Cambridge

One of the things I appreciate most about the University of Sheffield is the Student’s Union.  Every weekend international students have the opportunity to take a trip to another part of the country, for a reasonable price.  On the 23rd of February I took a bus to Cambridge for the day with three of my flat mates. 

Cambridge is a university city consisiting of 31 different colleges and it is the second oldest university in the English-speaking world (second only to Oxford of course).   The University in Cambridge was actually started in 1209 by scholars from Oxford after a dispute with local townsfolk there.

Unfortunately I didn’t actually get to see any of the colleges from the inside, mainly because there were graduation ceremonies going on, however I did get to see Trinity College chapel and courtyard and many of the colleges from the outside while punting down the river Cam!  I was also able to walk around the magnificent courtyards of King’s college and even took a guided tour through King’s College Chapel, perhaps the most famous building there.  I took a lot of pictures (see facebook) and even bought a guide book with some information about the chapel. 

The following history is paraphrased from “A Guide to King’s College Chapel” by Josephine Warrior.  King’s College Chapel was begun in 1446 by King Henry VI who wanted it to be the biggest and most beautiful college chapel.   However, Henry VI never lived to see it completed.  His right to the throne was challenged in 1455 by Edward Duke of York, starting the Wars of Roses.  It did not end well for Henry VI who was taken prisoner in 1461 and murdered in the Tower of London in 1471.  Edward IV did little for the chapel and work on it only began again through Richard III who completed the first five bays, which are roofed with oak and lead.  Henry VII defeated and killed Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, but did not seriously invest in the chapel until 1508 when he was urged by his mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort to complete the project.  He sent some money to pay for it in a chest (see facebook pics).  Henry VII was executed in 1509, but his executors supplied the money to finish the church.  By 1515 the main structure was complete and the stained glass windows were created under the supervision of King Henry VIII.  He was also responsible for the screen and much of the woodwork.  The glass windows are the most complete set of church windows surviving from the time of King Henry VIII!  And, not that I would recognize this, but apparently the glass and wookwork show a change in style from English Gothic to New Renaissance.  The chapel was finally completed in all its glory in 1547.  A quote from the guidebook says, “It took five kings, four master masons, and an army of craftsmen over a century to build King’s College Chapel.”  Below is a diagram of the elevation of the chapel over the years.

 

The history of the chapel is fascinating to me (learning about all of the battles and changes in power makes me think of Shakespeare), but of course its even more amazing to just be there and to experience it. The stained glass windows and the high vaulted ceilings take your breath away.  There is a huge screen of dark oak which divides the Chapel into an Antechapel and Choir and on top of the screen is the largest pipe organ I have ever seen in my life with statues of angels playing golden horns.  The chapel is full of heraldic carvings and ornamentation from the Tudor age such as the Tudor rose (which incorporates the red rose of the House of Lancaster and the white rose of the House of York), the portcullis (the badge of the Beaufort family), the red dragon of cadwallader (for Henry VII’s father) and the greyhound (for his mother, Lady Beaufort).  Henry VII is known as Henry Tudor because he unified the houses of York and Lancaster by marrying Elizabeth of York, daughter and heir of King Edward IV.  

                                                                                                  

One of the most amazing things to me was to see some of the ancient hymn books or Books of Hours that have been preserved from the 15th century.  All of the text and pictures and borders in them were done by hand!  I took a lot of pictures of the chapel and colleges, but if you want to see them you’ll have to visit my facebook page.  It takes far too long to try to upload them onto this blog.

After spending a couple of hours in the chapel we decided to visit Trinity College which is where Stephen Hawking studied astronomy and cosmology.  The chapel was modest in comparision, but the courtyards were beautiful.  Sometime along the way to Trinity, Elise and I were separated from our other flat mates and got lost in the mob of tourists.  However, as I mentioned before we made the most of it and went punting down the river Cam.  The weather was beautiful and we got to see the seven most famous colleges in Cambridge from the vantage point of our punt and with some interesting commentary by our very cute tour guide.  One of the most impressive colleges from the outside is St. John’s.  A lot of Harry Potter was filmed within its halls and corridors. Sadly we were unable to go inside, although I suppose we could have tried harder… (we did see an old man trying to climb over the walls to get inside!) 

One of the interesting thing about St. John’s is that it is supposed to be perfectly symmetrical.  Back in the day (I don’t remember dates) they used to try to maintain the symmetry of the building by making sure that all of the windows were closed at all times.  However in the spring and summer it would get too hot and the students would open their windows.  So the headmasters started fining students if they opened their windows and ruined the symmetry.  In order to get around this the students started opening windows that were symmetrical to each other, but eventually it became too complicated so they decided that they would all keep their windows open at all times so as not to ruin the symmetry.  The headmasters did not take very kindly to this as they said it looked shoddy to have all of the windows open.  In retaliation they implemented a new dress code… black robes, that the students had to wear at all times.  If a student was discovered on campus, not wearing his robe he would be fined.  For several years this was a huge source of income for the college!  Apparently the black robes are still in vogue because we passed a group of graduating students wearing them, with fur on the collars. 

We also learned about many other rivalries between the students and headmasters.  A few decades ago there was a group of students who called themselves the Night Climbers who were dedicated to causing mischief at night.  They would climb the walls and leave underwear at strategic points on the colleges in order to irritate the headmasters.  It got so bad that the professors started hiring other students to stand guard with beebee guns and shoot at them.  In retaliation to this the Night Climbers broke into one of the headmasters quarters, stole his car, a mini, dismantled it and strung it up by individual parts over bridges and around campus. This headmaster then implemented a rule that if anyone in a dorm was discovered to be a Night Climber, the entire dorm would be expelled.  In one year over a hundred students were expelled from St. Catherines College! 

After punting we didn’t have much time left, but we did take a half an hour look around the Fitzwilliam Museum which has paintings from the fourteenth century to the present day, as well as manuscripts, coins and antiquities from Egypt, Greece, Rome and Cyprus.  I wanted to take a picture with the heads of some Greek philosophers, but photography was prohibited.  However I did get a picture of the outside of the museum which is done in an imitation of Greek colonnades.  Elise and I ended our day in a small tea shop with a nice cup of Earl Grey and some scones.  We then had a difficult time finding the bus and almost contemplated purposely missing the bus and staying an extra night… there were just so many more things we wanted to do.