
Cambridge and its university are inseparable—its ancient buildings are everywhere. The university comprises seventeen “colleges”—each a castle-like collection of buildings, towers, chapels, courtyards, and ancient libraries and dining halls, often referred to as the “dreaming spires.” Together, the colleges house 3,000 students, from a total town population of 40,000.
Legend says the university was founded in 300 B.C. by a Spanish prince named Cantaber, although written records begin in the 12th and 13th centuries. Students are principally male, although two women’s colleges, Girton and Newnham, were founded 20 years ago.
Hotels in Cambridge include the Hoop on Bridge Street and the Prince of Wales on Sidney Street, but the globetrotters may stay in college rooms, especially if one of them is an old Cambridge man or woman.
Trinity is the largest college in Cambridge (and in England), founded by Henry VIII in 1546, and boasts such alumni as Sir Isaac Newton and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. It has three main courts, including the magnificent Great Court, and gardens backing onto the River Cam. Its famous library was designed by Sir Christopher Wren, and contains Newton’s globe and telescope, his death mask, a statue of Lord Byron (another famous alumnus), and many rare books and manuscripts, including Milton’s first notes of Paradise Lost.
In a short time you find yourselves delivered by the ever smiling Alf Milsom to the gates of the splendid Trinity College, where you are greeted by a unsmiling middle-aged gentleman dressed in funereal black, wearing a bowler hat, a rather large mutton chop moustache and side-burns, and a long wicked looking scar that runs from just above his left eye to the right hand corner of his mouth. This must be one of the band of porters who act as university watchdogs and protectors of the universities reputation. To say he is large would be doing his stature a disservice, suffice to say he manages to dwarf Roxborough by several inches
“May I be of assistance?”