Pembroke College
Cambridge's third-oldest college, with its first Wren chapel and a plaster-ceilinged Old Library.
Pembroke is the third-oldest college in Cambridge, and its buildings span nearly seven centuries. In 1347 Edward III licensed Marie de St Pol, widow of the Earl of Pembroke, to found it. She called it the Hall of Valence Mary, and her statutes favoured French-born students and set stern penalties for drinking and debts. It became Pembroke Hall later and Pembroke College in 1856.
What to look for
- Old Court and the gatehouse. Everything a college needed was built into a single court here: chapel, hall, kitchen, buttery, the Master's rooms and student rooms. The gatehouse is the oldest in Cambridge, and Old Court was enlarged to its present size in the 19th century.
- The Old Library. The first college chapel in Cambridge, from 1355, is now the library, and its ceiling is a 17th-century plaster one by Henry Doogood with birds in flight.
- The Wren chapel. Matthew Wren, once imprisoned for 18 years, kept a vow by commissioning his nephew Christopher Wren to build a new chapel, consecrated in 1665. George Gilbert Scott lengthened its east end in 1880.
- William Pitt the Younger. The prime minister was educated at Pembroke.
- Waterhouse's additions. Alfred Waterhouse designed the Red Buildings of 1871-72, a new Master's Lodge, a Hall and a library in the 1870s.
- New Court and Caroe Bridge. Scott's New Court (1881) carries a line of Psalm 127 in letters on its shields, and the Baroque-style Caroe Bridge screens it from Pembroke Street.
Gardens
The enclosed grounds include a semi-wild patch at the centre called the Orchard, a row of plane trees, and a bowling green re-turfed in 1996. The green is reputed to be among the oldest in continuous use in Europe. Orchard Building, completed in 1957, takes its name from the foundress's orchard, part of whose ground it occupies.
Bequests
The lawyer and MP Sir Robert Hitcham, a Pembroke alumnus, left Framlingham Castle in Suffolk and its lands to the college in 1636, and Hitcham's Cloister of 1666 carries his name. In 2015 the college received a bequest of 34 million pounds from the estate of the inventor and alumnus Ray Dolby, thought to be the largest single donation to a Cambridge college.
Practical notes
Visitors may walk round the grounds and enter the chapel if no service is under way. The library and all other interiors are private. Pembroke is generally open every day except a closed period from late April to late June, and it also closes occasionally for events. Tour groups should book through the Porters' Lodge; they may visit between 09:00 and 16:30.
Nearby
Within a few minutes' walk
