I'm living in College Grove this year, so I'm probably well placed to describe it!
Basically it's a 1 minute walk from the campus, which is amazingly useful in the morning when you can just roll out of bed and go to the 9:15 lectures, but also if you want to go to the library to get a heavy book.. you don't have to carry it very far!!
College Grove is separated into 3 blocks, each with 4 flats of 7 rooms each (apart from flat 1 which only has 5 rooms.. i'm in that one!). Each room has a small bed, a side-table, a desk, a chair, a mini fridge, a comfy chair, a clothes cupboard, 8 drawers, a tiny bathroom with loo, sink and shower!
Some rooms are bigger than others.. if you get room J you're in luck!
The kitchens have a fridge and freezer where you get a shelf and a drawer, and you have your own lockable cupboard. Kitchen stuff is provided, but it's all from Ikea, so you can imagine it's not that sturdy!
One drawback for College Grove is that we have no common room or lounge area in the flats (which Mary Brancker has)... the closest common room being the college one which has a massive flat screen tv (2 minutes walk from CG).. so basically people tend to hang out in the kitchens.. which isn't the most comfortable place to be!
There are 3 benches outside in a sort of courtyard which i'm sure will be nice to hang out on when it gets a little warmer!
Then it really depends on which room you end up in.. you can face the courtyard and get woken up by people coming back late at night singing at the top of their lungs, or you can face the college side where you get woken up by the barking dogs and cows and ponies being taken to their enclosure... I'm on the animal side, and I find the noise actually quite comforting! i'm on the bottom floor looking straight out onto the cows, I'm going to try and post a picture of the view from my window!
I'm really happy i'm in College Grove simply for the closeness to College and the fact that when we have 1 hour's break I can go back to my room and not have to stick around college like people from Mary Brancker. Also, CG is really really well situated.. right next to a bus stop where you can take any bus and end up 15 minutes later on Oxford Street!! It's also near Mornington Crescent tube station and a 10 minute walk to King's Cross.
I'm running out of ideas of things to say... but feel free to ask me about anything else!
Helen x