thomas Duffield, a Berkshire gentleman. Their descendants still live in the Manor House in the village and in nearby Berkshire.
In 1938 the Duffields sold Marcham Park and the new owner, Mr Berners, modernised the house, adding the beautiful 19th century staircase and the chandelier in the drawing room which he subsequently gave to the College. The Air Ministry requisitioned the house when the war began in 1939 and treated it well. After the war Mr Berners had decided to live elsewhere and in 1947 the house and 100 acres of land was bought by the NFWI for use as its own College. In the 1980s the Duffields bought back from the College the adjacent farmland over which students have a right of way to enjoy the Nature Trail.
The College
In 1943 Sir Richard Livingstone, later Vice Chancellor of Oxford University and an enthusiastic advocate of Adult Education, addressed a number of WI members at the first residential NFWI Summer School at Radbrook College, Shrewsbury. He said that their great Federation ought to endow and possess its own College.
This seed bore fruit and in 1945 a resolution was passed at the AGM in the Royal Albert Hall to bring the College into being. Marcham Park was bought for £16,000 and the College opened on 24 September 1948. Lady Elizabeth Brunner, later to become Chairman of the NFWI, formally proposed the motion. It was named Denman College after Lady Denman, the first chairman of the WI Movement who had just retired after 30 years in office.
The money was raised by every WI promising to give £10 over a period of three years. In this way £70,000 was given and the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust helped with the generous gift of £20,000.
Some of this money was used to buy the house and estate, to make necessary alterations and to buy furniture and equipment. The rest was invested to produce an endowment fund. ‘Denman College Year’ produced £40,000 and there have been other gifts over the years. Some federations made themselves responsible for the furnishings of the bedrooms, the East Anglian Federations furnished the Entrance Hall, Northumberland gave blankets, Shropshire a large refrigerator and Staffordshire provided china. Federations still maintain the bedrooms when redecoration and refurbishment is required and bedrooms in the Brunners (opened in 1972), Beech and Willow Cottages (opened in1992) and Maple and Oak (opened 1997) have been similarly adopted.
In 1986/87 £1,000,000 was raised to undertake essential repairs to meet modern health & safety legislation. £500,000 is now invested, the interest from which provides an annual income to enable a planned maintenance programme of work to be undertaken.