Royal Holloway, University of London. Royal Holloway, University of London, formally incorporated as Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, is a public research university and a constituent college of the federal University of London. It has three faculties, 20 academic departments and c. 9,200 undergraduate and postgraduate students from over 100 countries. The campus is located west of Egham, Surrey, 19 miles from central London. The Egham campus was founded in 1879 by the Victorian entrepreneur and philanthropist Thomas Holloway. Royal Holloway College was officially opened in 1886 by Queen Victoria as an all-women college. It became a member of the University of London in 1900. In 1945, the college admitted male postgraduate students, and in 1965, around 100 of the first male undergraduates. In 1985, Royal Holloway merged with Bedford College. The merged college was named Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, this remaining the official registered name of the college by Act of Parliament. The campus is dominated by the Founder's Building, a Grade I listed red-brick building modelled on the Chateau de Chambord of the Loire Valley, France. The annual income of the institution for 2017-18 was E173.6 million of which E13.9 million was from research grants and contracts, with an expenditure of E169.4 million. Royal Holloway is ranked 19th in the UK according to The Times/Sunday Times Good University Guide 2020, who also shortlisted the institution for University of the Year 2020. It is also ranked 23rd in the UK by The Complete University Guide 2020, as well as being ranked in the top 300 universities in the world as published by Times Higher Education World University Rankings for 2019. There are strong links and exchange programmes with institutions in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Hong Kong, notably Yale University, the University of Toronto, the University of Melbourne and the University of Hong Kong. Royal Holloway was a member of the 1994 Group until 2013, when the group dissolved. Royal Holloway College, originally a women-only college, was founded by the Victorian entrepreneur Thomas Holloway in 1879 on the Mount Lee Estate in Egham. The founding of the college was brought about after Holloway, seeking to fulfil a philanthropic gesture, began a public debate through The Builder regarding How best to spend a quarter of a million or more, at which point his wife proposed to build a college especially for women. Holloway later increased his original sum of money to half a million, and today, the campus is still best known for its original 600-bed building, known as the Founder's Building, designed by William Henry Crossland and inspired by the Chateau de Chambord in the Loire Valley, France. Sir Nikolaus Pevsner called the original college building the most ebullient Victorian building in the Home Counties, and noted that together with its sister building the Holloway Sanatorium, it represents the summit of High Victorian design. The Founder's Building, which is now Grade I listed, was officially opened in 1886 by Queen Victoria, who allowed the use of Royal in the college's name. Founder's has been described by The Times as one of Britain's most remarkable university buildings, largely for its elaborate architecture, and according to The Sunday Times it makes the college instantly recognisable. The college also has a Chapel, completed in 1886 as one of the last parts of the university to be finished. October 1887 saw the arrival of the first 28 students at Royal Holloway College. It later became a constituent of the University of London in 1900, as did Bedford College, which eventually merged with Royal Holloway College. Bedford College was founded by Elizabeth Jesser Reid in 1849 as a higher education college for the education of women. Reid leased a house at 47 Bedford Square in the Bloomsbury area of London, and opened the Ladies College in Bedford Square. The intention was to provide a liberal and non-sectarian education for women, something no other institution in the United Kingdom provided at the time. The college moved to 8 and 9 York Place in 1874, and then to Regent's Park in 1908. In 1900, the college became a constituent school of the University of London. Like RHC, following its membership of the University of London, in 1965, it allowed male undergraduates to study on its premises for the first time. RHC and Bedford merged in 1985.