Highways and Byways in Cambridge and ElyConybeare, John William Edward
History
Highways and Byways in Cambridge and Ely
Conybeare, John William Edward
Cambridgeshire (England) -- Description and travel; Isle of Ely (England) -- Description and travel
His first act was to enclose a Court, the Gate Tower of which should
worthily commemorate the Foundress. In this his success was complete.
The tower, which to this day forms the main entrance to the College,
is a delightful example of what may be done in architecture by a
skilful use of red brick. The quoining is of stone, and of stone also
are the elaborate decorations. In the centre above the first
string-course a richly-canopied niche contains the statue of St. John
the Evangelist. Below this, and immediately above the gate, is to be
seen Lady Margaret's shield, the three lions of England, quartered
with the three lilies of France, within a bordure barred azure and
argent, supported by the antelopes of the Beaufort family. On either
side of both statue and shield appear the Plantagenet rose and the
Tudor portcullis, each surmounted by an Imperial crown (just as we so
constantly find them in King's College Chapel), and all round is
sprinkled the Margaret flower, the daisy. The whole forms a beautiful
piece of composition which makes us regret that more of Fisher's work
is not left. All the First Court, indeed, is his, but it has been
altered out of all knowledge. Now its chief feature is the soaring
mid-Victorian chapel, the largest in Cambridge (except, of course,
King's), the most pleasing view of which is to be gained from the
Trinity Backs, where the tower, framed in foliage, exquisitely doubles
itself on the surface of the river. This ambitious fabric was built by
Sir Gilbert Scott in the 'sixties; and a line of cement on the lawn of
the Court alone traces for us the foundations of Fisher's original
Chapel.
The Hall ranks in size and beauty next to that of Trinity. The most
interesting of its portraits are those of Lady Margaret, Bishop
Fisher, and the poet Wordsworth, who was a resident member of the
College from 1787 to 1791. His rooms, as he tells in "The Prelude,"
were in the south-western staircase of the "First Court," just above
the kitchen:
"The Evangelist St. John my Patron was:
Three Gothic Courts are his, and in the first
Was my abiding-place, a nook obscure.
Right underneath, the College Kitchens made
A humming sound, less tuneable than bees,
But hardly less industrious, with shrill notes
Of sharp command and scolding intermixed."
Wordsworth was not a very contented student. He shared the anarchical
ideas then floating in the air, and soon to explode in the French
Revolution. College discipline was eminently distasteful to him, and,
above all, he detested the obligation to attend the Services in the
College Chapel (which, indeed, were, in those days, conducted in far
from ideal fashion).[63] In "The Prelude," he breaks out against them
in unmeasured terms:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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