Cambridge (page 2/3)

Front Cover, Cambridge

The front cover; my copy has a dust jacket which is in place in this scan.

Detail from title page

A line drawing of a castle tower with leaves in the foreground.

Cambridge: Title Page

“CAMBRIDGE Described by Noel Barwell / Pictured by E. W. Haslehust

Blackie & Son Limited, London and Glasgow”

The Great Court, Trinity College

“The College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, though inheriting much from the earlier college—King’s Hall—which was set up by Edward II and his son Edward III, owes almost everything to King Henry VIII. It was typical of this monarch that, after somewhat maltreating Wolsey’s foundation at Oxford and paying not too much attention to Henry VI’s or King’s College at Cambridge, he should have set about founding Trinity with the plain intent of eclipsing both. The College as we see it to-day, is the largest and wealthiest in either University. It is founded for a Master, sixty Fellows at the least, and eighty Scholars. In full term the resident members number nearly eight hundred souls. From the first, the buildings were set out to accommodate an unusually large society. The Great Court, with its Chapel, Gatehouse, Hall, Master’s Lodge, and rows of chambers, broken here by a tower, there by a turret, occupies over two acres of ground. The character of its architecture is for the most part Tudor; for the restorations and alterations which have from time to time taken place have not been permitted to stray far from the traditional style of the Court. A further court—the Cloister or Neville’s Court—consists of two ranges of Jacobean design, modified by later hands so as to fare better than they otherwise would beside Sir Christopher Wren’s great Library building, which here occupies the entire western side of the quadrangle, even projecting above and beyond it on [more...] [$]

Byron’s Pool

Cambridge is no city of spires. She lies belted with woods in the midst of a wide plain. To south, to west, to east stretches a lowland landscape, delicately moulded, rich in pasture and corn-bearing fields. Northwards a man need ride but a few miles across the fens to hear the bells of Ely, or at twilight to see the lantern of that ancient church preserve its solitary vision of the sun. Through this broad tract of country, whose every detail is typical of all which is most beautiful in the Eastern Midlands, winds that gentlest of English rivers, the Cam. Above Cambridge, it still bears its ancient name of Granta; at Ely it is the Ouse. The scenery along its upper reaches, though small in scale, is of singular merit to eyes which are not weary of “Nature’s old felicities.” Near Grantchester, a lock now marks an ancient bifurcation of the river, and here the stream widens to form a deep sequestered pool, shaded by a [more...] [$]