City in Cambridgeshire, England
Cambridge
In Cambridge, a 1958 prank put an Austin 7 on top of the Senate House roof, and the university's students have been outdoing each other with stunts ever since.
Key information
- County
- Cambridgeshire
- Nation
- England
- Population
- about 145,000 (2021 Census)
- Known for
- The University of Cambridge, punting on the Cam, King's College Chapel, Nobel Prize winners, the discovery of DNA's structure
- What locals are called
- Cantabrigians
- Famous people
- Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Stephen Hawking, Oliver Cromwell
- Football clubs
- Cambridge United (the U's); Cambridge City
About Cambridge
The car on the roof of the Senate House
On the morning of 8 June 1958, Cambridge woke to find an Austin 7 perched on the roof of the Senate House, one of the city's grandest buildings. Nobody could work out how it had got up there. Students had in fact hauled it into place during the night using ropes and scaffolding poles, and it took the authorities days to get it down again. The stunt is the most famous of a long line of Cambridge pranks, a tradition that says a great deal about a place full of clever people with time on their hands. The university has a taste for such mischief. It is said to be an affectionate rivalry with Oxford that keeps the ideas coming, and the two have been racing each other in the Boat Race since 1829.
How a bunch of runaways started a university
Cambridge University began in 1209, when scholars left Oxford after a dispute with the townspeople there and settled beside the River Cam. Within a few decades the first colleges appeared, with Peterhouse founded in 1284. Today there are 31 colleges, each with its own courts, traditions and dining halls. King's College was founded by Henry VI in 1441, and its chapel is the city's great showpiece, with the largest fan-vaulted ceiling in the world. Its choir sings the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols on Christmas Eve, broadcast every year since 1928 except 1930. Broadcasts carried on throughout the Second World War, even though the chapel's historic glass had been removed for safety. Trinity College is the biggest and richest of them, and counts more Nobel Prize winners among its members than any other college. Cambridge as a whole has produced well over a hundred Nobel laureates.
Apples, DNA and a very famous pub
Cambridge's scientists have changed how we see the world. Isaac Newton studied at Trinity and later worked out his laws of motion and gravity. Charles Darwin was a student at Christ's College. Stephen Hawking spent decades as a professor here, holding Newton's old post as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. On 28 February 1953, Francis Crick and James Watson, working at the Cavendish Laboratory, walked into the Eagle pub on Bene't Street and announced they had discovered the secret of life. They had worked out the double-helix structure of DNA. The pub still stands, and a plaque marks the moment. Its back bar also holds the ceiling where RAF airmen in the Second World War burned their names with candles and lighters. It was in the Cavendish, too, that J.J. Thomson discovered the electron in 1897.
Punting, bicycles and the Backs
The Cam runs behind several of the oldest colleges in a stretch known as the Backs, where lawns slope down to the water and bridges cross at almost every turn. The best way to see it is by punt, a flat-bottomed boat pushed along with a long pole. It looks easy and is not, and every summer a few visitors end up in the river. The Bridge of Sighs at St John's College, built in 1831, is named after its Venetian namesake. The Mathematical Bridge at Queens' College is often said to have been built without nails or bolts, though it was in fact put together in a more conventional way. Cambridge is also one of the most cycling-friendly cities in Britain. Flat streets, narrow lanes and a student population mean bikes are everywhere, and locked-up ones crowd every railing.
Chocolate, chips and Cromwell
Cambridge has a long list of local food and drink traditions. Cambridge burnt cream, a custard with a caramelised sugar top, has been associated with Trinity College since the late nineteenth century, traditionally dated to 1879, and is a close cousin of crème brûlée. Local pubs serve ale from East Anglian breweries, and the market square has traded for centuries. Oliver Cromwell, a future Lord Protector of England, studied at Sidney Sussex College in 1616 and later sat as the town's MP. The college's tradition says that his head was eventually buried in a secret spot within its grounds in 1960. The local football team, Cambridge United, play at the Abbey Stadium and are nicknamed the U's. Outside the city, the Cambridge Science Park and the surrounding technology cluster have given the area the name Silicon Fen, and companies including ARM were born here.
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