Lady Margaret Hall, the first women’s college in Oxford, was founded in 1878 by Elizabeth Wordsworth, a great-niece of the poet William Wordsworth. It was named for Lady Margaret Beaufort, a medieval nun of exceptional learning and high birth. The college’s original house, Old Old Hall, is still in use. Its first nine students were (by rule) Anglicans, and Somerville College opened as a non-sectarian Oxford alternative a year later. In 1979, along with most of the other women’s colleges, it decided to admit men as well as women.