which, until 1880, was also accessible by a ferry over Coe fen, played an important part in the early history of the university. It was the site given to the Whitefriars, who had been the first arrivals in Cambridge, and who from the time of their appearance there as romites till they became the sons of S. Theresa were the most conspicuous community in the town. The first general of the Carmelites--an Englishman--had been a contemporary of the founder of the first college, and it was at Newnham that he visited his friars in the middle of the xiii century, at the convent there which is described in the Hundred Rolls and the Barnwell Chartulary.[460] In the same century William de Manfield left his lands in Newnham to the scholars of Merton. In the next (the xiv) century the manor of Newnham was given to Gonville Hall by Lady Anne Scrope, and both Sir John Cambridge and Henry Tangmer, who were aldermen of the guilds of the Blessed Virgin and Corpus Christi, gave or bequeathed lands and houses they held in Newnham to the new college which the [Sidenote: A.D. 1291.] guilds had built.[461] The Carmelites moved later to the present site of Queens’ and the adjoining ground, and the edge of their property is skirted by every Newnham student on her way to lectures either through Silver Street or King’s College. This new residence was the gift of Sir Guy de Mortimer and was in the busy university centre--Mill Street in the parish of S. John Baptist--so that the friars still heard the sound of the horn which was blown at the King’s Mill to tell the miller at Newnham that he might begin to grind. Beyond the mill was Newnham Lane, which stretched to Grantchester.[462] Like Peterhouse which was adapted and built for the “Ely Scholars,” the Hall at Newnham was the outcome of a students’ association:--the North of England Council for the Higher Education of Women, of which Miss Clough was president, and the association formed to promote the interests of the Higher Local students were its real progenitors. As soon as the removal from Hitchin had been decided, it was hoped that the students already settled in Cambridge and the Girton community might form one body; but the decision to build away from the town put a stop to any such scheme. The standpoint of the promoters of Newnham had always diverged in some particulars from that of the promoters of Girton. The former wished to reduce the expenses of [Illustration: QUEENS’ LANE--THE SITE OF THE OLD MILL STREET The Towers of Queens’ College Gateway are seen on the left, through the trees on the right is St. Catherine’s College, and in the distance a portion of King’s College.]