The Porteus Room is a boardroom style room with tables and chairs and is one of our smaller teaching rooms often home to tutorials or seminars holding up to 10 people. This room is a mirror image of the Oldham Room with a collapsible door separating the two.
The room is named in honour of Norman Porteous, New College Professor of Old Testament Literature, Language and Theology, 1935-1968, and Principal, 1964-1968. Professor Porteous had served as an officer on the Western Front during the First World War, and after studying for the ministry at New College, had become a socially-committed United Free Church minister in the coalfields of West Fife, among communities suffering from poverty in the 1920s. A gifted classicist and student of Hebrew, he was drawn back into academic life in the 1930s by his concern over rising anti-Semitism in Europe and a tendency to downplay the Old Testament and vital Jewish aspects of the Christian Faith.
