Hockley Heights Gazette

What a beautiful place! It would be a wonderful life to be a student in Cambridge which is steeped in such history and tradition. On a punt down the Cam we were regaled with stories of rivalry between the Colleges, the architecture and of students past. Rivalry is rife between St John's College (used in the Harry Potter movies), and which was built by Henry VIII's mother and was at its time the most affluent of the Cambridge College's, and that of Trinity which was built by Henry VIII and became the biggest and most affluent College. There was a race between the Colleges to build the first clock tower....Trinity succeeded and by applying an ancient by-law which restricted the distance between clock towers ensured that St John could never have a working clock, so St John's have a tower with the circle face for the clock but no clock. Trinity from that day forward chime the bells twice, once to tell the time and once to remind St John's of their non-working clock tower.

Maudsley College only admitted female students in 1998, and the senior students wore black arm bands for 12 months to protest!!!

Prince Charles studied at Trinity College and before arrival at Cambridge asked to have the same conditions as the other students. Upon his arrival however he asked to have the entire 2 top floors of Trinity College to himself and his staff!!!! Prior to Charles taking his final exams, his closest security guard also asked to sit the exams as he had attended all the lectures and tutorials in the course of his duty...needless to say the security guard out scored the prince.....no surprises there!

Cambridge was established after the building of the bridge over the river Cam in the 8th century and the settlement that was founded from market trading from surrounding areas and travellers.

Cambridge punters stand at the back of the vessels whereas Oxford punters stand at the front, just because!

The mathematicians bridge is rumoured to have been built by Sir Isaac Newton but the fact is that it was built after his death. The bridge was built according to specific angles that put all of the stresses onto the cement blocks at either end, unfortunately the bridge has fallen down 3 times to date. I did have a couple of pints in the Isaac Newton pub across the road from Fitzwilliam College where I was staying though, and they were fine.

We noticed that there were several windows that were bricked over. This came about because there was a window tax introduced by the government in the 17th century and bricking up the windows was a legitimate way of not having to pay the tax, hence the expression 'daylight robbery'.

The bridge to Clare's College has a segment missing from one of the decorative balls at the top of the bridge. Rumour has it that the architect was not paid his full fee, so took the segment from the ball as recompense for his services.

Needless to say I could write a 3 book treatise on the history of Cambridge....so I will end here and as I didn't have a tour through King's College of Cambridge I think the Peck family may head up there for a weekend to check out so much more of the delightful Cambridge..........Cheers Kym