For periods up to the middle of the nineteenth century, a number of colleges of the University of Oxford had explicit regional associations, that functioned in particular as catchment areas from which they drew students and Fellows. Conspicuous examples were Balliol College and Scotland, and Jesus College and Wales. Others were Exeter College with Cornwall and Devon; Wadham College with Dorset and Somerset; Brasenose College with Lancashire and Cheshire; and The Queen's College with Cumberland and Westmorland.[1]
One way in which these relationships were expressed was the existence of endowments for closed scholarships, restricted to undergraduates from a given area. As a consequence of the Oxford University Act 1854, much of that system of scholarships was reformed, after which the geographical distribution of students, which was never rigidly defined, became more uniform.
Notes
edit- ^ Stone, Lawrence (29 January 2019). The University in Society, Volume I: Oxford and Cambridge from the 14th to the Early 19th Century. Princeton University Press. p. 79. ISBN 978-0-691-65603-8.