Visit Reports

Visit to the Queens’ College and King’s College Cambridge - 6th September 2017

A dry, bright late summer’s day welcomed our visit to Cambridge for this visit to two of the oldest Cambridge colleges before finishing for some time at the Fitzwilliam Museum. We were met by our guides David and Maggie for coffee at The Anchor on the riverside for briefing before we set out in two groups.

Queens' College

Our visit took us through a variety of courtyards taking in a variety of buildings, mainly students’ accommodation, ranging in age from its founding in 1448 through to the 20th century and having one of the oldest bridges, the Mathematical Bridge, over the River Cam.

Our guides gave us a lot of the history of the growth of the college from its founding through to the present day and of the involvement of several queens in its founding and development: they could answer the many questions from our party including about gaining admission to study at Queens’, the tutoring system and how funding for all the buildings and the assets the college had to enable a strong foundation.

King's College

Having had a thorough visit to Queens’ college buildings our visit to King’s concentrated on the King’s College chapel, but took in a lot of the history of the founding of the college by Henry VI in 1441, but mainly developed by Henry VII and Henry VIII.

The chapel is very impressive, having the world’s largest fan vault ceiling, and of course it has amazing choir stalls. Our guides again gave us a lot of the history of the college and chapel and anecdotes on how we might attend the annual carol service.

The Fitzwilliam Museum

We walked for the colleges a short distance to the Fitzwilliam Museum with our guides pointing out other colleges and giving us some of their history and oddities about their founding.

We could spend some of the afternoon visiting the great art collection here as a taster to making returns visits.

Mike Bird