Within the last decade two other notable conflagrations have here been kindled. When Lord Kitchener, then Sirdar of Egypt, and fresh from his victories over the Mahdi, visited Cambridge to receive an Honorary Degree, his presence amongst us was greeted by the wildest orgies. A huge bonfire was kindled on the Hill, the pile ultimately stretching diagonally across almost the entire area, and fed with ever fresh supplies of wood, for which the whole town was scoured. Railings were torn up wholesale (notably, as has been said, in the Backs), shutters were wrenched from shop windows, and even doors from houses; while hoardings, gates, and tradesmen's barrows were seized and devoted to the flames. Like scenes, a few years later, on a somewhat smaller scale, celebrated the relief of Ladysmith in the Boer War.
These riotous proceedings were the work of the wilder spirits of University and Town alike. But in the earlier part of the Nineteenth Century many a fierce collision between Town and Gown took place on the Hill. The Fifth of November was the annual occasion consecrated by custom to these conflicts. Bands of undergraduates paraded the streets shouting "Gown! Gown!" while bands of the fiercer element amongst the townsfolk did the like, to the cry of "Town! Town!" Fights were thus frequent, in spite of the efforts of the authorities, both Civic and Academic. Gownsmen took to flight at the appearance of the Proctors and their "Bulldogs,"[86] but it was to re-form elsewhere, and few were actually caught. The Police, when they came into existence, in the early 'forties, were more formidable. They invariably took the side of the Town,[87] and it was due to them that the "Fifth" became less and less pugilistic, till it is now only a memory. Fisticuffs were all very well, but batons made the fun not good enough.
CHAPTER VI
Round Church.—Union Society.—The "Great Bridge," Hithe.—Magdalene College, Buckingham College, Pepys, Charles Kingsley, the "College Window," Master's Garden.—Castle Hill, Camboritum, Cromwell's Rampart, Repulse of Charles I, the "Borough," View from Castle.—St. Peter's Church.—"School of Pythagoras."—Westminster College.—Ridley Hall.—Newnham College.—Selwyn College.—Convent of St. Radegund, Bishop Alcock.—Midsummer Common.—Boat Houses, Bumping Races.—Jesus College, "Chimney," Cloisters, Chapter House, Chapel, Cranmer, Coleridge.
Starting once more from the Great Gate of Trinity and turning northwards past St. John's we soon reach the "Via Devana," the old Roman road which, as has been said, is the backbone of Cambridge, traversing the town, under various names, from end to end. At this point of its course it is called Bridge-street. Opposite to us, as we enter it, rises one of the most distinctive buildings of Cambridge, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, popularly known as "the Round Church." Its strange shape is an echo of the Crusading period, during the whole of which such reproductions of the famous church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, the deliverance of which from the Turks was the Crusaders' dream, were erected in various parts of England. Earliest in date comes the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Northampton, built at the very beginning of the twelfth century, in the opening fervour of the first Crusade, which has also given us the beautiful old chapel of Ludlow Castle (now in ruins) and this church in Cambridge. The gallant but fruitless effort of Richard Cœur de Lion to retrieve the disastrous loss of Jerusalem is commemorated by the Temple Church in London, completed at the very close of that century; while the yet more fruitless endeavours of Edward the First, a century later again, in the last expiring flash of Crusading zeal, inspired the latest of our English Round Churches, that of Maplestead in Essex. In all these churches the reproduction of their original is of a very modified character.
So it is with our Cambridge example. It consists, indeed, (or, rather originally consisted) of a circular nave surrounded by an ambulatory, like its Jerusalem prototype, and may, like it, have had a domed roof, though this is scarcely probable. But there the likeness must always have ended; and the structure has, in later days, been altered and re-altered time after time. At first there was probably a small semicircular eastern apse, which within a century gave place to an Early English chancel. This, in turn, was superseded by the present chancel with its aisles, built in the fifteenth century, when an octagonal bell-tower was also erected over the nave. Finally, in 1841, the newly-formed "Camden Society" for the restoration of ancient churches was permitted to work its will upon this one, and proceeded to reconstruct it in accordance with what they imagined ought to have been the design of its first builders.[88] And this imaginary ideal, with its pointed roof and tiny Norman windows, is all that we now see. Nevertheless, the sight, more especially inside, is impressive in no small degree.
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre.