A Pilgrimage to Cambridge

About a month and a half ago, my brother Steven came from Canada for a whirlwind visit: six days to see as much of England as possible. I'm still amazed at what we managed to squeeze in! One of our trips was an overnighter to Cambridge, where we stayed with James, a friend of mine who is working on a PhD there.

The University of Cambridge is one of the two meccas of English-speaking academia, Oxford being the other. Anyone interested in academics needs to make a pilgrimage to one or both of these universities at least once in their life! To study or to teach at Cambridge is to put oneself in the company of a Who's Who of people who have shaped modern Western thought: Thomas Cranmer, Desiderius Erasmus, John Milton, John Harvard, William Harvey, Isaac Newton, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Alfred Tennyson, Charles Darwin, Bertrand Russell, John Maynard Keynes, Francis Crick and James Watson, and more.

Cambridge has a long and fascinating history. Cambridge is built on the River Cam (map here), and there has been a bridge over the river going up to Castle Hill since about 875, giving the town its name. Cambridge soon developed a distinct identity as a religious centre, with several churches, convents, hospitals, and the like being built up around the river by the 12th century. Several of these religious facilities became incorporated into the later University Colleges.

Cambridge's origins as a school go back to the 12th century, but it was founded as a university early in the 13th century by scholars from Oxford--and the rivalry between the two universities has never stopped. Both Oxford and Cambridge are distinctive in that they are each a confederation of autonomous colleges. The first of Cambridge's 31 Colleges was Peterhouse (or St. Peter's), officially founded in 1284. Other well-known old Colleges include Gonville and Caius (1348; pronounced "keys"), Trinity Hall (1350), Corpus Christi (1352), King's (1441), Queens' (1448), Jesus (1496), Christ's (1505), St. John's (1511), Magdalene (1542; pronounced "maudlin"), and Trinity (1546). Needless to say, there is a lot of history in a place like this!

One highlight of our trip was attending a choral evensong service at King's College Chapel. This chapel was begun in 1446 by King Henry VI but not completed until 1547. The view of the Chapel from The Backs across the River Cam is probably the most familiar symbol of Cambridge (pic 1). It is certainly awe-inspiring, as was the service we attended. Sitting in centuries-old oak seats reserved for University members and guests, listening to the choir sing the liturgy with every "amen" hanging in the air, eyes raised to the expansive vaulted ceiling above--this was a worship experience I will never forget.

The next day we toured around some of the older, central Colleges with James as our able guide. In addition to King's College, we walked through the grounds and some buildings of Gonville and Caius, Trinity, and St. John's Colleges, among others. I won't even attempt to describe all the highlights of a tour such as this but I'll simply point to some representative pictures to give a sense of what we experienced: the main street outside the central Colleges (pic 2); Great St. Mary's Church, the official church of the University dating to the 13th century (pic 3); the Great Court (pic 4) and Neville Court (pic 5) at Trinity College; one of three gates at Gonville and Caius College labeled with a scholarly virtue, humility (pic 6); the Bridge of Sighs over the River Cam at St. John's College (pic 7); a gate at St. John's College (pic 8); a statue outside St. John's College Chapel (pic 9); St. John's College from The Backs (pic 10); and the River Cam at Jesus Green, a park area beside Jesus College (pic 11).

For more history and pictures of Cambridge, be sure to go back and click on the links throughout. Thanks for coming on this all-too-brief tour!