The Little Book of Cambridgeshire E-Book

Caroline Clifford

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 270

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

The Little Book of Cambridgeshire is a compendium full of information which will make you say, 'I never knew that!' Contained within is a plethora of entertaining stories about the county and its famous - and occasionally infamous - men and women, its literary, artistic and sporting achievements, its customs and traditions, its transport and leisure, and a few ghostly appearances. Compiled by two knowledgeable local historians, this is a reliable reference book and a quirky guide, this can be dipped in to time and time again to reveal something new about the people, the heritage, the secrets and the enduring fascination of the county.

Leseprobe

First published 2018

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Caroline Clifford & Alan Akeroyd, 2018

The right of Caroline Clifford & Alan Akeroyd to be identified as the Authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 9015 8

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed in Great Britain

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

CONTENTS

Introduction

1   50 Things You May Not Know About Cambridgeshire

2   The University of Cambridge

3   Saints and Sinners

4   The Cambridgeshire Fens

5   Festivals and Fairs

6   Up and Away: Flying in Cambridgeshire

7   Royal Cambridgeshire

8   Disasters

9   Bricks and Mortar: The Buildings of Cambridgeshire

10   Road and Rail

11   Buried Treasure

12   Fictional Cambridgeshire

13   Cambridgeshire Who’s Who

14   On This Day

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Modern Cambridgeshire is in fact three counties: the historic county of Cambridgeshire, which is just the area around Cambridge; the Isle of Ely to its north; and Huntingdonshire to the west. From 1974 to 1998 the county also included the Peterborough area, which has switched between Northamptonshire, Huntingdonshire and Cambridgeshire from time to time and, although still part of the ceremonial county of Cambridgeshire, is now a unitary authority in its own right. Peterborough is the largest city in the ceremonial county.

The City of Cambridge is known mainly for its University, one of the most famous in the world. The University has had a huge impact on Cambridgeshire and has attracted many of the world’s leading minds. But there is more to Cambridgeshire than the academics. The only commoner ever to be offered the British Crown was born here, along with many other leading figures, as we shall see in later chapters.

Cambridgeshire is the fifteenth largest county in England by area, covering 1,309 square miles (3,389 square kilometres) and is 27th out of 48 by population. The estimated population in 2016 (the latest figure available at the time of writing) was 849,035. It is one of the fastest growing areas in the country.

The former counties of the Isle of Ely and Huntingdonshire are the flattest districts in England. The highest point in the Isle is at Haddenham, just 39m above sea level. Huntingdonshire’s highest point is 80m above sea level at Boring Field near Covington. The highest point in Cambridgeshire, at 146m above sea level, is near Great Chishill on the Essex border. Huntingdonshire also has the distinction of having the lowest point in the UK, Holme Fen, at almost 3m below sea level (and still sinking!). The Fens occupy the northern part of the modern county and are completely different from the rest of the county, as you will discover when you read this book.

Read on to find out more about this unique county – or counties.

1

50 THINGS YOU MAY NOT KNOW ABOUT CAMBRIDGESHIRE

1.   The only person to have assassinated a British Prime Minister, John Bellingham, was born in St Neots (he shot Spencer Percival in the lobby of the Palace of Westminster in May 1812).

2.   Diarist John Evelyn described Cambridge as a ‘low, dirty and unpleasant place, the street ill paved, the air thick and infected by fens’.

3.   The Prime Meridian runs through fifteen different parishes in Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire, from Coates in the north to Melbourn in the south.

4.   The 44th President of the United States Barack Obama’s grandmother is buried in Stapleford.

5.   Marshall Aerospace in Cambridge built the droop nose for Concorde.

6.   Parker’s Piece in Cambridge is the birthplace of football.

7.   There was a pet cemetery at Molesworth between 1909 and the 1950s. Over 800 burials of pets, mainly from London, took place there.

8.   The chimes of Big Ben were copied from the original Cambridge chimes of the University Church of Great St Mary in 1793.

9.   Cambridge did not become a city until 1951. It is one of only a few cities in the UK without a cathedral.

10. Barrington has the longest village green in England – half a mile long and covering 30 acres.

11. The first President of the United States George Washington’s great-uncle Godfrey Washington was vicar of Little St Mary’s in Cambridge. His coat of arms forms the basis of the stars and stripes flag.

12. The MG Owners Club has its UK headquarters at Swavesey.

13. The Cambridgeshire Guided Busway is the longest in the world.

14. The World Pea Shooting Championships have been held at Witcham since 1971. They were originally held to raise funds for the village hall.

15. There was a POW camp at Norman Cross for soldiers captured during the Napoleonic Wars. It was designed on principles that have since become standard across the world. By April 1810 there were 6,272 prisoners there. It was the second such prison; one had previously been set up in Gloucestershire for prisoners from the American War of Independence.

16. The area of market gardens near Christ’s Pieces, Cambridge, was called the Garden of Eden – recognised now by street names Eden, Adam, Eve and Paradise streets. The whole area is known as ‘the Kite’ because of its shape.

17. Parker of Parker’s Piece in Cambridge was a college cook who leased the land from Trinity College when it was exchanged by the college for land off Garret Hostel Lane which became part of the college.

18. Airman Homer, based with the 358th Bomber Squadron at Molesworth, was reportedly awarded the Air Medal for participating in five combat missions. Why was this unusual? He was a dog!

19. The Grafton Centre was named after Augustus Fitzroy, Duke of Grafton, Vice Chancellor of the University at the time when the area was first built on in the seventeenth century.

20. Portholme is the largest meadow in Europe, according to Arthur Mee in his King’s England series. These days it is divided by the railway cutting through it. The fact that it regularly floods makes it good for growing grass (a meadow is an area that is cut for hay).

21. The first car based in Cambridge is believed to have been a Peugeot Phaeton belonging to student Charles Rolls, who later went on to found the company Rolls-Royce with Henry Royce from Alwalton.

22. The first ever Village College, providing all sorts of education from the cradle to the grave, was set up at Sawston.

23. The discoveries at Must Farm near Whittlesey have been described as ‘the Bronze Age Pompeii’.

24. During the First World War Huntingdonshire had a Cyclist Battalion.

25. The first set of quads to survive in Britain were born in St Neots. Ann, Ernest, Paul and Michael Miles (the St Neots Quads) were born in November 1935. They caused a sensation and people were charged a shilling to look at them in their nursery through the window of their council house in Eynesbury. Lucrative endorsements and sponsorship enabled the family to move from Eynesbury to St Neots. They made guest appearances at functions and were presented to the Duchess of Gloucester at Hinchingbrooke during the Second World War. Their latest appearance together was at St Neots Museum to celebrate their 80th birthdays in 2015.

26. Cambridge’s famous Bumps Rowing races are held because the river is too narrow for proper racing.

27. The King Edward potato was developed and named by a Ramsey farmer, Jabez Papworth.

28. Oliver Cromwell’s head is buried in Cambridge. Three years after Cromwell’s death in 1658, Charles II ordered the dead body to be exhumed and then hanged, drawn and quartered. Cromwell’s head was then skewered on a spike at Westminster. For several centuries the head travelled widely, being bought and sold by various entrepreneurs and showmen wishing to profit from displaying it. In 1841, Cromwell’s head was bought by a Mr Josiah Wilkinson. In 1960, the Wilkinson family wished to arrange a proper burial, so contacted Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge, where Cromwell had once briefly studied. After some debate the college decided to bury the head in a secret location. A plaque close to the burial site commemorates the curious interment on 25 March 1960 somewhere within the ante-chapel at the college. The precise spot was left unmarked. Cromwell’s well-travelled head could finally rest in peace.

29. During the Second World War, Queen Marie of Yugoslavia lived in Great Gransden.

30. The term ‘wooden spoon’ is derived from the one that was awarded to the person with the lowest mark in the Cambridge University mathematics tripos. It was last awarded in 1909.

31. At one time, there were two shopkeepers in King’s Parade Cambridge named Greef and Sadd. Mr Death lived nearby in King Street. H.E. Greef was a plumber, glazier and decorator as wells as captain of the voluntary fire brigade, Alfred Saad was a numismatist and antiquary, and John Death, who lived at Poplar House, was a Justice of the Peace. They all appear in the 1891 street directory.

32. Huntingdon’s Thinking Soldier First World War Memorial was sculpted by Kathleen Scott, widow of Scott of the Antarctic.

33. Cambridge has a statue to a road sweeper in the Market Square. Snowy Farr used to carry live animals around on his cart and raised large amounts of money for the Guide Dogs for the Blind charity.

34. Chippenham was Britain’s first Estate Village, set up by Edward Russell, Lord Orford (who also travelled around the Fens in a sailing boat).

35. Isiah Deck, a pharmaceutical chemist in Cambridge in the early 1800s, used to set off large rockets outside King’s College each New Year’s Eve. In 1838 he was put in charge of the fireworks committee for Queen Victoria’s coronation feast.

36. China’s most famous poet, Xu Zhimo, has a memorial in King’s College inscribed with two verses of his poem ‘A Second Farewell to Cambridge’ (in Chinese).

37. An early electric lamp post on Parker’s Piece in Cambridge has been named ‘Reality Checkpoint’ as it is thought to be the point where student Cambridge ends and real life begins.

38. Number 7A Jesus Lane in Cambridge (now Pizza Express) was once a Turkish Bath House.

39. The barrows at Bartlow Hills in Cambridgeshire are the largest surviving Roman burial mounds in Western Europe.

40. In the second half of the nineteenth century there was a lucrative industry in the Cambridgeshire fens, mainly around Burwell and Wicken, digging coprolite. Coprolite means ‘dung stone’ from the Greek. These fossilised remains were dug up and used as fertiliser. Most of what was found was actually dinosaur fossils rather than dung.

41. St Ives Bridge is one of only four in the country to incorporate a chapel. Between 1736 and 1930 it had two extra storeys.

42. Hilton village has one of only eight surviving ancient turf mazes in England. It was cut in 1660.

43. What is thought to be the oldest set of Christian church plate in the world was discovered at Water Newton.

44. In the early 1970s a hover train was tested on a specially built track between Earith and Sutton Gault.

45. Olaudah Equiano, a former slave kidnapped from Nigeria when he was 10 years old and later known as Gustavus Vassa, married Susanna Cullen from Soham in 1792.

46. The Gog Magog Hills are named after two giants from the Book of Revelations and got their name due to a large phallic figure once cut into the turf there.

47. In 1970 there was a student riot in Cambridge. The ‘Garden House Riot’ was against the fascist government in Greece and resulted in eight students being sentenced to imprisonment. The event was a turning point in student protests in Britain.

48. Queen Catherine of Aragon, first wife of Henry VIII, is buried in Peterborough Cathedral.

49. Holme Fen is the lowest point in Britain, 9ft below sea level.

50. More than 12,000 people sat down to dine on Parker’s Piece to celebrate Queen Victoria’s coronation in 1838.

2

THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

Along with its great rival, Oxford, Cambridge is probably the most famous university in the world. The University recently celebrated its 800th anniversary (in 2009); it has dominated the town and later City of Cambridge for all that time. The University could merit several books on its own – we are recording here just a few items we think are of interest.

The University has around 18,000 full-time students (2016/17 figure), which is actually quite small compared with the more than 40,000 students at Manchester and 32,000 at Leeds. There are around 11,500 staff. 62 per cent of the students are undergraduates and 38 per cent postgraduate. The male/female ratio is 54 per cent male and 46 per cent female.

The University is made up of thirty-one individual colleges. Peterhouse is the oldest college, founded in 1284; Clare is the second oldest, founded in 1326. Seven colleges have been founded since 1950. The newest is Robinson College, founded in 1977, although Homerton College is the last institution to have achieved full college status (2010). Before that it was a teacher training college.

The most famous area of rivalry between the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford is the annual Boat Race, held on a 4-mile course between Putney and Mortlake on the River Thames. The first men’s race was held in 1829 and it became an annual fixture in 1856. Cambridge has eighty-three wins in the men’s race to Oxford’s eighty. In 1927 the first women’s race was held and this too became an annual event from 1964. Cambridge have won the women’s race forty-three times to Oxford’s thirty. Since 2015 the two races have been held on the same day.

To celebrate its 600th anniversary in 1884, Peterhouse College became the second place in England to use electricity (after the Houses of Parliament). Peterhouse is the smallest of the colleges.

Peterhouse has a history of multiple exorcisms. In 1997 ghost sightings at the college made national news. The apparition was identified as Francis Dawes, a former bursar, who had committed suicide in 1789 after the election of an unpopular master. An exorcism was said to have been carried out in 1999. Two previous exorcisms had already been carried out in the college. In the eighteenth century a poltergeist was removed from a student’s room and a former dean carried out a ceremony because of the appearance of a dark presence in a corner of the old courtyard, overlooking the graveyard.

Corpus Christi College is the only college at either Oxford or Cambridge to be founded by the citizens of the town rather than by wealthy patrons.

Darwin College was built on land owned by the Darwin family. It accepts graduates only.

Trinity College, founded by Henry VIII, is the largest and wealthiest of the colleges. The statue of the king on the Great Gate was tampered with in the late 1800s: Henry’s sceptre was removed from his hand and replaced with a chair leg.

King’s College was founded by Henry VI in 1441 as a college to take students from his other foundation, Eton College. The foundation stone of the chapel was laid in 1446, but its construction was delayed by the Wars of the Roses and the chapel was finally ready for use in the reign of Henry VIII, nearly a century after it was begun. King’s College Chapel receives around 230,000 visitors each year. Its Christmas service, the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, was first broadcast in 1928 and is now televised around the world.

The windows of King’s College Chapel, unlike windows in other colleges, miraculously survived the destruction wrought by Puritan iconoclasts in the English Civil War. During the Second World War, however, the glass was removed from the windows and stored in cellars around Cambridge. They were replaced by grey tar-paper, with a few strips of plain glass at the bottom to let in some light.

The ‘Cambridge Rules’, drawn up in 1848, are the basis of the modern rules for football used by the English FA.

The youngest ever student was William Wooten, aged 9 (1675).

Three signatories of the American Declaration of Independence attended Cambridge University: Carolina Representatives Thomas Lynch Jr (Caius) and Arthur Middleton (Trinity Hall), and Virginia delegate Thomas Nelson Jr (Christ’s).

The Queen Mother (Queen Elizabeth at the time) was the first woman to be awarded a degree in Senate House in 1948.

The infamous Soviet spies Donald Maclean (Trinity Hall), Guy Burgess, Kim Philby and Anthony Blunt (all Trinity) (the latter was only exposed as a spy in 1979), were known as ‘the Cambridge Spies’ because that is where they were recruited.

The Cambridge ‘Footlights’ Amateur Dramatic Club is where numerous famous performers including Emma Thompson, Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry and David Mitchell started their careers. Performances are regularly staged at the ADC Theatre.

The debating chamber of the Cambridge Union was used by Field Marshall Montgomery to plan the D-Day landings in Normandy in the Second World War.

It is at Trinity College that the Great Court Run is attempted, a feat made famous in the 1981 film Chariots of Fire. In 1927 David Cecil, Lord Burghley, became the first and only person to officially run around the court whilst the college clock struck noon, a distance of 370m, in 43 seconds. He went on to win gold in the 400m hurdles at the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam. The race was recreated for charity in 1988. Sebastian Coe and Steve Cram attempted the feat, but neither beat the clock (Coe won in 46 seconds). In 2007 a second-year economics undergraduate, Sam Dobin, completed the run as the chimes stopped, but ran on the cobbles rather than the path, which makes the run easier (and slightly shorter), so it didn’t officially count.

In addition to the great University Library, one of the UK’s five copyright libraries entitled to receive a copy of every book published in the country, Cambridge University has two other famous libraries. One is the Wren Library at Trinity College, which was designed by Sir Christopher Wren. Wren was the nephew of Bishop Matthew Wren of Ely. The Bishop had been imprisoned for eighteen years during the Civil War and when he was released he invited his nephew to design and build a new chapel at Pembroke College. This was Christopher’s first major project. Five years later he designed a chapel for Emmanuel College, but of course he is much better known as the architect who designed St Paul’s Cathedral in London.

The University Library contains many treasures, including the first edition of Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica, with handwritten notes for the second edition, and an eighth-century copy of the epistles of St Paul as well as first editions of Shelley, Wordsworth, Byron and Tennyson. Rare handwritten manuscripts and notebooks are also to be found in the collection, including the manuscript version of A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh and notes on the nuclear test programme by Robert Oppenheimer. Many of its treasures are now being digitised.

The other famous library is the Pepys Library at Magdalene College, bequeathed to his old college by the diarist Samuel Pepys. The library is made up of 3,000 volumes and attracts tourists and scholars from across the world.

The University has more than 100 libraries in total.

Cambridge University has the most Nobel laureates of any institution – ninety-eight since 1904 (at the time of writing). Affiliates of the University have won Nobel Prizes in every category: thirty-two in Physics, twenty-six in Medicine, twenty-four in Chemistry, eleven in Economics, three in Literature and two in Peace. Trinity alone has had thirty-two Nobel Prize winners. Frederick Sanger, from St John’s and Fellow of King’s, is one of only four individuals to have been awarded a Nobel Prize twice. He received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1958 and 1980.

In 1857 graduates of the University petitioned the Cambridge University Commissioners to remove the condition of compulsory celibacy from the appointment to ‘Fellow’ of the University. Tenure of a Fellowship meant that marriage was out of the question.

The aim of the Cambridge night climbers is to leave their mark on the roofs of the college buildings. The earliest known night climber was Peter Gunning of Ely, who left an inscription on a lead slab on the roof of St John’s in 1734. Lord Byron was reputedly the first to climb the Trinity Great Court fountain and scale the Wren Library. Night climbing became so popular at the end of the nineteenth century that The Roof-Climbers’ Guide to Trinity was published in 1900 as a May Week joke. A guide to climbing St John’s was published in 1921. In 1949 a bicycle was placed on a weathervane on the School of Geography in Downing Place. Many small objects have been placed on the spires of King’s College Chapel, including four Santa hats on the four spires in 2009. It cost the college several thousand pounds to have them removed.

On 7 June 1958 engineering students from Gonville and Caius College hoisted an Austin 7 car onto the roof of the Senate House. It was a remarkable achievement and it took the authorities several days and a large crane to get it down again.

Magdalene College was the last all-male college in Oxford or Cambridge. Women were finally admitted in 1988. There are, however, still three all-female colleges: Lucy Cavendish (for mature students), Murray Edwards College and Newnham College. The first mixed college was Darwin, which was founded as a mixed college in 1964. Churchill, King’s and Clare were the first all-male colleges to admit women, in 1972. The first all-female college to admit men was Hughes Hall, in 1973.

Queens’ College doesn’t have an apostrophe between the n and s in its name because it was founded by two queens, Margaret of Anjou, wife of Henry VI, and Elizabeth Woodville, wife of Edward IV; this was probably the only thing the two women agreed on as their husbands fought against one another in the Wars of the Roses.

Theodore Roosevelt, twice President of the USA, was awarded an honorary degree from Oxford and Cambridge Universities in 1910.

In 1890, Philippa Fawcett scored the highest mark in the Cambridge University maths exam, a subject widely considered to be only suitable for men. This raised some awkward questions as, at the time, Cambridge did not allow women to be awarded degrees. Her success attracted widespread newspaper coverage and helped to silence the popular belief that the female brain was illogical and, consequently, women should be denied the vote.

Cambridge University Press (CUP) is the oldest continuously functioning publishing house in the world. It was founded with a licence from Henry VIII in 1534. The printer, Thomas Thomas, had premises on what is now Senate House Lawn. The Press has printed many major works over the years, including John Milton’s Lycidas, Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica (1713 edition), Ernest Rutherford’s Radio-activity, and Noam Chomsky’s Language and Mind.

CUP is also the oldest Bible publisher in the world. The first Cambridge Bible, a ‘Geneva Bible’, was printed in 1591. The Press still prints the Church of England Authorised Bible and Book of Common Prayer.

Cambridge University bookshop, on the corner of Market Street and Trinity Street, has been a bookshop since at least 1581. This is the longest time a single business has occupied a shop in the world. It has been known as the Cambridge University Press bookshop for twenty-five years. The premises are said to be haunted by the ghosts of a White Lady or girl with long blonde hair, accompanied by the scent of violets, and a man in Victorian evening dress.

Cambridge ‘May Week’ is in June. May Week sees a series of balls and parties at the colleges and may originally have been held before the exams as a means of relaxation to improve performance – this was soon found to not be the case!

The head of Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector, was rescued from a pike on the top of Westminster Hall and spent many years in private hands. In 1960 it was buried somewhere in Sidney Sussex College – it is said that no one knows exactly where. A plaque in the chapel records that it is there somewhere.

Cambridge University opened the first University Training School for primary-age children in 2015 as part of their North West Cambridge development (Eddington).

FAMOUS STUDENTS ANDMEMBERS OF THE UNIVERSITY

There are obviously far too many to list them all, so here is just a selection.

SCIENCE AND MATHS

Isaac Newton (Trinity), mathematician and astronomer, who is considered one of the most influential scientists of all time. He discovered gravity, the laws of motion and calculus.

James Clerk Maxwell’s (Trinity) research into electromagnetic radiation would lead to the development of television, mobile phones and infra-red telescopes. The largest astronomical telescope in the world in Hawaii is named after him. He was also involved in the setting up of the Cavendish Laboratory and became the first Cavendish Professor of Physics. Others who worked at the Cavendish include Joseph John Thompson (Trinity), the physicist who discovered the electron and the first sub-atomic particle, and his student Ernest Rutherford (also Trinity), known as the father of nuclear physics and chemistry.

Francis Crick (Gonville and Caius), James Watson (Clare) and Rosalind Franklin (Newnham) discovered the structure of DNA.

Stephen Hawking (Gonville and Caius) was the former Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, author of The Brief History of Time and subject of the film The Theory of Everything.

Charles Babbage (Peterhouse) mathematician, codebreaker and pioneer of computing.

Alan Turing (King’s), the Bletchley Park codebreaker. Other codebreakers associated with Cambridge are Dilly Cox (King’s), John Jeffreys (Downing), Gordon Welchman (Fellow of Sidney Sussex) and Max Newman of St John’s. Other inventors include Frank Whittle (Peterhouse), the inventor of the jet engine, and Christopher Cockerell (Peterhouse), who developed the hovercraft.

The field of natural history includes the man who proposed the theory of evolution by natural selection, Charles Darwin (Christ’s), American zoologist Dian Fossey (Churchill), best known for her work with gorillas in Rwanda, and TV presenter and naturalist David Attenborough (Clare).

World-famous economist John Maynard Keynes (King’s) was born and studied in Cambridge. The philosopher, statesman and scientist Francis Bacon went to Trinity College at the age of 12. It was there that he first met Queen Elizabeth I.

POETS AND WRITERS

The vast array of authors who have studied at Cambridge include Sylvia Plath (Newnham), John Milton (Christ’s), Christopher Marlowe (Corpus Christi), Rupert Brooke (King’s), Siegfried Sassoon (Clare), Ted Hughes (Pembroke), Andrew Marvell (Trinity), Lord Byron (Trinity), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Jesus), John Dryden (Trinity), Allama Muhammad Iqbal (Trinity), Alfred, Lord Tennyson (Trinity), A.A. Milne (Trinity), Salman Rushdie (King’s), C.S. Lewis (Magdalene), Douglas Adams (St John’s), Zadie Smith (King’s), J.B. Priestley (Trinity Hall) and Germaine Greer (Murray Edwards). The illustrator Quentin Blake studied at Downing College.

ACTORS AND TV STARS

Actors who studied at Cambridge include Sir Ian McKellan (St Catharine’s), Hugh Bonneville (Corpus Christi), Dan Stevens (Emmanuel), Tom Hiddleston (Pembroke), Derek Jacobi (St John’s), Tom Hollander (Selwyn), Eddie Redmayne (Trinity) and James Norton (Magdalene), Emma Thompson (Newnham), Cherie Lunghi (Homerton), Tilda Swinton (Murray Edwards) and Rachel Weisz (Trinity Hall). Film producer Sam Mendes studied at Peterhouse and director, scriptwriter and playwright Stephen Poliakoff studied at King’s.

Comedians/actors/presenters include Stephen Fry (Queens’) and Hugh Laurie (Selwyn), John Cleese (Downing) and fellow Monty Python members Eric Idle and Graham Chapman. The ‘Goodies’ all studied at Cambridge: Tim Brooke Taylor, Bill Oddie (both Pembroke) and Graeme Garden (Emmanuel). Others include Sandi Toksvig (Girton and Homerton), Griff Rhys Jones (Emmanuel), Jimmy Carr (Gonville and Caius), David Baddiel (King’s), David Mitchell (Peterhouse), Ben Miller (St Catharine’s), and Hugh Dennis (St John’s).

Sacha Baron Cohen, the creator of Ali G and Borat, studied at Christ’s and his cousin Simon Baron Cohen is a Fellow of Trinity College, Professor of Developmental Psychopathology and Directory of the University’s Autism Research Centre.

Other TV favourites from Cambridge include Sue Perkins (Murray Edwards) and Mel Giedroyc (Trinity), comedians who became stars of the BBC’s The Great British Bake-Off, Clive Anderson (Selwyn), Blue Peter presenter Konnie Huq (Robinson), Countdown maths expert Carol Vorderman (Sidney Sussex), historian Simon Schama (Christ’s), former Newsnight presenter who now presents the quiz show University ChallengeJeremy Paxman (St Catharine’s), TV host David Frost (Gonville and Caius), Loyd Grossman (Magdalene), radio presenter Vanessa Feltz (Trinity), news reporter John Simpson (Magdalene) and political presenter Andrew Marr (Trinity Hall).

POLITICS

British politicians who studied at Cambridge include our first Prime Minister Robert Walpole (King’s) and William Pitt the Younger (Pembroke), our youngest ever Prime Minister at 24. Other Cambridge alumni who led the country are Viscount Palmerston (St John’s), Arthur Balfour, Stanley Baldwin, Henry Campbell Bannerman, Viscount Melbourne and Earl Grey, all of Trinity College. William Wilberforce (St John’s), the anti-slavery campaigner, became a lifelong friend of William Pitt at Cambridge.

More recent political figures include Nick Clegg (Robinson), Diane Abbott (Newnham), Vince Cable (Fitzwilliam), David Owen (Sidney Sussex), Michael Portillo (Peterhouse), Andy Burnham (Fitzwilliam) and Alistair Campbell (Gonville and Caius).

Many foreign leaders have also studied at Cambridge, including the first Prime Minister of an independent India, Jawaharlal Nehru (Trinity) and his grandson, also Prime Minister of India, Rajiv Ghandi (Trinity), who was assassinated in 1991. Stanley Bruce (Trinity Hall), Prime Minister of Australia 1923–29, and Jan Smuts (Christ’s), Prime Minister of South Africa, studied in Cambridge between 1919–24 and 1939–48.

SPORT

Sporting alumni include England cricket captains Mike Atherton (Downing), Ted Dexter (King’s), and Mike Brierley (St John’s). Rugby internationals and Captains of the British and Irish Lions Gavin Hastings (Magdalene) and Rob Andrew (St John’s). Athletes David Cecil, Lord Burghley (Magdalene), Chris Brasher (St John’s) and Harold Abrahams (Gonville and Caius), Olympic gold medallist in modern pentathlon Stephanie Cook (Peterhouse) and triathletes Alistair Brownlee (Girton) and Emma Pooley (Trinity Hall), who also won an Olympic silver medal for cycling. The legendary darts commentator Sid Waddell studied at St John’s.

A few other famous alumni include Archbishops Michael Ramsey (Magdalene), Rowan Williams (Clare), Justin Welby (Trinity) and John Sentamu (Selwyn); the envoy held hostage for five years in Beirut, Terry Waite (Trinity Hall); the Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes (Magdalene); and former Governor of the Bank of England Mervyn King (St John’s).

Others include the mountaineer who died on the ascent – or was it the descent? – of Everest, George Mallory (Magdalene), John Harvard, founder of Harvard University (Emmanuel) and Prince Charles (Trinity).

3

SAINTS AND SINNERS

SAINTS

There are thousands of saints associated with the early Christian church and many continue to be added to the list. Cambridgeshire had several important religious institutions (see Chapter 9), but these don’t appear to have produced many celebrated holy figures. There are, however, several saints at least loosely associated with the county.

The creation of saints in the early Christian church was a rather informal affair. Popular acclaim could confer sainthood without the necessity for official confirmation from the Vatican. The medieval obsession with relics, which were believed to have miraculous properties of healing and forgiveness, meant that the possession of a whole body of a saint would be a wonderful thing for a church or abbey. Newly established abbeys like Ramsey needed something to attract pilgrims.

So it was that when some ancient bones along with some religious tokens were unearthed at Slepe, an area under the control of Ramsey Abbey in around 1001 or 1002, the stage was set for a miraculous occurrence. The only information about the bones came to a local blacksmith in a dream. The body identified itself as Ivo, a Persian bishop who had come to England. The vision also appeared to the local bailiff and, when a stone coffin was also discovered, it was obvious that he was a saint. The body was transferred to Ramsey Abbey and became St Ivo