Cambridge [antikvár]

CAMBRIDGE THE CITY AND THE COLLEGES Olwen Hedley IF one had to choose a single view with which to sum up the spirit of Cambridge, it must be King's College Chapel from the river. Pale stone buildings, themselves noble but offering no challenge to the serene perfection of the chapel, flank the tall turrets and window of its western front. Lawns, trees and bridges create a foreground of unruffled light and shade. Within, the chapel still stirs the same deep feelings of piety and devotion which inspired its founder, Henry VI. Although this view has no equal, it is still an important pointer to the rest of Cambridge, since the city derived its earliest life from the river, once called the Granta and later the Cam. When Henry VI began to plan King's College in 1441 he exercised a form of compulsory purchase, levelling houses, lanes and wharves between the water and High Street, now King's Parade, on the east. At that time the marsh town was still a port as well as the seat of a university. Cambridge today has few, if any, links left with the distant North Sea. The Backs, or 'Back Greens', are a landscape from which the silvery-brown, slow-moving stream carries only an academic memory on its way through the fens. Along its eastern bank stand the courts and gardens of most of the older colleges, each linked by a bridge with the border of parkland on the west side. Although not all the earlier foundations are beside the river, its course is closely related to the growth of the university. As it flows northward from the Fen Causeway it passes Peterhouse, founded in 1284, the first of the Cambridge * * * facing page: The meadow gate of King's College opens onto a fine view of the chapel. Royal heraldry appears in the college arms above the gate. above: A contemporary portrait of Henry VI, founder of King's, who laid the first stone on Passion Sunday, 1441. colleges. Before reaching King's it washes the west range of Cloister Court at Queens', which Henry VI's wife, Margaret of Anjou, re-founded in 1448 because there was "no college founded by ony Quene of England hidertoward". The other queen commemorated in the name of the college is the third founder, Elizabeth Wood-ville, consort of the murdered King Henry's successor, Edward IV. The fabled "Mathematical Bridge" at Queens' is the first of the varied series along the Backs, of which Clare Bridge, beyond King's, is the oldest. Clare College, founded in 1326, was rebuilt in the seventeenth century and its pretty stone bridge belongs to that period. Next to Clare is Trinity Hall, which dates from 1350. This is the only instance in which the name 'Hall', applied to the early colleges, has been retained. It distinguishes the foundation from Trinity College, re-founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, who merged two medieval establishments, Michaelhouse and King's Hall, into a house of learning designed to reflect the dictates of the Reformation. Trinity is the largest of the Cambridge colleges. Its three courts stand between Trinity Hall and St. John's College. St. John's, founded in 1511 by King Henry VII's mother, Margaret Countess of Richmond and Derby, is the second largest of the colleges and has three ancient courts on the east bank and a fourth, built in 1826-30, on the west. The addition of New Court, a romantic triumph of the Gothic Revival, was rendered aesthetically complete by the enclosed Bridge of Sighs, which crosses the Cam to the older precincts. It is the last under which the river flows before meeting town and traffic at Magdalene Bridge. The medieval wharves lay principally along the Backs. When Michael-house was founded in 1324 by Hervey de Stanton, King Edward II's Chancellor, it adjoined them and was presently allowed to build a small dock of its own. Cambridge was at the head of river navigation and the barges came up from King's Lynn, which traded with London and Scotland. There is only one place where the faint feeling of that old commerce seems to linger, and that is the little quay below Magdalene Bridge. From its stones you can watch the Cam, still dreamy but no longer just an idyllic scene, drift out of sight on its way to join the Ouse above Ely. On the further side, opposite the quay, the river flows under the pale rose walls of Magdalene College, which at its first foundation in 1428 was called the Monks' Hostel and later Buckingham College after the ill-fated 2nd and 3rd dukes of that name, both of them benefactors. The only early college on the west bank, Buckingham was incorporated in Magdalene in 1542 and is more than a memory, since the charming First Court has retained unique medieval features from its original foundation. To the north-west of Magdalene, past the church of St. Giles, Castle Hill evokes a past immeasurably more remote than that in which the university has its roots. Here King William I planted one of the many fortresses with which he kept his new realm under control after the Norman Conquest. The steep grass motte, with Continued on page 5 3