Pembroke College, Cambridge

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Pembroke College, Cambridge
Pembroke College heraldic shield
                     
Full name Pembroke College
Motto -
Named after Countess of Pembroke, Mary de St Pol
Previous names Marie Valence Hall (1347),
Pembroke Hall (?),
Pembroke College (1856)
Established 1347
Sister College(s) Queen's College
Master Sir Richard Dearlove
Location Trumpington Street
Undergraduates ~420
Postgraduates ~240
Homepage Boatclub

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.


Contents

[edit] History

On Christmas Eve 1347, Edward III granted Marie de St Pol, widow of the Earl of Pembroke, the licence for the foundation of a new educational establishment in the young university at Cambridge. The Hall of Marie Valence, as it was originally known, was thus founded to house a body of students and fellows.

The statutes were notable in that they both gave preference to students born in France who had already studied elsewhere in England, and that they required students to report fellow students if they indulged in excessive drinking or visited disreputable houses.

The college was later renamed Pembroke House, and finally became Pembroke College in 1856.

[edit] 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.

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.

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.

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, Matthew 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 Matthew's Day, 1665, and the eastern end was extended by George Gilbert Scott in 1880.

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.

The front gate of Pembroke College
Enlarge
The front gate of Pembroke College

[edit] Famous alumni of Pembroke College

See also Category:Alumni of Pembroke College, Cambridge

[edit] Pembroke today

Pembroke College has both graduate and undergraduate students. The undergraduate student body is represented by the Junior Parlour Committee (JPC). The graduate community is represented by the Graduate Parlour Committee (GPC). Pembroke is unusual in having its recreational rooms named as "parlours" rather than the more standard "common room" . There are many clubs and societies organised by the students of the college, such as the college's dramatic society the Pembroke Players, which has been made famous by alumni such as Peter Cook, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Clive James and Bill Oddie and is now in its 50th year.

[edit] Pembroke May Ball

Pembroke College had a longstanding tradition of hosting well-organised, good-value May Balls, before downsizing to a June Event in 2001. The Event has since become well-known by both reviewers and students as one of the best in the university, but the Committee has recently announced that Pembroke will be returning to the May Ball scene in 2007.

[edit] International Programmes

Pembroke is the only Cambridge college to have a programme allowing American students to study abroad just for the spring (Lent and Easter) terms. About 15 students are accepted into the programme, directed by International Programmes at Pembroke, each year.

[edit] Institutions named after the college

Pembroke College, the women's college at Brown University in the United States was named after Pembroke College (Cambridge), before it was assimilated into the university in 1971.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

Colleges of the University of Cambridge Arms of the University

Christ's | Churchill | Clare | Clare Hall | Corpus Christi | Darwin | Downing | Emmanuel | Fitzwilliam | Girton | Gonville and Caius | Homerton | Hughes Hall | Jesus | King's | Lucy Cavendish | Magdalene | New Hall | Newnham | Pembroke | Peterhouse | Queens' | Robinson | St Catharine's | St Edmund's | St John's | Selwyn | Sidney Sussex | Trinity | Trinity Hall | Wolfson
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