Magdalene College Hall, Cambridge victorian era

Magdalene College ( /?m??dl?n/ mawd-lin) is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.
The college was founded in 1428 as a Benedictine hostel, in time coming to be known as Buckingham College, before being refounded in 1542 as the College of St Mary Magdalene. Magdalene College has some of the grandest benefactors including Britain's premier noble the Duke of Norfolk, the Duke of Buckingham and Lord Chief Justice Sir Christopher Wray. However the refoundation was largely the work of Sir Thomas Audley, Lord Chancellor under Henry VIII. Audley also gave the College its motto ? garde ta foy (Old French: "keep your faith"). Audley's successors in the Mastership and as benefactors of the College were however prone to dire ends; several benefactors were arraigned at various stages on charges of high treason and executed.The College's most famous alumnus is Samuel Pepys, whose papers and books were donated to the College upon his death, and are now housed in the Pepys Building. The College boasts a portrait of the famous diarist by Sir Peter Lely, which hangs in the Hall. Magdalene is noted for its 'traditional' style: it boasts a well-regarded candlelit formal hall (held every evening) and was the last all-male College in Oxford or Cambridge to admit women in 1988 (Oriel College was the last in Oxford, admitting women in 1985). This resulted in protests by some undergraduates, including the wearing of black armbands and flying the college flag at half-mast.Magdalene's old College buildings are representative of the College's ramshackle growth from a monks' foundation into a centre of education. It is also distinctive in that most of the old buildings are in brick rather than stone (save for the frontage of the Pepys Building). Magdalene Street divides the most ancient courts from more recent developments. One of the accommodation blocks in the newer part of the college was built by Sir Edwin Lutyens in the early 1930s.