JK'ing Around in Europe: Cambridge

So I thought it was time for me to go back to the place where I was born and raised... if not in actuality, at least in name.

We realized we had not visited any of the great campuses of the UK, Cambridge or Oxford. While Loughborough is great, it's got a couple hundred years to work on to reach that level.

So we found a nice sunny day and headed off to the south and east towards the River Cam.

We started our day off with a punt tour up the 'backs of the colleges'. This is a guided tour along the river, through about 8 of the different colleges of Cambridge University.

This is the bay where our punt tour started. It's a very quiet day. Imagine when it's busy.

Some of our punts lined up ready to go

This is what a self-hire looks like. No witty commentary, no fascinating history, and a lot of not going in the direction you thought you were going to.

More 'wrong-direction' boating. Maybe the next time we'll try it, but we were happy to sit back and relax for our first experience.

Cambridge University is based on a college system, similar to Trent University, some parts of University of Toronto, and Hogwarts. Each student is set into a college (house) in their first year. This is where you will have your dorm, your study spaces, some libraries, and dining halls, while the classes you take will be across the entire university. Similar to Harvard, many of the students live in the dorm halls for all 3 or 4 years of their undergraduate and masters program.
Like the houses of Hogwarts, there is a great deal of competition between the colleges. Many more stories throughout the tour. Hold on for it.

Before we get there, the origin story of Cambridge (as told by our punting guide Noah, who admitted many of his stories were at least partially true, and only some of them entirely fictional). The original founding of Cambridge University was by a few (former) students of Oxford. One of which was charged with a crime (theft or murder, my brain is fuzzy). Rather than face the punishment in Oxford, they travelled to Cambridge, and set up a new university to continue their studies. This was 807 years ago in 1209.

Today, it ranks 3rd in the world (while Oxford sits at 6th).

We started off our punt tour at the Wooden Bridge, more commonly known as the mathematical bridge. <Warning: Engineering Nerd Alert - skip ahead if discussion of moments, tangents, and loads makes you comatose>. The bridge has much folklore surrounding it, two of the most commonly stated tales being that it was designed by Newton (he died nearly 20 years before it was conceived), and that it was originally constructed without the use of any nails, bolts, rivets or fasteners.

Mathematical Bridge! - And NOAH! Our fearless guide.

From the bridge above the river

Unfortunately both are untrue, but it is a remarkable bridge. The bridge is formed of entirely straight pieces of wood, which form tangents to create the arch. The tangents are fastened to radial pieces running along the outside frame. The interesting part of the design is that all the tension members are entirely in tension, and all the compression members are entirely in compression. If there were not lateral forces on the bridge, it would be possible to construct it without the fasteners. Sadly, that is a caveat which would get you sued pretty quickly just about anywhere.

Sorry, but we did build it!

The nature of the Newton tale is due to it's symmetrical and geometric design. The use of tangents suggest a deep understanding of calculus and derivatives. The belief it was built without fasteners, is because the iron spikes in the original design were driven in from the outside, making them invisible to pedestrians on the bridge.

This false colour image shows each of the tangential members of the bridge. Engineering is awesome! :)

Ok, so back to old things and school rivals.

Among the biggest rivals that we heard about is the one between Trinity College, and St. Johns. Our punteer? puntier? punter? the guy pushing us along, said that St. Johns is kinda like Slytherin, the least liked of the colleges. It doesn't help that it and Trinity are directly across the river from each other. To show their superiority, St. Johns built a new, massive main hall for their college, which faces directly at Trinity.

Another shot of Noah in full work mode.

This is St. John's main (almost symmetrical) building.

What you might notice, is that the hall is completely symmetrical. You might also notice, that while the tower has a clock face cutout, it has no clock. Two stories surround this. The first is that the architect refused to put a clock on the tower, as it would ruin the symmetry. The second is that the budget for the building has gone so over-board, that the clock was left off originally, to save some money, with the intention of adding it later.

Unfortunately, foes are able to be crafty. Seeing that St. John's delayed installing their clock, and knowing there to be a bylaw in Cambridge dictating a minimum distance between two chiming clocks, Trinity college quickly built their own clock, added a few bells, and rendered the efforts of St. Johns forever in vain. Well that's one way to screw your neighbour.

Sorry that the photos don't always show the whole building. We took many of these from the punt, which you can imagine, is low in the water. We were not able to go onto the campus at all because it's closed right now for the students to have some peace while they review for their exams that happen over the next few weeks.

The nightcrawlers of Cambridge were a group of ne'er-do-wells, who took particular interest in climbing the outside of tall buildings, and generally causing trouble by putting unwanted things on top of them. One of their most famous pranks involved stealing the headmaster's car, disassembling it, lifting it up to the roof of one of the college buildings, and reassembling it.
While that may be one of their more glorious pranks, I like the following one better. One year, 2 weeks before christmas, the nightcrawlers scaled the left tower of Kings Chapel, and placed a traffic cone on top of the tower.

Not from the river, but you can see how tall the spires of the church are!

From the other side (on the river). This photo doesn't show the immense doorway below the main window we see here.

The university, not wanting to leave the cone there over the christmas liturgical season, and holidays, hired a scaffolding company, and paid them a very large sum to erect a scaffolding up to the peak of the tower and remove the traffic cone. After several days of building the scaffolding, and nearly reaching the top, the workers left for the day. The next morning when the workers returned to finish the work, they found the traffic cone removed from the left tower, and placed on the right one. Today there are angry spikey bits attached to the tower to prevent anyone from climbing up them and repeating the prank.

And on this you can see the spikey bits. They ring around the tower between the two sets of windows .

So about Kings Chapel. It is the second largest chapel in Europe, only beaten in size by the Sistine Chapel in The Vatican. While not the official church of Cambridge University (that's Great St. Mary's, coming in the next post), it is one of the central symbols of Cambridge University.
Construction began in 1446 with the first stone laid by King Henry VI, and took almost 70 years to complete (the stained glass another 15 years).

During the second world war, it was realized that, should a bomb hit the chapel, the 500 year old stained glass would be destroyed, so a plan was hatched to remove the stained glass for the duration of the war. Taking apart 500 year old stained glass is apparently a time consuming process, as it didn't finish before the war did. Putting back together 500 year old stained glass is an even longer process, and isn't sped up at all when the cases are mixed up. Apparently (according to Noah), 4 years were spent removing the glass, and 12 were spent putting it back in place. It is known that some errors were made in the process, and they can be spotted if you know where to look.

We did go into Kings Chapel for evensong, a mass service which includes a major portion being sung, in this case by the Kings College Choir. The acoustics in the chapel were incredible, and the choir absolutely spot on. Unfortunately there are no recordings (or even photographs) during evensong, so we have little from that part of the trip.

Not all of the buildings on campus are gorgeous works of art, some are also just plain ugly. There is a section of the campus where buildings and expansion took place, unfortunately, during the 1960's and 1970's. Any of our friends from Western, think University College and Physics and Astronomy contrasted with Social Science. It was opened by Prince Charles, who reportedly stated that it was among the ugliest buildings he has ever seen, including residence halls, and car parks.
The real problem with this is, one of these buildings was designated a Class 2 heritage building, and so is protected from being torn down.

I think, for the first time in my life, I agree with Prince Charles' wisdom.

Ok, one more story from the punt tour / Cambridge University, and then we'll do the rest of Cambridge in another blog post.

If you read our blog post from Venice you might remember the Bridge of Sighs, located just off of Saint Mark's Square, and leads from the courthouse to the jail, so would represent the last sliver of daylight the condemned prisoners would see. Cambridge has it's own bridge, in the same style, and also called the Bridge of Sighs.

Queen: Don't you think it looks like the Bridge of Sighs in Venice? Everyone for evermore: Yes! Absolutely I do!

But if you look closely, it doesn't really look all that similar, in-fact it's pretty well completely different except that it's a covered bridge and approximately grey. It is rumored that Queen Victoria saw the bridge, remarked how much it looked like the one in Venice, and so it was named, because, as we've learned through much of British history, when a monarch says Yes, you don't say no. To embrace the naming, Cambridge students comment how, like the bridge in Venice, this one leads students from their dorm rooms and dinner hall, as condemned individuals, right to the exam halls.

The last of the photos for this post are just some more of the old buildings from campus. Such a picturesque university.

The door on the waterline was where punts would bring supplies and unload for the residence.

The main bridge over the River Cam. Re-constructed in the last 50 years to accommodate double-decker buses, but still retaining some of the style of the old structure.