A place to think slowly, and to act with courage.

For more than 160 years, Aldermere has brought curious people together in small seminars, old libraries and new laboratories - to read closely, argue well and leave the world a little wiser.

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A vaulted stone cloister lit through tall Gothic windows — The North Cloister, Old College

Learning in the company of scholars

Aldermere is a residential college of 4,200 undergraduates and 1,600 graduate students. Every student belongs to one of eight colleges, studies with a personal tutor, and joins a community that has argued, sung, rowed and dined together since the reign of Queen Victoria.

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The Aldermere Review

Stories from the college

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College news · 18 Sep 2026

The chapel tower reopens after a three-year restoration

Stonemasons, historians and forty student volunteers have returned 1,400 carved stones to the tower that has watched over the Great Lawn since 1892.

Inside the debating society that has met every Thursday since 1871

Research

A quiet gene that helps ancient oaks survive drought

Arts and culture

The college orchestra takes Brahms to twelve small towns

Academics

Six schools. One college.

142 programmes across the humanities, sciences and professions - each taught in small groups by the people who write the books.

Humanities

31 programmes

Natural Sciences

27 programmes

Engineering and Applied Science

22 programmes

Law and Public Policy

18 programmes

Music and Fine Arts

21 programmes

Business and Economics

23 programmes

Aldermere by the numbers

1864: Year of foundation, by royal charter
8:1: Students to every member of faculty
94%: Of seminars have fewer than twelve students
38: Rhodes and Marshall scholars in the last decade

An archival photograph of a chemist at work in a college laboratory — The Harwell Laboratory, 1968. Aldermere chemists have worked on this site for a century.

Research

Questions worth a lifetime

Our 14 research institutes bring historians, engineers and physicians to the same table - and invite undergraduates to join them from their first year.