Pioneering Women: Riddel Hall and Queens University Belfast

Few topics have produced more heroines than the struggle of women for their right to education. Foremost amongst the pioneers of third-level education for women in the north of Ireland were Eliza and Isabella Riddel. Never themselves having had the opportunity of university education, in 1913 they founded Riddel Hall as a residence for women students. Ruth Duffin, the hall’s formidable first warden, had very strong ideas about citizenship, culture and physical exercise that proved to be visionar