Riverside College opened in the autumn of 1966 in a converted grain mill on the east bank of the river. There were 140 students, eleven teachers, one staircase and a library that fitted in a single room. The founders wanted a college that took students on their promise rather than their postcode, and that idea has survived every building project since.
Six decades on the river
The Hall followed in 1974, paid for by an appeal to local families, and the boathouse in 1983, paid for by the first generation of alumni. The science wing, the playing fields and the library in the old granary came after. The mill is still there, and the first-year common room is still on its top floor.
The association
Twenty-three former students founded the Old Riversiders' Association in 1976 with a constitution on two sides of paper. Today it is the Riverside College Alumni Association: a register of former students from every year since 1969, a network of batch representatives and chapters, and the people behind the reunions, the mentoring programme and every appeal on the giving page.
Help us keep the record
Much of the college's history is not in any official file. It is in shoeboxes, old albums and on phones. If you have photographs, magazines or programmes, members can add them to the archive, and a volunteer will caption them with you.
Riverside College is fictional. This history is sample content for the AlumDeck demo.
