Highways and Byways in Cambridge and Ely

by John William Edward Conybeare

For the first century of its existence, the students of Emmanuel worshipped in an unconsecrated building running north and south,[114] where they received the Sacrament "sitting on forms about the Communion Table, and pulling the loaf one after other when the minister hath begun. And so the cup; ... without any application of the sacred words." But in 1679 this room was turned into the College Library, and the present chapel built on the usual Anglican lines.

Emmanuel has little architectural beauty; but there are pleasant grounds, with a swimming-bath, as at Christ's, and two larger ponds, in which swans and wild ducks are kept. The swimming-bath and the smaller pond are accessible only by the favour of a Fellow; but the large piece of water is in a great open court (beyond the first court). All are fed from a branch of the Hobson's Conduit stream, runlets from which run down St. Andrew's Street, even as they run down Trumpington Street. Beyond the swan-pond lie the new buildings, lately erected to meet the greater expansion of the College, for Emmanuel, after over two centuries of depression, now ranks (along with Caius and Pembroke) at the head of the list with regard to relative numbers, except Trinity alone. In actual numbers she broke in 1890 her record of 1628, and has gone on advancing steadily since. Her shield bears a blue lion ramping on a white ground and holding a laurel wreath, emblematic of the victory of the "Lion of the tribe of Judah."

Immediately opposite the front gate of Emmanuel there runs off, at right angles, from the Via Devana, a thoroughfare known as Downing Street. Till the present century it actually gave access to Downing, the youngest of the Colleges to which the University officially accords that title. In those days Downing consisted of a huge parallelogram of prettily be-treed greensward, a furlong across and three furlongs long,[115] thus covering far more space than any other college. But in numbers it was the smallest of all, and also in income, till finally agricultural depression reduced it to such straits that it was forced to sell its northern frontage to the University. Thus Downing Street now leads, not to Downing, but to the great central huddle of University museums, laboratories, and lecture-rooms, which have been incessantly rising during the last two generations, and which are still continuing to rise. Here, cheek by jowl (on the site of the old Austin Friary), are the magnificent Geological Museum erected in memory of Professor Sedgwick, the Museum of Botany, the Law Schools, the Museum of Archæology, the Museum of Anatomy,[116] the Museum of Mineralogy, the Chemical Laboratory, the Medical Schools,[117] the Physical Laboratory,[118] the Engineering Laboratory, the Optical Lecture-room, and, beside these, the Philosophical Library, and the huge Examination Hall which is the latest addition to the equipment of the University.

To reach Downing to-day, one must turn to the left on leaving Emmanuel, and continue along the Via Devana (here called Regent Street) till large iron gates on the opposite side of the road invite us to enter the College grounds. These give still an impressive sense of space, though now curtailed at the southern as well as the northern end, and form a pretty setting for the two parallel ranges of yellow stone, which date from the beginning of the nineteenth century. For though Downing was by that time keeping the centenary of its foundation (by Sir George Downing, of Gamlingay in Cambridgeshire), the funds had not hitherto admitted of the erection of college buildings. When first set up, these classical frontages were considered the ne plus ultra of architectural perfection, and strangers were taken to see them as the great glory of Cambridge.

Regent Street, after we leave Downing, will soon bring us again to the Church of Our Lady, so that we have now completed our circuit of Cambridge. There remain, however, a few outlying spots worth a visit should time serve. Nearest and most picturesque of these is Coe Fen, a long strip of common, lying along the eastern bank of the river, before it enters on its course through the Backs. The best time to see it is at sunset, and the best way to gain it is by following down the narrow byway beside Little St. Mary's, and turning to the left at the bottom. We shall then find ourselves on the Fen, beneath the old wall of Peterhouse deerpark, a delicious, heavily-buttressed, mass of red brick-work, leaning over and curved with age, patched and re-patched all over with all kinds of fragments, giving colour effects that are quite charming.[119] Passing beyond its shelter, and that of its continuing hedge (which divides us from Peterhouse and other gardens), we may take the first turn to the left, up a narrow (and often dirty) byway, which will lead us past the Leys School, the great Wesleyan educational outpost of Cambridge, into the Trumpington Road, where it joins Lensfield Road at Hobson's Conduit. Or, instead of turning to the left we may turn to the right, and, crossing the Cam by the iron footbridge, make our way over "Sheep's Green," the Common east of the river, to Newnham Mill and the Backs. Or we may hold straight on, by the footpath that runs the whole length of the Fen, which will bring us out on the Trumpington Road just by the first milestone, where that road crosses "Vicar's Brook."

It is from this side that we notice how this is no ordinary milestone, but a grand monolith twelve or fifteen feet in length, and feel that it must have a story. And so indeed it has, for it is the very first milestone ever set up in Britain since the days of the Roman dominion here. In those days every great road in the country had its series of milestones recording the distance from the central milestone in London, which still exists, in its decay, as "London Stone." But after the mighty organisation of the Roman Empire lost its hold upon the land, roads went to ruin, and milestones were broken up or used for Anglo-Saxon gate-posts. Not till 1729 was the idea of restoring the system entertained; and it was a Cambridge College, Trinity Hall, that first took it up, and carried it out on the road from Cambridge to London. Hence it is that these milestones bear the Crescent of the College shield. And for their inaugural milestone was chosen this grand monolith, which was itself an old Roman milestone.

North-east of Cambridge stretch the mesh of dingy streets which make up the great suburb of Barnwell. Hither and thither they run, in soul-crushing monotony; yet even here there are gems of interest to be found. The suburb came into existence, to begin with, through the proximity of a great Abbey, the Augustinian Priory of Barnwell. This House of Religion was founded in the first instance by Hugoline, the pious wife of Picot, William the Conqueror's far from pious Sheriff of Cambridgeshire. It was by her located close beneath his dwelling-place in the Castle, and dedicated to St. Giles. Half a century later, the Picot land was forfeited for treason, and granted to Richard Peverel, who had been, in the First Crusade, standard-bearer to Robert Curthose, the Conqueror's eldest son. He transferred the House to the riverside, hard by a holy spring, the Burn Well (or source of the Brook), where a hermit of special sanctity had already reared an Oratory dedicated to St. Andrew. He also raised the number of monks from six to thirty, to correspond with that of his own years at the time.

The Abbey grew and flourished. Its inmates, as appears from their "Custom Book" of 1296 (lately published by Mr. J. W. Clark), led a very civilised life—cleanliness being specially insisted upon; and its proximity to Cambridge placed it in touch with political life. Royalty stayed in it now and again; in 1388 even Sessions of Parliament were held in it; Papal Legates visited it.[120] And when civil wars broke out, it was a prize worth plundering; a fate it more than once suffered. When the final plunder came, under Henry the Eighth, the whole was utterly swept away; the only thing left being a small stone building, which was apparently the Muniment room of the Abbey. Though utterly ruinous, this little block is by no means without architectural merit, and may be found by following the Newmarket Road (which enters Cambridge as "Jesus Lane") to its junction with East Road (the eastward continuation of Lensfield Road). Here Abbey Street runs down to the river, and just off it is our building, commonly known as the "Priory Chapel." Hard by is an old red-brick dwelling-house, bearing the date 1578, and called the "Abbey Barn"; and in its grounds are several venerable fragments.

In close proximity to these ruins is an actually surviving relic of Barnwell Priory. This is a tiny church of Early English Architecture, known as the "Abbey Church," or "Little St. Andrew's."[121] Small as it is, it is the Mother Church of a huge parish (now happily divided into districts) containing more than half the entire population of the Borough of Cambridge. It was built by the Canons of Barnwell, when their Priory was a century old, for the use of the little knot of hangers-on whom every great abbey attracted to its doors, and whose secular (and, perhaps, far from cleanly) presence was unwelcome at the fastidious worship of the Priory Church. And they made it the representative of the old hermit's Oratory of St. Andrew. For long ages it sufficed for the adjoining population; but when that population increased by the hundred-fold, as it did at the opening of the nineteenth century, things got to a desperate pass, and Barnwell became practically heathen, with an only too well-deserved reputation for vice of every kind.

So matters stood when, in 1839, Dr. Perry, Fellow of Trinity College, who was Senior Wrangler in 1828, and whom we have met with as the devoutest attendant at the College Chapel, and as the builder of Great St. Andrew's, came forward to stem the evil. Renouncing the comfort of College life, he took upon himself the charge of this hopeless district; for which he built, at his own expense, the commodious (if ugly) red-brick church opposite the Abbey, and a like fabric (St. Paul's) at the other end of the area, on the way to the railway station. He laboured devotedly himself, he inspired others to work, he invoked the help of a band of pious undergraduates who had already begun a Sunday School on their own account,[122] and when he departed to become the pioneer Bishop of Australia, he left a well-equipped Parish organisation which is still in full activity.[123]