Cambridge (England) -- History; University of Cambridge -- History
To return to the fabric of Bishop Hugh de Balsham's College. We have
seen how a handsome hall (_aulam perpulchram_) was built with the 300
marks of the Bishop's legacy. This is substantially the building of five
bays, which still exists, forming the westernmost part of the south
side of the Great Court of the College. The three easternmost bays are
taken up by the dining-hall or refectory, the westernmost is devoted to
the buttery, the intervening bay is occupied by the screens and passage,
at either end of which there still remain the original north and south
doorways, interesting as being the earliest example of collegiate
architecture in Cambridge. The windows of this hall on the south side
date from the end of the fifteenth century. The north-east oriel window
and the buttresses on the north side of the hall were added by Sir
Gilbert Scott in 1870, who also built the new screen, panelling, and
roof. At about the same time the hall was decorated and the windows
filled with stained glass of very great beauty by William Morris. The
figures represented in the windows are as follows (beginning from the
west on the north side): John Whitgift, John Cosin, Rd. Tresham, Thos.
Gray, Duke of Grafton, Henry Cavendish; in the oriel--Homer, Aristotle,
Cicero, Hugh de Balsham, Roger Bacon, Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton; on
the south side--Edward I., Queen Eleanor, Hugh de Balsham, S. George, S.
Peter, S. Etheldreda, John Holbroke, Henry Beaufort, John Warkworth.
After the building of this hall the College evidently languished for
want of funds for more than a century. But in the fifteenth century the
College began to prosper, and a good deal of building was done. The
character of the work is not expressly stated in the Bursar's Rolls--of
which there are some thirty-one still existing of the fifteenth
century, and a fairly complete set of the subsequent centuries--but the
earliest buildings of this date are probably the range of chambers
forming the north and west side of the great court. The kitchen, which
is immediately to the west of the hall, dates from 1450. The Fellows'
parlour or combination room, completing the third side of the
quadrangle, and immediately east of the dining-hall, was built some ten
years later.
Cole has given the following precise description of this room:--
"This curious old room joins immediately to the east end of the
dining-hall or refectory, and is a ground floor called The Stone
Parlour, on the south side of the Quadrangle, between the said hall
and the master's own lodge. It is a large room and wainscotted with
small oblong Panels. The two upper rows of which are filled with
paintings on board of several of the older Masters and Benefactors
to the College. Each picture has an Inscription in the corner, and
on a separate long Panel under each, much ornamented with painting,
is a Latin Distic." ...[31]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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