Pembroke College, Cambridge

Pembroke College is a college of the University of Cambridge, home to over 600 students and fellows, and is the third oldest of the existing colleges.

Buildings

The first buildings were comprised of a single court (now called Old Court) containing all the component parts of a college - chapel, hall, kitchen and buttery, master's lodgings, students' rooms - and the statutes provided for a manciple, a cook, a barber and a laundress. Both the founding of the college and the building of the city's first college chapel (1355) required the grant of a papal bull.

Related Topics:
Court - 1355 - Papal bull

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The original court was the university's smallest at only 95 feet by 55 feet, but was enlarged to its current size in the nineteenth century by demolishing the south range.

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The college's gatehouse, however, is original and is the oldest in Cambridge. The Hall was rebuilt in the nineteenth century by Alfred Waterhouse after he had declared the existing one unsafe.

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The original chapel now forms the Old Library and has a striking seventeenth century plaster ceiling, designed by Henry Doogood, showing birds flying overhead. Around the Civil War, one of Pembroke's fellows and Chaplain to the future Charles I, Mathew Wren, was imprisoned by Oliver Cromwell. On his release after eighteen years he fulfilled a promise by hiring his nephew Christopher Wren to build a great chapel in his former college. The resulting chapel was consecrated on St Mathew's Day, 1665, and the eastern end was extended by George Gilbert Scott in 1880.

Related Topics:
Henry Doogood - Civil War - Charles I - Mathew Wren - Oliver Cromwell - Christopher Wren - 1665 - George Gilbert Scott - 1880

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Pembroke's enclosed grounds also house some particularly well-kept gardens, sporting a huge array of carefully-selected vegetation. Highlights include "The Orchard" (a patch of semi-wild ground in the centre of the college), an impressive row of Plane Trees and an immaculately-kept bowling green which is reputed to be the oldest in continual use in Europe. Curiously, Pembroke has recently had a wildlife presence, with doubtlessly studious badgers seen on college grounds.

Related Topics:
Plane Trees - Bowling green

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