Leaving a Legacy

By remembering the College with a gift in your will, you can help to support scholarships, bursaries and grants; fund Fellowships; and enhance our College environment.

View across Front Quad from Royal Society Room, as Wren would have seen it

Christopher Wren's signature from a letter in Wadham's archives

“If you seek my legacy, look around you” – Sir Christopher Wren, Epigraph

As members of the Wadham College community, we uphold a long tradition of excellence, equality, and progressive thinking. By leaving a legacy to the college, you can help ensure that this tradition is nurtured and maintained, and that future generations of students will benefit from the same transformative experiences that defined your time at Oxford.

As a future legator, you will become a member of the 1610 Society – whose name reminds us that the College owes its existence to a legacy faithfully enacted by Dorothy Wadham more than 400 years ago – and will be invited to join other members of the community at special events throughout the year.

We hope that you will consider joining the 1610 Society, and with your help, we can continue to offer an exceptional educational experience, ground-breaking research, and unparalleled opportunities for intellectual growth. Join us in preserving our precious heritage and securing a bright future for Wadham by leaving behind a legacy that will inspire and empower generations to come.

Robert Hannigan
Warden

Leaving a Legacy

We appreciate that leaving a gift in your will is a personal matter and one you may wish to keep private. However, if you would like to discuss plans you may have, we are always ready to help. You are welcome to call us for a confidential discussion.

Julie Hage, Development Director
+44 (0) 1865 277 997
julie.hage@wadham.ox.ac.uk

Barnaby Norman, Deputy Development Director
+44 (0) 1865 277 542
barnaby.norman@wadham.ox.ac.uk

Legacies are at the heart of Wadham’s history and of its future. The College was founded by a legacy from Nicholas and Dorothy Wadham and ever since then legacies and philanthropic giving have been key to the College’s survival and development, both physically and intellectually.

Wadham's most accomplished alumnus is Sir Christopher Wren, whose epitaph in St Paul’s Cathedral may be translated ‘If you seek my legacy look around you’. In a similar vein the many more recent developments which you will see around you in College have only been possible thanks to the great generosity of a large number of legators and donors, great and small over many years.

Sir Christopher’s words may remind some of us of the Roman poet Horace’s reflection on his work. ‘I have created a legacy more lasting than brass.’ This is perhaps a different form of legacy - poetic and intellectual - which is also very relevant to our College. Without legacy and similar support, our current teaching, the tutorial system, our research and everything to do with our ground-breaking access to excellence programme, would be at risk.

Under current government funding mechanisms our College (like many others) makes a substantial operating loss – around 50% on turnover! This pressure on the College and on its staff and students is only intensified by current inflation. That is not a sustainable situation. It goes without saying that in a ‘free market’, Wadham and Oxford as a whole could easily be financially sustainable if fees were at the levels of Harvard’s and similar universities’; however I do not believe many of us would want to go down that route. Similarly, international students, who contribute so much to the intellectual life of our College, are financially more ‘profitable’ than home students; we welcome them; however I do not believe we would want to see growth in international numbers to be driven by purely financial considerations and/or to be at the expense of home students (particularly with our commitment to access).

I do hope therefore that as many of you as possible will feel able to join the rest of us in the 1610 Society by including a legacy, large or small according to your means, in your wills. It is key to the sustainability and growth of our College. That way we will leave behind us a legacy ‘more lasting than brass’ even if we cannot hope to match the physical glories of St Paul’s Cathedral, St Stephen’s Walbrook and so many more of Sir Christopher Wren’s wonderful buildings.

Colin Drummond (Classics 1969)

President of 1610 Society

"Without legacy and similar support, our current teaching, the tutorial system, our research and everything to do with our ground-breaking access to excellence programme, would be at risk."

Colin Drummond, (Classics, 1969), President of the 1610 Society

Contact

For further information about leaving the college a gift in our will, please contact:

Julie Hage, Development Director
+44 (0) 1865 277 997
julie.hage@wadham.ox.ac.uk

Barnaby Norman, Deputy Development Director
+44 (0) 1865 277 542
barnaby.norman@wadham.ox.ac.uk

Colin Drummond
President of the 1610 Society
cijhd@hotmail.com