Pembroke College A.D. 1347.
Pembroke Hall was founded in 1347 by Marie daughter of Guy de Chatillon comte de Saint-Paul and of Mary grand-daughter of Henry III. She was of the blood of that Walter de Chatillon who in the retreat from Damietta during the 7th crusade, held a village alone against successive assaults of the Saracen; and having drawn forth their missiles from his body after each sally, charged afresh to the cry of Chatillon! Chevaliers!—and the widow of Aymer de Valence Earl of Pembroke the inexorable enemy of Robert Bruce in Edward’s wars against the Scottish king. Pembroke stands opposite Peterhouse and several hostels were destroyed to make room for it. It was called by the founder the hall of Valencemarie, and in Latin documents aula Pembrochiana.
Architectural scheme of a college.
With Pembroke the first college foundation stone was laid in Cambridge. Here for the first time we have a homogeneous collegiate house and not a mere adaptation of pre-existing buildings, and may therefore enquire what was the architectural plan of a college. The principle of the quadrangle, although it underwent considerable architectural development, was recognised with the first attempt at college architecture.[127] The special collegiate buildings at first occupied one side of the court only. Here, facing the gateway, were to be found the hall with its buttery and kitchen, above the hall the Master’s lodging, with perhaps a garret bedroom above it—the solarium. The combination room attiguous to the hall makes its appearance in the next century, and at right angles or parallel to this main block stretch the students’ chambers and studies. A muniment room or treasury is over the gate; the library, occupying a third side,[128] and the chapel, come later; and last of all the architectural gateway is added.[129] Meadows and fields and the Master’s plot of ground are soon developed into the Master’s garden, the fellows’ garden, the bowling green, and tennis court. By the xv century the buildings round a courtyard easily assume the plan of the new domestic dwelling of that epoch, of which the type is Haddon Hall Derbyshire and, in Cambridge, Queens’ College: the college domus of the xiv century becomes the quadrangular manor-house of the xvth and xvith. In such a scheme of public buildings only a few scholars could be lodged in the main court, and smaller quadrangles for their accommodation were therefore added. University Hostel formed one side of such a second court in Pembroke; Clare and Queens’ had also second courts, and their example was followed at Christ’s and S. John’s.
Here then we have a scheme of building which is neither monastic nor feudal. It may with propriety be called scholastic but it is also essentially domestic architecture. The college quadrangle as we see it evolved in Cambridge is the earliest attempt at devising a dwelling which should resemble neither the cloister nor the castle, should suggest neither enclosure nor self-defence—a scholastic dwelling. The college is the outcome of that moment in our history when feudalism had played its part and monasticism was losing its power; it represents what the rise of the universities themselves represents and its architectural interest is unique. No monastic terms are retained; the hall is not a refectory, the one constant monastic and canonical feature, the church, has no part at all in the scheme—the scholars were men not separated from their fellows and they used the parish church.
The first collegiate dwelling houses, like the English manor-house, consciously or unconsciously followed one of the oldest house-plans known to civilisation—the scheme of dwelling-rooms round a court was that of the Roman house. The aula seu domus scholarium had moreover as its starting point—like the earliest domus ecclesiae—a hall in a house; the hall is the nucleus of the college.[130]
The site of Pembroke.