Fonds GC - Official Archive of the Master and Fellows of Gonville & Caius College in the University of Cambridge

The College is a corporate body consisting of the Master and Fellows; in addition to which are the members of the College, the scholars, research students and exhibitioners. The College is part of the University of Cambridge, but was founded as, and remains, a distinct and autonomous body in its own right.

The College was founded in 1348 by Edmund Gonville, Rector of Terrington, under the authority of letters patent from Edward III. In 1353 his executor, William Bateman, Bishop of Norwich, consolidated Gonville's foundation, providing endowments and statutes, and moved it from its original site, now part of Corpus Christi College, to a site adjacent to his own foundation, Trinity Hall. Bishop Bateman renamed it the Hall of the Annunciation of the Blessed Mary the Virgin, though it continued to be commonly called Gonville Hall. The original community of Gonville Hall, consisting of a Master, Fellows and a small number of other students, gradually acquired endowments to support itself and buildings to house its work. The College's buildings, including a chapel, a hall and a library as well as accommodation for members of the College reflected its functions as a place for a common life of study and prayer.

After a period of decline, the College was refounded in 1557 by John Caius as Gonville and Caius College, M.D., a former student and Fellow of Gonville Hall, under the authority of letters patent from Philip and Mary. Dr Caius provided further endowments for fellowships and scholarships, as well as extending College buildings. He also laid down a new set of statutes for governing the College, and a scheme for corporate record-keeping. By 1630 the College had expanded considerably, having about 25 fellows and 150 students, but during the unsettled times that followed, numbers declined and did not recover their 1630 level until 1840, after which expansion was rapid. Expansion made extension of College buildings a necessity - a larger Hall and a new Library were built 1853-4, and new residential buildings in 1868-70, 1901-4, 1934 and 1962. Between 1860 and 1926, the College's endowments and statutes were reformed as a result of government appointed University Commissions; while teaching and research became specialised, professional pursuits. In 1979, the College admitted women to its fellowship and student body for the first time.

Since the foundation of Gonville Hall, the College has preserved its records of its foundation, its statutes of governance and deeds relating to its endowments and entitlements. The records of the College's assets, their administration and use in support of the foundation, form the bulk of the Archive's contents.

The main series of administrative records, such as accounts, Bursar's books, annals, gesta, sealings and matriculation books, were identified by Dr Caius in his statutes; and in one form or another were kept in largely continuous series from the seventeenth century to the present day.

At some stage, bursarial and estate records became separated from the most important old administrative records, which were sent for safekeeping to the College Library. Hence, Dr Caius' annals and statutes are still in the College's manuscript collection; while in other volumes, which have since been reunited with the Archive, there is a red or black number which shows that they were stored in the Library until at least the late nineteenth century.

Record-keeping procedures were elaborated during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and administrative tasks were increasingly delegated by College Officers to a growing number of administrative staff working in specialised departments. The types of record kept also diversified. In addition to the traditional registers and ledgers, minutes, personnel files (for fellows, students and staff), project files, correspondence files, working papers, and plans and photographs are now also kept.

(See J. Venn et al., Biographical History of Gonville and Caius College, 8 volumes (Cambridge, 1898-1998) for a list of College members, a description of College history, selected archival records, descriptions of College offices and estate and building histories. C.N.L. Brooke, A History of Gonville and Caius College, 2nd edition (Boydell Press, 1996) is the most modern general history of the College)