Highways and Byways in Cambridge and Ely

by John William Edward Conybeare

St. Benet's Church, Interior.

This connecting gallery is of red brick, toned by age into delicious mellowness, and is best seen from the back of the College, where a quiet little lane ("Free School Lane"), one of the most charming amongst the byways of Cambridge, gives access through the above mentioned archway into the quiet little church yard of this quiet little church, with its Saxon tower, the oldest monument of ecclesiastical architecture in Cambridge, and one of the most picturesque. The precise date of its erection, and how the church came to exist at all, is, and will probably remain, an unsolved problem in history. Some authorities imagine that it points to an East Anglian settlement to the east of the Cam, distinct from the Mercian "Grantabridge" on the western bank, where the old Roman town once stood; others believe that it was built by the English inhabitants expelled from that town by the Danes in the time of King Alfred. Whatever may be the truth there is no small fascination in this venerable relic of the old English days, with its "long and short" stonework, the rudely-fashioned Romanesque pilasters in its windows, and the nondescript "portal-guarding" lions of its interior archway. The body of the church has been altered and re-altered time and again during the ages: at the bases of the present chancel-arch those of two earlier predecessors may be observed, and the south wall of the chancel is honeycombed with disused openings once leading into the Collegiate buildings of Corpus, while the existing stairway (also disused) is seen in the eastern corner of the south aisle. The church is thus of rare interest to the architectural student, and its history has been exhaustively dealt with by Mr. Atkinson (Cambridge Illustrated, p. 133). A glass case in the south aisle contains various relics of antiquity belonging to it, and beside them an ancient iron "fire-hook," used of old for tearing down blazing roofs and buildings.[10]

Out-taken the Old Court, Corpus has nothing in the way of buildings that has either beauty or interest, the College having been remorselessly remodelled about 1825. But the contents of its Library surpass all else of the kind in Cambridge, containing, as it does, what is probably the identical Gospel Book used by St. Augustine in his conversion of the English, and what is probably the identical copy of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle written for King Alfred, if not by his own hand. These priceless treasures once formed part of the library of Canterbury Abbey, which was sold by Henry the Eighth, at its suppression, as waste paper. Such relics as survived twenty years of this profanation were rescued by Archbishop Parker (the first Protestant Archbishop), in Elizabeth's reign, and were presented by him to the College, of which he had been Master.[11] To guard, so far as possible, against their again coming "to such base uses," he accompanied his gift with the condition that if a certain number of the MSS. were ever missing, the whole should pass to Caius College, and thence to Trinity Hall in case of a like loss. The authorities of these Colleges have (and exercise) the right of annual inspection: so far quite fruitlessly, as no single MS. has disappeared during the last three centuries. But the result has been to render this Library harder of access to visitors than any other, and it can only be seen by special arrangement with the Librarian, who has to be present in person, along with some other Fellow or Scholar of the College, before strangers can be introduced.

Corpus has the reputation of being haunted by a ghost, the existence of which has been taken quite seriously even within the present century. But the tale of its origin has a most suspicious number of variants. Some hold it to be the spirit of a poor motherless girl of seventeen, the daughter of Dr. Spenser (Master from 1667 to 1693), who died of fright at being discovered by her father while enjoying a clandestine interview with her undergraduate lover. (This tragedy is fairly historical.) Others declare that it is the lover; who was locked, or locked himself, into a cupboard, where he died of suffocation! Others again have a tale of a student from King's, who (in order not to haunt his own College) came hither to kill himself! That strange noises, not yet accounted for, are heard in some of the rooms, is, apparently, an established fact.

Opposite the Gate-tower of Corpus an open roadside esplanade, shaded by lime trees, marks the still vacant space destined by St. Catharine's College, in the seventeenth century, for a Library, to complete its red-brick quadrangle, a design which has come to nothing. The interior of the Court, which is not without dignity, still lies open to view, shut in only by what was then meant to be a merely temporary iron railing, with St. Catharine's wheel conspicuous above the entrance. The College was founded as a kind of satellite to King's College, by Robert Woodlark, the third Provost of that great Foundation, in 1475. It has always remained a small and comparatively poor Society.

If we pass through the Court, such as it is, of St. Catharine's, (familiarly known as "Cat's,") the western gate will bring us out into Queens' Lane. We shall, however, do better to reach this most fascinating of all Cambridge byways not thus but through the College from which it derives its name, Queens'. To do this we must turn westwards down Silver Street, a few yards south of St. Catharine's, and just opposite St. Botolph's Church. Before taking this turn we should give a glance northward along Trumpington Street at the splendid mass of Collegiate and University buildings which here come into view. High above all rises the glorious fabric of King's College Chapel, while, beyond it, the classical façades of the Senate House and the University Library, the fine gateway of Caius College, and the further off tower of St. John's College, fill the eye with a delightful sense of aesthetic culture and harmony.

Entering Silver Street, a mean thoroughfare, all too narrow for its volume of traffic, and demanding no small caution from all and sundry, we have on our left a building for all the world like a College—so frequently, indeed, mistaken for one by newcomers, as to have gained the nickname of "the Freshman's College." In reality this is the University Printing Press, or the Pitt Press, as it is commonly called; the existing frontage opposite Pembroke having been erected in 1831, in memory of that statesman, who was a member of Pembroke College.[12] All the official printing of the University is done here, and the building also serves as the quarters of the University Registrary, who keeps the record of Entrances, Degrees, etc.

At the end of Silver Street, which is, happily, little over a hundred yards in length, we reach an iron bridge over the Cam; its placid stream "footing slow," as Milton says (in Lycidas), and only some thirty feet in breadth. Above the bridge, however, it widens out into a broad pool, enlivened by the rush of water from the "King's Mill," beyond which the eye ranges over the open levels of "Sheep's Green." Both the mill and the bridge are amongst the oldest features of Cambridge, and the tolls payable at both were in mediæval times a Royal monopoly. The King's agent in collecting them on this bridge (known as "The Small Bridge" in contradistinction to the more important structure beneath the Castle) was a hermit, for whose accommodation a small bridge-house and chapel were built. This curious use of hermits, as keepers of roads and bridges, was common in Cambridgeshire before the Reformation.

At Silver Street bridge the river enters on its course through the enchanted ground of the "Backs," and the visitor will do well to take water at the adjoining boat-house; for the stream here forms for half a mile a byway lovely beyond words, not to be matched elsewhere in all the world; flowing, as it does, between venerable piles of academic masonry, and "trim gardens," the haunts of "retired leisure"; umbrageous, as it is, with the shade of lime, and elm, and beech, and chestnut, and weeping willow, and laburnum; spanned, as it is, by bridge after bridge, each a new revelation of exquisite design.