Cambridge (City Centre) 

 

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Historical notes about the City of Cambridge (City Centre)

We may be Oxford or Cambridge on Boat Race day, changing as the wind blows, but as travellers we are Cambridge for ever. Neither of our own centuries has spoiled it; it is the pure University town. For that young Englishman whose chance in life begins here there is no better gift that the world contains. It is a marvellous thing to be young and to be learning in Cambridge.

And even for those of us who are but travelling, coming into Cambridge one day and leaving the next, there are no English acres to surpass these, no streets with such fine sights. Whenever we come these Colleges are spectacle unsurpassed in England, but if we come in springtime we come to an enchanted land. Indoors the beauty of Cambridge stands from age to age, but out of doors it changes with the seasons, and in all our tour of England has been nothing to equal the picture of Cambridge as we glide in a boat along the River Cam, or as we saunter at the Backs and stand on the bridges. An hour like this in days like these, with the strain of the world heavy upon us all, is to be removed far from the spectre that haunts mankind, and to be lost deep in beauty of an age that has passed away. College after college passes by, bridge after bridge, and these stone walls of the palaces of learning look down on this unchanging scene – the noble lawns, the gliding river, the delicate green willows, the majestic copper beeches, the glorious avenues, a hundred thousand daffodils, the delightful rock gardens, are a memory that never fades from the traveller’s mind.

And if we walk along the streets, along incomparable Trumpington Street, even on a dull day, but best of all when the sun is high in the heavens, we are dead to the delights of the world if we are not deeply moved as there bursts upon us the dazzling skyline of King’s College, the gateway and the chapel renowned to the ends of the earth. We need no great imagination to think ourselves looking at some scene of Oriental splendour.

All this has Cambridge, and more, and more. Gateway after gateway holds us spellbound, and a stone’s throw apart stand a little square tower of the Saxons and a little round church of the Normans. The great and the small quadrangles are haunted by the sense of the past. The great interiors, the gallery of St John’s, the library of Trinity, the noble rooms of the Fitzwilliam Museum, hold us entranced. The treasures of beauty and learning are beyond compute. We may see the manuscript of Milton’s Paradise Lost, Keats’s own writing of his Ode to a Nightingale, Macaulay’s Diary, the manuscript of In Memoriam, Pepys’s books on the shelves on which he kept them. We may walk round acre upon acre of scientific buildings, laboratories, museums, until we feel that all the learning on the earth is housed with dignity in this most spacious town. We do not tire of it, for it has an infinite variety, but again and again we seek the haunting beauty of the Backs, or walk along the fens that creep up to the River Granta, or loiter on these matchless bridges. All these centuries Cambridge has been teaching the love of beauty to our sons (and in our own century to our daughters too) and it remains unique as a city that has not thrown its beauty all away, has not allowed it to be sold for sixpences, but has kept its streets delightful, its lawns fit for kings, and its Backs a veritable treasure for the nation.

Cambridge owes its existence and its early rise to its place on the dry ground stretching from the chalk hills to the fens, and to the river by which it could draw supplies from the country round, or from abroad through the port of Lynn. For many years after the coming of the railway barges arrived almost ever day to unload their cargoes by the Mill Pool and the Great Bridge, the bridge first built of wood, then stone, now iron. It is this bridge that appears from early days in all the changing names of the town, which was laid waste by the Danes in 870 and burned by them in 1010. When Danish warriors settled here for a year they knew it as Grantbrycge. In Domesday Book it was Grantebrige. It may have been the Normans who changed it to Cantebrigge, which in time became Caumbridge and the nave we know. The old name of the river was the Grant or Granta, and it was not till Shakespeare’s day that the name Cam became established.

The grassy mound on the high ground above the river, which the Conqueror raised for a castle to guard the bridge, is still here for us to see, with earthworks about it which may have marked the boundary of the fortified enclosure of the Saxons. The belief that the present town was formed by the union of the Saxon community with another across the river is supported by the fact of Saxon architecture in the churches on both banks, St Giles’s and St Benedict’s. King John gave the burgesses a Merchant’s Guild and the right to choose their Provost. He surrounded the town with the King’s Ditch, which Henry the Third strengthened and crossed by bridges near the two medieval gateways, Trumpington Gate near the corner of Trumpington and Pembroke Streets, and Barnwell Gate in St Andrew’s Street.

The chief trade of the town today is in supplying the wants of the University; but it was probably due to the town’s importance as an early trading centre that the growth of the University received its impetus, which was helped by monastic bodies anxious to reap benefit from this educational movement. It was helped, too, by the migrations of many students from Oxford owing to trouble between that town and its University, and it grew till by 1231 it was an important centre with a chancellor of its own. It was about this time that the students began to live in hostels under the rule of a principal, instead of in separate lodgings as they pleased, and half a century later came the beginning of the collegiate system, when Peterhouse was founded by the Bishop of Ely, Hugh de Balsham.

From that time the story of the University is splendidly illustrated by the array of buildings associated with it, built of stone and brick, and standing mostly between the river and one of the two main roads running through the town. This is a fine tree-shaded road as we enter Cambridge from the south, changing its name during its narrowing journey through the town from Trumpington Road and Street to King’s Parade, Trinity Street, and St John’s Street, at the end of which, the little Round church, it joins the second main road. This comes over Gog Magog Hills road as Regent Street, St Andrew’s Street, Sidney Street, and Bridge Street; then, beyond The Great Bridge, going on as Magdalene Street and Castle Street. The many names of both these roads are a useful guide as to what is round along them, and linking one with the other is a network of narrow ways. Where the road from the station meets the Hills Road is the town’s memorial to its heroes, a bronze soldier on the march.

Cambridge is small in compass, but so packed with interest that the traveller hardly knows how to begin to make its acquaintance. Two things he should do: he should climb the Castle Mound, 40 feet high, for the view of the neighbourhood and a survey of the town with its towers and spires; and he should walk along Queen’s Road which bounds the Backs, the lovely college grounds on the west bank of the River Cam. Here the stately buildings are seen in all their majesty, and as we walk towards them, down their delightful avenues of lofty trees, rising from velvet lawns patterned at times with golden crocuses, and ending at the charming bridges crossing the stream, the crowded streets are completely forgotten in the beauty and peace of these cloistered ways. We should look long to find a happier memory to keep of Cambridge than the picture seen from the west side of the old balustraded bridge of St John’s. On one hand is the 19^th century Bridge of Sighs, its stone beauty enhanced by the dark old yew at one end; on the other side is Trinity’s bridge of 1765; in front of us is the rich red of St John’s, with the beautiful bay of the Library bearing on its gable the date 1624 and initials representing the Bishop of Lincoln who paid for most of it. No bridge of all those crossing the Banks is lovelier than Clare’s, designed by Thomas Grumbold three centuries ago. A beautiful picture seen from Queen’s Road embraces the west end of King’s Chapel, and the Fellows Building, its archway framing a picture of the fountain in the Great Court surmounted by the bronze statue of Henry the Sixth. Above the Backs the river flows between Coe’s Fen and Sheep’s Green, west of which are three of the younger colleges. Below the Backs it flows by Jesus Green and Midsummer Common, with the boathouses on the other side. This lower part of the Cam is used for the college Bumping Races.

Though the castle was never important as a fortress, it is said to have been strengthened in medieval days, and was renovated by Cromwell’s supporters; but nothing is left of it. Yet its site is one of the most pleasant in the town. The Shire Hall facing the street was built in the classical style a century ago, its front adorned with columns supporting a cornice on which stand four symbolic figures. Behind it the Mound rises from a beautiful lawn, looking to the new County Hall, an imposing block with many stone windows in walls which are an attractive medley of grey, red, and blue bricks.

On top of the Mound is a plan of the old castle and the earthworks, with the directions and distances to towns and cities and features of interest in Cambridge. The domed Observatory is seen 1500 yards to the west, rising among the trees; St Giles’s with its Saxon remains is close at hand, and just beyond Castle Street are the gables of the Westminster Theological College, dignified and pleasing with its red brick walls, low tower, and imposing iron entrance gates.

At the foot of Castle Street is a rambling place which was once the White Horse Inn, with low rooms of all sizes and stout oak beams looking old enough inside to justify the date outside, 1423. Now it is a Folk Museum, its rooms furnished as in days gone by. In the fascinating nursery are countless dolls, chairs, beds, and toys. There is a zoetrope (the first form of moving picture), and a backboard to make a child sit up straight. There are old fashioned dresses, a chest with a coved lid and three locks, a town-crier’s bell, tipstaffs carried by mayors, and a picture of a weird flying machine of 1877 with wings like a bird’s. In the yard outside are the old hobby-horse and bone-shaker bicycles, a wooden plough, a stately coach in which the high sheriff rode, and Trinity’s old fire engine.

Where this road continues as Magdalene Street are more old houses and shops. Facing Magdalene College the old Cross Keys Inn has become a post office, but still has two overhanging storeys, brackets carved with grotesques, and gabled dormers over the timbered storey looking on to its old yard. This leads now to Magdalene’s new courts – the dignified Benson Court designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, and Mallory Court, a happy conversion of old buildings into a tall gabled block named as a tribute to George Leigh Mallory, who walked into his immortality near the top of Everest, and has there an unknown grave. Behind these courts is what is known as the School of Pythagoras, a two-storeyed stone house of the 12^th century with some original windows and one from the close of the 13^th century. Built up to it is a later brick wing with curved gables, standing in a walled garden with lawns and yews. Seen from Northampton Street, it is one of the town’s attractive peeps.

It is worth while strolling through the streets to look at these quaint places. Bridge Street was once full of inns, and though many of the fronts are made new there is still much old architecture in the yards at the back. Once the Hoop Inn from which stage coaches set off to London, Number 4 Bridge Street is now a shop of which the Georgian front still has windows with ironwork below them and stone faces above. Beyond the Round Church are more old houses over shops, some with dormers, others with storeys overhanging. Fronted by a lawn in Jesus Lane is Little Trinity, a brick house of Queen Anne’s day with a pediment and vases. Between St Catharine’s College and King’s College in Trumpington Street is the Bull Hotel, the old home of the Bull Book Club.

Among the various almshouses is the Hospital of Saint Anthony in Panton Street, founded in the 14^th century on another site; Anthony with his pig and bell and Eligius with tongs and a horse’s leg are on the gables. Since John Addenbrooke, Fellow of St Catharine’s, bequeathed a few thousand pounds for the founding of a hospital from the poor in the 18^th century many more thousands have been given and spent in making the fine hospital bearing his name in Trumpington Street.

The marketplace, too, has greatly changed since its old days. On the south side is the new Guildhall, built of brick and stone on its older site; over shops on the north side are new chambers of Caius College; and here and there one or two old houses are left. One of the 17^th century has a window with a shell hood, a wrought iron balcony, and a rich plaster ceiling within; one has a 15^th century ceiling and panelling two and three hundred years old.

Behind the Guildhall is the public library with 70,000 volumes and a Shakespeare collection. Round the walls of the domed reading room are prints of Old Cambridge, one showing the coronation festival of 1838, when 15,000 people dined on Parker’s Piece. Facing the library is the Corn Exchange, a plain brick building with scenes of ploughing and reaping carved in stone, and inside, by Baron Marochetti, a stone figure of Jonas Webb, a noted breeder of sheep.

The County Hall, a 20^th century building with a classical front, is in Hobson Street, the name recalling the Cambridge carrier Thomas Hobson, whose memory lives on our lips, for from his rule never to let a horse out of its proper turn came the phrase Hobson’s Choice, this or none. The elaborate fountain in the marketplace replaces an old conduit Hobson set up, and has an octagon with a golden pineapple crowning its domed top, and a parapet adorned with a painted shield and cherubs.

Cambridge has a group of churches well worthy of the traveller’s attention. It will be convenient to visit them before going the round of the University and its colleges.

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Historic images from around the City of Cambridge

This small selection of historic images of Cambridge (City Centre) are from our British National Image Library. You may click on the thumbnail pictures to view larger versions and read what information we have regarding the image.

1815 Queen’s College

1815 Trinity Hall

1815 Caius College

1815 Trumpington Street

1815 Clare Hall

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Hotels, Apartments and B&B's in Cambridge

The visitor accommodation options for Cambridge listed below are supplied by LATE ROOMS and BOOKING.COM from a selection of over 16,000 hotels located throughout the UK.

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 Accordia Apartments 

 

 Citystay - Glenalmond Apartments 

 

 Citystay - The Belvedere 

 

 Citystay - The Marque 

 

 Citystay - The Vie 

 

 Citystay - Vesta Apartments 

 

 Nobleo Apartments 

 

 Pinnacle Residences - Central Cambridge