College Tour
Starting at the Round Church (although you can start anywhere, as it’s a circular route), the College Trail takes around 30 minutes to complete. It takes in 12 of the University of Cambridge’s 31 colleges including Trinity College, the iconic Kings College, the Corpus Christi clock and the proposed college of Sherlock Holmes.
Round Church
Modelled on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Round Church in Cambridge was founded between 1115 and 1131 by crusaders. It’s an Anglican church which pre-dates the University by 75 years and is one of only four medieval round churches still in use in England. It’s the second oldest building in Cambridge (the oldest is St Bene't's Church) and the round shape was believed to represent resurrection.
St Johns College
St John's was founded in 1511 on a site that was once home to a monastic house - the Hospital of St John - which was in existence from the early 13th century. It’s one of the largest Colleges in Cambridge and former students include Nobel Prize winners, Prime Ministers, scientists, artists, and leaders in business and industry. By the mid-19th century, the College had expanded across the River Cam with the construction of its famous Bridge of Sighs.
Trinity College
Trinity was founded by Henry VIII in 154 when he combined two existing colleges (King’s Hall and Michaelhouse) and seven hostels. The oldest parts of the College, including the range behind the Clock Tower, are medieval. The clock still strikes the hour twice - first on a low note and then on a much higher one. Isaac Newton, one of the greatest physical scientists, studied here and completed his most important mathematical and scientific work between 1661 and 1696. Byron, Thackeray, and Tennyson were all Trinity undergraduates in the early part of the 19th century and Earl Grey is one of Trinity’s six Prime Ministers.
Gonville and Caius
Gonville & Caius – known simply as ‘Keys’ (if you were wondering how to pronounce “Caius”!) – is the fourth oldest College in the University of Cambridge. First founded as Gonville Hall by Edmund Gonville in 1348, it was refounded in 1557 by John Caius as Gonville and Caius College. The College is now one of the largest Colleges in Cambridge and has produced fifteen Nobel Prize winners.
Trinity Hall
Trinity Hall (not to be confused with Trinity College) is the fifth oldest College in the University of Cambridge. It was founded in 1350 by Bishop Bateman for the study of canon and civil law following the devastation caused by the Black Death plague. (At first all colleges in Cambridge were known as ‘Halls’ or ‘Houses’ and then later changed their names from ‘Hall’ to ‘College’. However, when Henry VIII founded Trinity College next door, it became clear that Trinity Hall would continue to be known as a Hall.) Notable alumni include the theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking and Academy Award-winning actress Rachel Weisz.
Clare College
Clare College is the second oldest of Cambridge’s thirty-one colleges (the oldest is Peterhouse, founded 1284). It was founded in 1326, and in 1336 King Edward III granted licence “to his cousin Lady Elizabeth de Clare to establish a collegium”. It became known as Clare Hall in 1339 and the present simplified title, ‘Clare’, dates from 1856. It was the first of the Oxford and Cambridge foundations to provide for a Master, Fellows and Scholars in a single community.
Kings College
King's College was founded by King Henry VI in 1441 and has continuously striven to uphold Henry’s love for “education, religion, learning and research”. Henry was only 19 when he laid the first stone in 1441. At the time Cambridge was still a port, so, to make way for his college, Henry levelled houses, shops, lanes and even a church between the river and the high street (now King's Parade).
Kings College Chapel
King's College Chapel plays a central role in College life, as well as being the most instantly recognizable and iconic building in Cambridge. In addition to being a place of daily worship during term-time, it’s where the Choir performs concerts and records music for their own record label. They broadcast live on radio to millions worldwide every Christmas and every year they pre-record new television services for both Christmas and Easter.
Corpus Christi
Corpus Christi was the sixth College to be founded at Cambridge University. Unusually, it was founded by townspeople - members of two Cambridge guilds -primarily to train priests. The College was founded in 1352 in the aftermath of the Black Death. On 28 February 1953, Francis Crick and James Watson interrupted anyone lunching at the Eagle Pub (then and still owned by Corpus) to announce they had "discovered the secret of life" - Watson and Crick had decoded the double helix structure of DNA, based on the x-ray data of Rosalind Franklin. Since 2008 the Corpus Clock is one of the most distinctive public monuments in Cambridge.
Queens College
Tourists gets told that the name of Queens’ College is spelled in the plural form with the apostrophe after the final letter ‘s’ because the College was founded by two Queens of England: first in 1448 by Margaret of Anjou, wife of King Henry VI of England (the founder of King’s College, Cambridge), and secondly in 1465 by Elizabeth Woodville, wife of King Edward IV of England. But the formal title of the College is: ‘The Queen’s College of St Margaret and St Bernard, commonly called Queens’ College, in the University of Cambridge’ - which shows both forms of spelling. The Mathematical Bridge, built in 1749, is also surrounded by myths, most of which are untrue (for instance it was not first built without bolts at the joints).
Pembrooke College
On Christmas Eve 1347 Edward III granted Mary de St Pol, widow of the Earl of Pembroke, a licence for the foundation of the College. Pembroke is the earliest Cambridge College to survive today on its original site (the building now known as Old Court). It is the third oldest of the Cambridge colleges and was the first to have its own Chapel. It has buildings from almost every century since its founding and is one of only six Cambridge colleges to have educated a British prime minister (in Pembroke's case William Pitt the Younger).
Emmanuel College
Emmanuel College was founded by Sir Walter Mildmay in 1584 on the site of a thirteenth-century Dominican Priory. The Dominican buildings were adapted into accommodation, and the monks' chapel into the dining hall. On its foundation, the college was intended to educate Protestant preachers. In this way the College was distinctive from others across Cambridge at the time. Sir Walter stated: "I have planted an acorn, which, when it becomes an oak, God alone knows what will be the fruit thereof".
Christs College
Christ's College was founded by William Byngham in 1437 as God's House. In 1505, the college was granted a new royal charter and was given a substantial endowment by matriarch of the Tudor dynasty, Lady Margaret Beaufort, and changed its name to Christ's College - becoming the twelfth of the Cambridge colleges to be founded in its current form. The poet John Milton studied here, as did naturalist Charles Darwin and the legacy of evolutionary biology lives on to this day.
Sidney Sussex
Sidney Sussex is one of the smaller Cambridge Colleges. Founded in 1596 by Lady Frances Sidney, Countess of Sussex. Famous as the college attended by Oliver Cromwell, it has also produced soldiers, political cartoonists, alchemists, spies, murderers and arsonists as well as a Premiership football club chairman. From the largely theological and mathematical college of the first two centuries, it became a power-house in the rapidly expanding medical, natural, physical and chemical sciences of such renown that by the early 20th century it led Dorothy L Sayers to propose Sidney as the college of Sherlock Holmes.