Edge Hill began in 1885 as a non-denominational college with an initial intake of 41 women students. Today, some ten thousand study a wide variety of courses in what is now a University College. This is no mere institutional history; this account is also of more than a century of social and economic change. Early chapters discuss the ways in which the education and socialisation of women reflected and reinforced gender divisions, while later chapters deal with the challenges facing higher education in recent years.