Ramsay Hall: Go big or go home

Freshers’ is a pivotal time in every student’s life. In the centre of Fitzrovia, a mere hungover stumble from the Wilkins building, lies the bastion of Fresherdom. The perfect place to meet 400 students who are as clueless about life as you are. Enter Ramsay.

Lights will guide you home

Comprised of four blocks, each named after major world cities, Ramsay is the obvious choice for a student of London’s Global University. Unless you sleep on the sofas in the Cruciform hub, its location is unbeatable too. After a sordid night at Loop or ULU, kebab or questionable sausage in hand, Ramsay-dwellers are beckoned home by the BT Tower. This beacon of purple light is so reliable in the small hours of morning, that Coldplay – former Ramsay residents – drew inspiration from it for their song “Fix You”. The drunken pilgrimage from Roxy back to Ramsay is actually immortalised in bland chords of alternative rock. How many other halls can claim the same?

‘Tears stream, down your face…’

A zoo of characters

With so many people under one roof, Ramsay residents have the opportunity to make friends from a variety of different backgrounds and courses. More likely than not, they will have forgotten most acquaintances’ names after Freshers’ Week, only to bump into them intoxicated at Phineas and reintroduce themselves. They become best friends for the night, only to forget each other until the next inadvertent encounter.

Terry 

Besides the yearly influx of over 400 freshers, Ramsay is home to a few permanent staff. Terry, one of the night porters, can give icy stares that’ll extinguish the tunes blaring from your room at 2.30am. Despite his demeanour, he is the kindest man you could meet. He also reads about five books per week, has a post-doc, and always has time to chat and impart his pearls of wisdom when you come back from Loop at 1am.

Pearls of wisdom as shiny as that forehead

The food on Charlotte Street

The interior of Icco’s may look like a 1980s prison cafeteria, but their pizza tastes like it’s come straight from Italy. Whether purchased as a hangover cure or a post-exam reward, Icco’s is delicious, cheap, and remains a favourite. The Charlotte Street-Goodge Street intersection is sprinkled with decent restaurants that even an impoverished student can afford.

The unrivalled amenities

From the strange Halloween sofa décor in our common room, to our spacious kitchens just big enough to fit two people, Ramsay could not claim to have state-of-the-art facilities. However, it possesses something far more important than modern technology: character. When you first arrive, the radiators are lukewarm, and the hideous curtains seem, well, hideous. After acclimatisation to Ramsay, though, you realise material things, like curtain fashion, don’t matter as much as a sense of belonging.

Trick or treat freshers

Dinner, one of the hallmarks of the Ramsay experience, provides this sense of belonging. Coordinated by matronly Sue, mouth-watering dishes are served between the reasonable hours of 4:45 to 6:00, after which you basically just eat whatever there is left. At Sue’s Café, amiable chatter can be heard, interspersed with clamorous cries of “Any finished trays darlings?”.

The craziest shit happens here

From last year’s total decimation of the common room, to someone soiling himself on his hallmate’s door, Ramsay has been the backdrop to the drunken finale of so many classic nights out. Our halls have played host to underground parties, and Ramsay is known by freshers as the place to continue the night after leaving the club. Biweekly chants of “fuck off Ramsay”, led by local Astor inmates, can often be heard from London block. Beneath these feeble shrieks lies deep seated envy, because Astor residents all wish they were at Ramsay anyway.

Ramsay has location and diversity. Canteen camaraderie and the BT Tower. The Court is just down the road and in the common room, invariably there’s a drinking game being played. At Ramsay, it’s often difficult to study because there’s always something going on. As freshers, we wouldn’t have it any other way.