Parker's Piece

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The coronation feast of 1838.

Parker's Piece is a perfectly flat and very roughly square green common located near the centre of Cambridge, England. The two main walking and cycling paths across it run diagonally, and the single lamp-post at the junction is commonly known as Reality checkpoint, ^{[citation needed]} a name understood by generations of students to denote the point where the main concentration of city centre colleges ends and "real life", in the shape of the town proper, begins ^{[citation needed]}. An alternative explanation for the lamp-post's title is that it was named "after the experience of walking past it at night in the fog."

The grass is well manicured and it is known today chiefly as a spot for picnics and games of football and cricket. (Fairs tend to be held on the rougher ground of Midsummer Common.) In the nineteenth century it was one of the principal sports grounds used by students at the University of Cambridge and the site of numerous Varsity Matches against Oxford.

Before 1613, the site of Parker's Piece was owned by Trinity College. In that year, the college exchanged the land - at that time located well outside the town - with the town of Cambridge for the majority of Garrett Hostel Green, an island on the River Cam, and the site of the current Wren Library, Trinity College. It was subsequently named after a college cook, Edward Parker, who obtained the rights to farm on it.

In 1838, a feast for 15,000 guests was held on Parker's Piece to celebrate the coronation of Queen Victoria.

In the nineteenth century, football was commonly played on this ground, as is described in the following quotation from Dr. G.E. Corrie, Master of Jesus College (1838): "In walking with Willis we passed by Parker's Piece and there saw some forty Gownsmen playing at football. The novelty and liveliness of the scene were amusing!"[1]

Parker's Piece has a special place in the history of modern football as it was here that the first formulated rules, the Cambridge Rules were put into practice. They were very influential in the creation of the modern rules of Association Football drawn up in London by Ebenezer Cobb Morley. A plaque has been mounted at Parker's Piece bearing the following inscription:

"Here on Parker's Piece, in the 1800s, students established a common set of simple football rules emphasising skill above force, which forbade catching the ball and 'hacking'. These 'Cambridge Rules' became the defining influence on the 1863 Football Association rules."[2]