Darwin College

Darwin sits where Silver Street meets the river, with part of its grounds on two small islands in the Cam. It was founded in 1964 as the university's first all-graduate college and the first to admit men and women alike. Trinity, St John's and Gonville and Caius colleges backed the idea, and the Darwin family gave the college its home and its name.

What to look for

• Newnham Grange. Newnham Grange went up in 1793 for a Cambridge trading family, the Beales, and counts as the oldest part of the site. George Darwin, son of Charles, bought the house in 1885 and remodelled it, and his daughter Gwen Raverat described growing up here in her memoir Period Piece. Family portraits on loan from the Darwin Heirloom Trust hang in several of the main rooms.
• The riverside. The main grounds are linked to the islands by footbridges, and the site runs from Queens' Bridge along to the Granta, so a walk here is as much about water as brick.
• The library. The green-oak and lime-mortar library alongside the Old Granary opened in 1994 and relies on natural ventilation rather than machinery.
• The Malting House. Added in 2004, this Grade II listed building once housed the Malting House School, known in the 1920s for radical teaching ideas.

Becoming a college

Growing numbers of postgraduates after the Second World War convinced Cambridge that it needed a graduate college. In 1963 Trinity, St John's and Gonville and Caius announced that they would found one together. It started in 1964 on the river bank opposite Queens' College. The Privy Council approved it as an Approved Foundation on 29 January 1965, and it received its own royal charter as an independent college in 1976. The Darwin connection came about by chance of timing: after Sir Charles Galton Darwin died in 1962, people planning the new college learned that the family house might become available, and the family welcomed the idea of it forming the college's nucleus and carrying the family name.

Extending the grounds

The college grew by absorbing its neighbours. In 1966 it took over the Hermitage, a nineteenth-century house beside Newnham Grange, which had belonged to St John's. The conversion and extension work was paid for by the founding colleges and by large gifts from the Rayne Foundation. In 2010 the rectory of Little St Mary's, at 4 Newnham Terrace, joined the college and completed a continuous boundary running from Queens' Bridge to Newnham Road and the River Granta. The two islands in the river form the remaining stretch of the boundary, back to Queens' Bridge.

Practical notes

The college asks visitors to treat it as a place of study and a home. Members of the public are generally welcome in the gardens between 9am and 6pm; picnics and animals are not permitted, commercial tours and tourist groups cannot be accommodated, and the college may close to visitors without notice. Follow the Porters' directions. The Darwin Lecture Series, eight talks around one theme each year, has run for more than twenty-five years; check the college calendar for dates.