Colleges of the University of Cambridge Queens' College |
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Full name | The Queen's College of St Margaret and St Bernard, commonly called Queens' College, in the University of Cambridge | |||||||||||
Founders | Margaret of Anjou (1448) Elizabeth Woodville (1465) |
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Named after | Margaret the Virgin; Bernard of Clairvaux |
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Established | 1448 Refounded 1465 |
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Admittance | Men and women | |||||||||||
President | The Lord Eatwell | |||||||||||
Undergraduates | 490 | |||||||||||
Graduates | 270 | |||||||||||
Sister college | Pembroke College, Oxford | |||||||||||
Location | Silver Street (map) | |||||||||||
Floreat Domus (Latin, "May this house flourish") |
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College website | ||||||||||||
Boat Club website |
Queens' College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.
The college was founded in 1448 by Margaret of Anjou (the Queen of Henry VI), and refounded in 1465 by Elizabeth Woodville (the Queen of Edward IV). This dual foundation is reflected in its orthography: Queens', not Queen's, although the full name is The Queen's College of St Margaret and St Bernard, commonly called Queens' College, in the University of Cambridge.[1]
Queens' is the second southernmost of the colleges on the banks of the Cam, primarily on the East bank. (The others — in distance order — are King's, Clare, Trinity Hall, Trinity, St John's, and Magdalene to the north and Darwin to the south.)
The President's Lodge of Queens' is the oldest building on the river at Cambridge (ca. 1460).[2] Queens' College is also one of only two colleges with buildings on its main site on both sides of the River Cam (the other being St John's).
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Old Court was built between 1448 and 1451. Stylistic matters suggest that this was designed by and built under the direction of the master mason Reginald Ely, who was also at the same time erecting the original Old Court of King's College (now part of the University Old Schools opposite Clare College), and the start of King's College Chapel. Whereas King's was built using very expensive stone, Queens' Old Court was made using cheaper clunch with a red brick skin. Queens' was finished within two years, whereas King's Old Court was never finished, and the chapel took nearly a century to build.
Cloister Court The Cloister walks were erected in the 1490s to connect the Old Court of 1448/9 with the riverside buildings of the 1460s, thus forming the court now known as Cloister Court.
Walnut Tree Court was erected 1616–18. Walnut Tree Building on the East side of the court dates from around 1617 and was the work of the architects Gilbert Wragge and Henry Mason at a cost of £886.9s. Only the ground floor of the original construction remains after a fire in 1777, so it was rebuilt from the first floor upwards between 1778–1782, and battlements were added to it in 1823. This court was formerly the site of a Carmelite monastery founded in 1292, but is now the location of the College Chapel and various fellows' rooms. The present walnut tree in the court stands on the line of a former wall of the monastery, and was a replacement form an older one in the same position after which the court was named.
The College Chapel in Walnut Tree Court was designed by George Frederick Bodley and consecrated in 1891. It follows the traditional College Chapel form of an aisleless nave with rows of pews on either side, following the plan of monasteries, reflecting the origins of many Colleges as a place for training priests for the ministry. The triptych of paintings on the altarpiece panel may have originally been part of a set of five paintings, are late 15th Century Flemish, and are attributed to the 'master of the View of St Gudule'. They depict, from left to right, the Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, the Resurrection of Jesus, and Christ's Appearance to the Disciples.
Essex Building, erected 1756–60, is so named after its builder, James Essex the Younger (1722–1784), a local carpenter who had earlier erected the wooden bridge.
Friar's Court In response to the college's growth in student numbers during the 19th century, the President's second garden was taken as the site for new student accommodation called Friars' Building, designed by W. M. Fawcett and built in 1886. It is flanked on the East by the Dokett Building, designed by C. G. Hare and built in 1912 from thin red Daneshill brick with Corsham stone dressings and mullioned windows. The Erasmus Building completes what it now called Friar's Court on the West. It was designed by Sir Basil Spence and erected in 1959, and is notable for being the first college building on the Backs to be designed in the Modernist tradition.
Fisher Building, named after St John Fisher, was erected in 1936 and designed by G. C. Drinkwater. It continued the Queens' tradition of using red brick. The window frames are of teak, and all internal woodwork is oak. It was the first student accommodation in Queens' to lie west of the river. It was also the first building in Queens' to have bathrooms and toilets on the staircase landings close to the student rooms. These were so clearly evident that it prompted an observer at that time to comment that the building "seemed to have been designed by a sanitary engineer".
Cripps Court, incorporating Lyon Court (named after Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the Queen Mother), was designed by Powell, Moya and Partners and built in stages between 1972 and 1980. It houses 171 student bedrooms, three Combination Rooms (Junior for undergraduate students, Middle for Postgraduates, and Senior for Fellows of the College) and a bar, three Fellows' Flats, a solarium, Dining Hall and kitchens, a gymnasium, squash courts, various function rooms, a large multipurpose auditorium (The Fitzpatrick Hall) and a creche. It was the benefaction of the Cripps Foundation, and was the largest building ever put up by the College. It enables the College to offer accommodation to undergraduates within the main college site for three years. A fourth floor was added in 2007, providing student accommodation and fellows' offices. Disabled access ramps and security doors were added in 2010.
The Mathematical Bridge (officially named the Wooden Bridge) crosses the River Cam and connects the older half of the college (affectionately referred to by students as The Dark Side) with the newer, western, half (The Light Side, officially known as 'The Island'). It is one of the most photographed scenes in Cambridge; the typical photo being taken from the nearby Silver Street bridge.
Popular fable is that the bridge was designed and built by Sir Isaac Newton without the use of nuts or bolts, and at some point in the past students or fellows attempted to take the bridge apart and put it back together. The myth continues that the over-ambitious engineers were unable to match Newton's feat of engineering, and had to resort to fastening the bridge by nuts and bolts. This is why nuts and bolts can be seen in the bridge today. This story is false: the bridge was built of oak in 1749 by James Essex the Younger (1722–1784) to the design of the master carpenter William Etheridge (1709–1776), 22 years after Newton died.
It was later repaired in 1866 due to decay and had to be completely rebuilt in 1905. The rebuild was to the same design except made from teak, and the stepped walkway was made sloped for increased wheelchair access. A handrail was added on one side to facilitate the Queen Mother crossing the bridge on her visits to the college. The ever-present boltheads are more visible in the post-1905 bridge which may have given rise to this failed reassembly myth.
See also Category:Alumni of Queens' College, Cambridge
Name | Birth Year | Death Year | Career |
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Desiderius Erasmus | 1466 | 1536 | Humanist and theologian |
John Frith | 1503 | 1533 | Heretic |
John Lambert | 1539 | Heretic | |
John Whitgift | 1530 | 1604 | Archbishop of Canterbury |
Thomas Digges | 1546 | 1595 | English astronomer |
John Hall | 1635 | Physician | |
John Goodwin | 1594 | 1665 | Preacher |
Thomas Horton | 1603 | 1649 | Soldier |
Charles Bridges | 1794 | 1869 | Preacher and theologian |
Thomas Hingston | 1799 | 1837 | Antiquarian |
Alexander Crummell | 1819 | 1898 | Priest |
Thomas Nettleship Staley | 1823 | 1898 | Bishop of Honolulu |
Frank Rutter | 1836 | 1937 | Art critic and curator |
Osborne Reynolds | 1842 | 1912 | Fluid dynamicist |
James Niven | 1851 | 1925 | Physician |
Charles Villiers Stanford | 1852 | 1924 | Composer |
Roland Penrose | 1900 | 1984 | Artist |
T. H. White | 1906 | 1964 | Writer |
Arthur Mooring | 1908 | 1969 | Knight of the British Empire |
Lesslie Newbigin | 1909 | 1998 | Bishop, Missiologist |
M. S. Bartlett | 1910 | 2002 | Statistician |
Cyril Bibby | 1914 | 1987 | Biologist |
Arnold W. G. Kean | 1914 | 2000 | Pioneer of civil aviation law |
Abba Eban | 1915 | 2002 | Israeli politician |
Peter Down | 1927 | Architect | |
Kenneth Wedderburn | 1927 | Labour life peer | |
Peter Redgrove | 1932 | 2003 | Poet |
David Hatch | 1939 | 2007 | Radio executive |
Tom Lowenstein | 1941 | Poet | |
Richard Dearlove | 1945 | Head of MI6 | |
Lord Eatwell | 1945 | British economist | |
Derek Lewis | 1946 | Chief Executive of the UK Prison Service | |
Stephen Lander | 1947 | Head of MI5 | |
Richard Hickox | 1948 | 2008 | Conductor |
John E. Baldwin | 1949 | Radio-astronomer | |
Graham Swift | 1949 | Author | |
Awn Shawkat Al-Khasawneh | 1950 | Prime Minister of Jordan | |
John McCallum | 1950 | Canadian politician | |
Charles Leslie Falconer, Baron Falconer of Thoroton | 1951 | Lord Chancellor | |
Nicholas Campion | 1953 | Cultural historian | |
Paul Greengrass | 1955 | Writer and film director | |
Michael Foale | 1957 | Astronaut | |
Stephen Fry | 1957 | Comedian, writer, actor, novelist | |
Philip D. Murphy | 1957 | Statistician and computing | |
John Sherrington | 1958 | Auxiliary Bishop-elect of Westminster | |
Andrew Bailey | 1959 | Executive Director and Chief Cashier of the Bank of England. | |
Peter Jukes | 1960 | Author and playwright | |
David Ruffley | 1962 | Member of Parliament | |
Tom Holland | 1968 | Author and historian | |
Emily Maitlis | 1970 | Newsreader and journalist | |
Liz Kendall | 1971 | Labour Party frontbench politician | |
Vuk Jeremić | 1975 | Serbian Minister of Foreign Affairs | |
Khalid Abdalla | 1980 | Actor | |
Mark Watson | 1980 | Comedian | |
Lindsay Ashford | Journalist and novelist, the first ever woman to graduate from Queens' College[3] | ||
Lucy Caldwell | 1981 | Novelist and playwright | |
Simon Bird | 1984 | Actor in E4 comedy series The Inbetweeners | |
Hannah Murray | 1989 | Actress in award-winning teenage series Skins |
Name | Dates | Notes |
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Andrew Dokett | 1448–1484 | |
Thomas Wilkynson | 1484–1505 | |
John Cardinal Fisher, Martyr and Saint | 1505–1508 | Catholic Bishop of Rochester; executed by Henry VIII for refusing to accept him as head of the Church of England in 1535, canonised in 1935. Namesake of the Fisher Building. |
Robert Bekensaw | 1508–1519 | |
John Jenyn | 1519–1525 | |
Thomas Farman | 1525–1527 | |
William Frankleyn | 1527–1529 | |
Simon Heynes | 1529–1537 | |
William May | 1537–1553, 1559–1560 | Theologian and dean of St Paul's Cathedral; his report saved the Cambridge colleges from dissolution under Henry VIII |
William Glyn | 1553–1557 | Also Bishop of Bangor |
Thomas Pecocke | 1557–1559 | |
John Stokes | 1560–1568 | Also Archdeacon of York |
William Chaderton | 1568–1579 | Later Bishop of Chester and Bishop of Lincoln |
Humphrey Tindall | 1579–1614 | |
John Davenant | 1614–1622 | Later Bishop of Salisbury |
John Mansell | 1622–1631 | |
Edward Martin | 1631–1644, 1660–1662 | Sent the college silver to King Charles I; imprisoned in the Tower of London by Oliver Cromwell; escaped, recaptured and released; restored to presidency under Charles II |
Herbert Palmer | 1644–1647 | Puritan and member of the Westminster Assembly; installed as President by Cromwell |
Thomas Horton | 1647–1660 | Theologian; removed by the restoration of the monarchy |
Anthony Sparrow | 1662–1667 | Later Bishop of Exeter and Bishop of Norwich |
William Wells | 1667–1675 | |
Henry James | 1675–1717 | |
John Davies | 1717–1732 | |
William Sedgwick | 1732–1760 | |
Robert Plumptre | 1760–1788 | |
Isaac Milner | 1788–1820 | |
Henry Godfrey | 1820–1832 | |
Joshua King | 1832–1857 | |
George Phillips | 1857–1892 | |
William Campion | 1892–1896 | |
Herbert Ryle | 1896–1901 | Later Bishop of Exeter, Bishop of Winchester and Dean of Westminster |
Frederic Henry Chase | 1901–1906 | Later Bishop of Ely |
Thomas Fitzpatrick | 1906–1931 | Namesake of the Fitzpatrick Hall in Cripps Court |
John Archibald Venn | Son of the logician John Venn | 1932–1958 |
Arthur Armitage | 1958–1970 | Namesake of the Armitage Room above the Fitzpatrick Hall |
Sir Derek Bowett | 1970–1982 | International lawyer |
Ernest Oxburgh | 1982–1988 | |
Sir John Polkinghorne | 1988–1996 | KBE; FRS; physicist and theologian; extensive writer on science-faith relations; Templeton Prize 2002; member of General Synod |
Lord John Leonard Eatwell | 1997 – | Baron Eatwell; member of the House of Lords; previously chief economic adviser to Neil Kinnock and chairman of the British Library; Opposition Spokesman for the Treasury in the House of Lords. |
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