‘If I should die, think only this of me’ ... time stands still in Rupert Brooke’s Grantchester

A perfect summer afternoon on the river ... known as both the Cam and the Granta, the river has given its name to both Cambridge and Grantchester (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Patrick Comerford

Remembrance Day this year falls on Sunday 10 November 2013. In many commemorations in England, Rupert Brooke’s poem, ‘The Soldier,’ is part of the traditional readings, with its opening lines:

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England …

‘The Soldier’ was written by Rupert Brooke in 1914 at the beginning of World War I as the fifth in a series of sonnets, 1914.

The poem encompasses the memoirs of a dead soldier who recalls the blissful state of England and proclaims his patriotism by declaring that his sacrifice will mean the eternal ownership by England of the small piece of soil on which he dies. It is often contrasted with Wilfred Owen’s anti-war poem, ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ (1917), which is also read in many places on this Sunday.

A year after ‘The Soldier’ was published, Brooke died on a French hospital ship during the Gallipoli landings in 1915, and was buried in an olive grove on the Greek island of Syros. The manuscript of ‘The Soldier’ is held in King’s College, Cambridge, where he had studied.

The Grantchester Grind

The Grantchester Grind, the name given by many generations to the walk between Cambridge and Grantchester, also became the title of a Tom Sharpe novel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

While I was on study leave in Cambridge earlier this summer, I visited a “corner … that is forever England” – the village of Grantchester, which is closely associated with Rupert Brooke and his poetry. Although he was born in Rugby and died in the Aegean, Brooke lived in the Old Rectory in Grantchester, and the village is the one place most intimately associated with him.

The Church of Saint Andrew and Saint Mary dates from the 11th century and has long been linked with Corpus Christ College Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Grantchester is listed in the Domesday Book (1086), when two mills are recorded, and it is mentioned briefly in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People. The parish church, Saint Mary and Saint Andrew, which stands above the Mill Way, is as old as the village. Over the centuries, the church has undergone many changes, but its surviving structures range from early Norman times to the 19th century, including some stonework from ca 1100.

The decorated tracery in the East Window in the parish church displays a unique “butterfly” effect (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

The incumbents were Rectors of Grantchester until 1380, when Corpus Christ College, Cambridge, became the patron of the living and the incumbents became the Vicars of Grantchester, many of them fellows or senior members of the college.

The upper part of the East Window of the church includes an unusual “butterfly” design. Outside in the churchyard, the war memorial records the names of villagers who died in two World Wars, including Rupert Brooke.

These laid the world away; poured out the red
Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be
Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene,
That men called age; and those who would have been,
Their sons, they gave, their immortality.

– Rupert Brooke, ‘War Sonnets’

While Corpus Christ College is patron of the village church, King’s College Cambridge has owned the Manor House in Grantchester since 1452. At first it provided the Fellows of King’s with food, and in time of plague the fellows also took refuge there. As Lord of the Manor, King’s College gradually acquired the greater part of the village, the farmland and the meadows, and did much to conserve its character.

Grantchester’s pubs ... oozing with English charm and antiquity (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

The village has at least four old pubs: the Blue Ball is Grantchester’s oldest pub, although the present building dates from about 1880; the Green Man has the oldest building of the four pubs; the Red Lion is a handsome thatched building and was once known as the Ax and Saw; the Rupert Brooke, known as the Rose and Crown for 100 years or more, acquired its present name in the 1970s.

An early 17th century thatched and whitewashed cottage ... typical of the houses in Grantchester (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

The charm of the village is enhanced by picturesque, white-washed cottages, the terrace of former almshouses, the old schools, the village hall and the reading room ... and cricket on the green.

Tea in the Orchard

The Orchard was first planted in 1869, and Rupert Brooke took up lodgings there in 1909 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

For many, the ideal approach from Cambridge is through Grantchester Meadows, where Sylvia Plath once read poetry to the cows. She would tell her mother: “I never had such an intelligent, fascinated audience.” The footpath through Grantchester Meadows is nicknamed the “Grantchester Grind,” which has given its name to a comic novel and the second in the Porterhouse Blue series by Tom Sharpe, who died earlier this year. Others still travel by punt to picnic in the meadows or to take tea at the Orchard.

The tradition of tea at the Orchard began in 1897 when a group of Cambridge students persuaded Mrs Stevenson, the owner, to serve them tea in her apple orchard which was first planted in 1868, and suggested the idea of starting a tea garden.

The Orchard has a small Rupert Brooke Museum, which opened in 1999 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

In 1909, Rupert Brooke, then a young graduate studying for a fellowship at King’s College, took up lodgings at Orchard House. It was an idyllic period, when the world had been relatively at peace for almost 100 years since the Battle of Waterloo. Two years later, the poet moved next door to the Old Vicarage.

The Reading Room, attached to the Village Hall, was the first school in Grantchester (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

In those years immediately before the outbreak of World War I, the Orchard, with its wooden Tea Pavilion, provided a backdrop to Rupert Brooke’s remarkable group of friends – including the philosophers Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein, the novelists EM Forster and Virginia Woolf, the economist JM Keynes, and the artist Augustus John, who lived nearby in a gypsy caravan with his two wives and their seven children.

Rupert Brooke formed the centre of this group. While was at Orchard House, he spent his days studying, running to Haslingfield in the mornings, swimming in the river, walking barefoot in the village, pedalling around the neighbouring villages with political pamphlets for Beatrice and Sidney Webb, living off fruit and honey, and commuting to Cambridge by canoe.

Cricket on a sunny afternoon between the village and the river (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

In a letter to his girlfriend, Noel Oliver, written in Orchard House in 1909, Brooke said: “I am in the Country, in Arcadia; a rustic. It is a village two miles from Cambridge, up the river. You know the place; it is near all picnicking grounds. And here I work at Shakespeare and see few people ... I live on honey, eggs and milk, prepared for me by an old lady like an apple (especially in the face) and sit all day in a rose garden to work.”

He recommended her to read EM Forster’s latest story in the English Review and his last novel, A Room With a View.

The former almshouses, originally thatched and divided into four dwellings, ow form one single house (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

The economist John Maynard Keynes visited Brooke at Grantchester later that year and found him “sitting in the midst of admiring females with nothing on but an embroidered sweater.” The Irish poet WB Yeats described him as “the handsomest young man in England.”

Byron’s Pool ... where Lord Byron, Rupert Brooke, Virginia Woolf and Ludwig Wittgenstein went swimming (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Further upstream is Byron’s Pool, named after Lord Byron, who was said by Brooke to have gone swimming there while he too was a student in Cambridge. Brooke also swam regularly in Byron’s Pool with his friends, and on one occasion he and Virginia Woolf swam in the pool naked by moonlight – or so she boasted to Vita Sackville-West.

Above the pool, there is a modern weir where the Bourn Brook flows into the River Cam, which defines the dividing line between the parishes of Grantchester and Trumpington.

Later, while he was in Berlin in 1912, Brooke, in a fit of homesickness, wrote evocatively and memorably in ‘The Old Vicarage, Grantchester,’ recalling his times in the Orchard, Grantchester Meadows, the Old Vicarage and the parish church:

Deep meadows yet, for to forget
The lies, and truth, and pain? ... oh! Yet
Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?

‘The weight of the war’

The Mill House, once the home of Alfred North Whitehead who worked there with Bertrand Russell, who in turn argued there with Wittgenstein (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

When he heard of Brooke’s death, Bertrand Russell, who was a pacifist, could still write: “It makes me very sad and very indignant. It hurts reading of all that young world now swept away – Rupert and his brother and Keeling and lots of others – in whom one foolishly thought at the time that there was hope for the world – they were full of life and energy and truth – Rupert himself loved life and the world – his hatreds were very concrete, resulting from some quite specific vanity or jealousy, but in the main he found the world lovable and interesting. There was nothing of humbug in him.”

Russell had once stayed at the Mill House, working with Wittgenstein and Alfred North Whitehead. Later, Russell wrote from Cambridge: “I am feeling the weight of the war much more since I came back here – one is made so terribly aware of the waste when one is here. And Rupert Brooke’s death brought it home to me ... I keep fearing that something of civilisation will be lost for good, as something was lost when Greece perished in just this way.”

The Old Vicarage was Rupert Brooke’s home and is celebrated in his nostalgic poem from 1911 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Brooke, who spent his last happy days in Grantchester, always dreamt of returning to the Old Vicarage, was first built in 1685. After World War I, his mother, Ruth Mary Brooke, having lost all three of her sons, bought the Old Vicarage and entrusted it to Rupert’s closest friend, Dudley Ward. The Ward family continued to live there until 1979.

The Old Vicarage is now the home of the writer Jeffrey Archer and his wife the Cambridge scientist Mary Archer, who have erected a statue of Rupert Brooke on the front lawn.

Wright’s Row ... apart from the modern cars, the streetscape looks almost unchanged since Rupert Brooke lived in Grantchester (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

In ‘The Old Vicarage, Grantham,’ a melancholic and homesick Rupert Brooke asked:

Say, do the elm-clumps greatly stand
Still guardians of that holy land?
The chestnuts shade, in reverend dream,
The yet unacademic stream?

Sadly, the great elm trees were lost sixty years later through Dutch Elm disease in the 1970s. They have since been replaced by a plantation of mixed native trees.

In the late afternoon, I walked from Grantchester to Trumpington, the scene of Chaucer’s Tale of the Miller, which tells of the miller, his wife and daughter, and two Cambridge students. On Trumpington, one of the village pubs is called the Lord Byron, after the other swimming poet. Nearby, I had a very late lunch in the Green Man before returning to Cambridge.

Rupert Brooke’s name is inscribed on the war memorial in the churchyard alongside the names of parishioners (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

The Soldier, by Rupert Brooke

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by the suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism, Liturgy and Church History, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute. This essay and these photographs were first published in the Church Review (Dublin and Glendalough) and the Diocesan Review (Cashel, Ferns and Ossory) in November 2013

Reading The Masters, ‘the best academic novel in English,’ in Cambridge

Christ’s College, Cambridge ... provides the setting for CP Snow’s nameless college in ‘The Masters’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Over the past few weeks, I have completed a leisurely reading of The Masters, perhaps the best known of CP Snow's series of novels Strangers and Brothers.

I picked a well-thumbed, dog-eared copy of the book on a book barrow in Temple Bar one Sunday afternoon earlier this summer, and it has been stuck in my bag on trips to London, Hertfordshire, Essex, Sorrento and Cambridge.

Because it was bed-time reading, it took a little longer to read than most other books. But, although it was written in 1951 and set in 1937, the book came to life on the last of those visits, with its setting in Cambridge, while I was in Cambridge for this year’s summer school in Sidney Sussex College, organised by the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies.

As the dons walk around the streets of Cambridge and the courts of their college, I could see those streets and courts come to life three-quarters of a century after the original storyline.

The plot involves the election of a new Master in 1957 at Lewis Eliot’s Cambridge college. Although the college is unnamed, it became obvious as I read on that the college in many ways resembles Christ’s College, where I have been a guest at the High Table in Hall, preached, lectured and stayed at different times over the past few years. The statutes of Christ’s College insist that every fellow undertakes to uphold it as a place of education, religion, learning, and research.

The chemist and novelist CP Snow (1905-1980), later Lord Snow, gave us the familiar idiom “the corridors of power.” He was elected a Fellow and tutor of Christ’s College in 1930. His first rooms were those once occupied by the poet John Milton (1608-1674), and later he moved to rooms that had been those of Charles Darwin (1809-1882).

So, from his very beginning at Christ’s, Snow was aware of the tension and balance between the humanities and the sciences.

Lining up in Christ’s College, Cambridge, for the degree conferring ceremony (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

At Christ’s, Snow tutored HS Hoff, the novelist William Cooper. Snow was the model for the college dean, Robert, in Cooper’s Scenes from Provincial Life. Later, Snow held several senior Civil Service positions and briefly served in Harold Wilson’s government as Minister of Technology.

Snow dedicated The Masters to the memory of GH Hardy, the Cambridge mathematician. Hardy was a Fellow of Trinity College Cambridge, the two first met at a dinner in Christ’s in 1931, and the two shared a lifelong passion for cricket.
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The story is set in 1937, against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War and the irreversible drift towards World War II. The book begins with the Master of a Cambridge college, Vernon Royce, on his deathbed. His imminent death stirs intense rivalry and jealousy among the 12 fellows who have to elect his successor.

The Chapel of Christ’s College, Cambridge … in 2010, the college celebrated the 500th anniversary of the consecration of the chapel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The real contest starts before the master dies. Soon former friends become true enemies as two fellows, Paul Jago and Thomas Crawford emerge as the two candidates.

Paul Jago is an Irish-born graduate of Trinity College Dublin. His is an imaginative, magnanimous and sensitive person, but he has never distinguished himself as an English scholar. Lewis Eliot, the semi-biographical narrator, believes Jago would make a good master, but his wife is seen by some of the dons as a liability.

Thomas Crawford is politically radical and is prepared to make sure his college makes a stand against appeasing Hitler. However, Eliot believes Crawford is not going to be good at dealing with people. He is a confident, first-rate biologist, but he lacks many human qualities.

Crawford’s character is based on Sir Charles Galton Darwin (1887-1962), the grandson of Charles Darwin. Darwin was elected the Master of Christ’s College in 1936 – an election in which Snow switched his support from candidate to the other late in the day.

Jago’s character is based on Canon Charles Raven (1885-1964), Regius Professor Divinity at Cambridge 1932-1950. Raven was the unsuccessful candidate in 1936, but became Master of Christ’s in 1939 when Darwin left to become Director of the National Physics Laboratory, and remained Master until 1950, a year before Snow published The Masters.

In a letter to The Spectator in 1962, Raven denounced Snow for depicting academics as mere careerists. Is that how they are depicted in The Masters?

The Master’s Lodge and the Chapel in Christ’s College are side-by-side in First Court (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Much of the interest of the novel lies in its analysis of the motives and political manoeuvres of the fellows campaigning for their chosen candidates. Mixed motives are at work throughout the campaign. For some dons, personal politics is all that matters, for others it is down to personal charisma. Others ask whether they should choose a man of the arts or a man of science. Throughout it all, the conflict between loyalty and ambition is a constant theme.

The contest becomes more complex when a rich industrialist offers a large donation that would change the nature of college to the benefit of the scientists and for ever.

There is no final twist to the The Masters – the final result was almost predictable and inevitable. In the meantime, we have insights into the fellows’ attitudes to providing clergy for the parishes that are college “livings,” their living conditions, and their social and political values. It is a hardly a surprise that they get on better with the porters than they do with each other.

As he was writing, Snow could see the inevitable way in which Cambridge colleges would change. But, despite those changes, the Cambridge he evokes is still recognisable, and the appendix could be an account of the changes in any Cambridge college over the centuries.

The book still address many of the present conflicts between the humanities and the sciences: Can science determine human values? Or should science operate within moral and ethical humane parameters?

Snow knew these questions can never be answered conclusively in favour of one side or the other. In “The Two Cultures,” a lecture in 1959, he lamented the gulf between scientists and “literary intellectuals.” At one point in The Masters, the oldest college fellow, Maurice Gay, expresses this when he says: “We ought to have outgrown these arts and science controversies before we leave the school debating society.”

Although the college remains anonymous throughout The Masters and many of the historical details are changed, it is obvious from the setting is obvious from the geographical setting and the architectural details that this is Christ’s College.

The Masters is considered “the best academic novel in English.” The story was broadcast by BBC Radio in August 1958, and the novel was first dramatised for the London theatre 50 years ago when Ronald Millar’s adaptation was staged at the Savoy Theatre in London in 1963.

The Masters is preceded in reading order by The Light and the Dark and followed by The New Men. Which should I read next.

Snow in Christ’s College ... First Court covered in snow when I was staying there in February 2009 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

An afternoon by the boathouses and the river, watching life go by

The Rosie makes its way between rowers, scullers and houseboats, with Fort St George (left) on the south bank of the Cam and Peterhouse boathouse on the north bank (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Patrick Comerford

My week in Cambridge ended as it began: walking by the river, enjoying the sunshine, and enjoying the sight of people in boats on the water.

Having left my bags at the Porters’ Lodge in Sidney Sussex College on Friday afternoon [19 July 2013], I walked around the corner into Jesus Lane, and on to the junction with Maid’s Causeway and Victoria Avenue to Midsummer Common, on the north-east of the inner city.

Midsummer Common in the middle of summer (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

This vast stretch of common land stretches for over 33 acres (13.4 hectares) along the banks of the River Cam, from Victoria Bridge to Elizabeth Way. Until Victoria Avenue was cut through the common in 1890, there was an even larger expanse of open land that included Jesus Green.

Although Midsummer Common is open common land, it looks more like a vast city park, with street lighting, tarmac paths and cycle lanes, and all the human problems that city parks attract.

I crossed Midsummer Common to the south side of the river, where houseboats are moored along the bank, while most of the boathouses of Cambridge colleges and town clubs on the north side.

In between the swans and young people learning to row and to scull, a small narrowboat, the Rosie, was chugging up and down the river, taking small groups of people on river tours.

I crossed the river at Clare Footbridge, and walked back and forth along the north bank of the Cam, in and out between the boathouses.

There are about 30 colleges in Cambridge, each with its own boat club on the Cam, interspersed with a the boathouses of a number of town clubs and the premises of the Cambridge University Combined Boat Clubs, which manages college rowing on the Cam and running university races, such as the Lent and May bumps but not the Fairbairn Cup. There are clubs too for medical students at Addenbrooke’s and students at the Veterinary School.

Sidney Sussex shares a boathouse with Girton, Corpus Christi and Wolfson (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Close to Clare Footbridge, Sidney Sussex shares a boathouse with Girton College, Corpus Christi and Wolfson. The Sidney Sussex club’s blades are dark blue with red stripes. Sidney alumni race as the Lord Protector Club – well, Oliver Cromwell was a Sidney alumnus.

The other clubs on the river include the Cambridge ’99 Boat Club, the Cantabrigian Rowing Club, the City of Cambridge Rowing Club, the Rob Roy Boat Club, the X-Press Boat Club and the Champion of the Thames Boat Club, some of them based in the boathouse of the Cambridgeshire Rowing Association.

The Goldie Boathouse, home of the Cambridge University Boat Club, is named after JHD Goldie (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Some of the boathouses have names that have become part of Cambridge lore. The Goldie boathouse is the home of the Cambridge University Boat Club. The boathouse is named after JHD Goldie, of Saint John’s and CUBC.

The Boat Club of Saint John’s College is known as Lady Margaret. According to Cambridge myth, the name Lady Margaret was adopted after the Saint John’s Boat Club was banned from using that name. However, the club was probably named after its boat, as was custom in the formative years of college rowing. The alumni race as Lady Somerset Boat Club.

The names of some town clubs are associated with well-known pubs in Cambridge.

The X-Press Boat Club was once the boat club of the Free Press Public House, but is now it is associated with The Cambridge Blue after the landlord switched pubs. The name of the club was supposed to change to the Cambridge Blue Boat Club, but this was blocked after objections were raised by the university.

The Champion of the Thames Boat Club has boasted its unusual name since 1995, and is sponsored by The Champion of the Thames, a pub on King Street, near Sidney Sussex College. The pub, in turn, is named after an oarsman who won a race on the Thames on 1860, moved to Cambridge and ever after had all correspondence addressed to “The Champion of the Thames, King Street, Cambridge.”

A glass of wine at the Fort St George on a summer afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

I crossed the river again at Peterhouse Footbridge, and close to the houseboats, across from the Peterhouse boat club, I stopped for a cool glass of wine in the Fort St George, an old sprawling pub on the south bank of the river.

To give the pub its full name, this is The Fort St George In England, and is the oldest public house on the Cam. It is a Grade II listed timber-framed building and dates from the 16th century. The pub got is unusual name because it is said to look like the East India Company’s Fort St George in Madras (Chennai).

I could have lost all sense of time in the afternoon sunshine on the river bank, until a friend from the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies joined me at the table, and conversation turned to reality.

I strolled back along the south side of the river, where the people who live on the houseboats have their own sense of community and call themselves the Camboaters.

Christ’s College Boat Club has the oldest wooden-framed boathouse on the river (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Christ’s College Boat Club is housed in the oldest wooden-framed boathouse on the river, and this is the nearest to Jesus Lock.

As I continued on to Jesus Lock, people were sunbathing on the banks of the river, enjoying this unusually warm and bright summer weather. There were lengthy queues too at the Lido to get into the Jesus Green Swimming Pool.

The corner of Chesterton Lane, Northampton Street and Magdalene Street, seen from the grounds of Saint Giles Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

I crossed the river once again at the Jesus Lock Footbridge, at Chesterton Road, and walked on back along Chesterton Lane, and Magdalene Street and Bridge Street to Sidney Sussex College. My week in Cambridge was coming to an end.

Magdalene Street, walking back into Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Some other boathouses on the River Cam:

Lady Margaret Boat Club (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

The Boat Club of St John’s College is known as Lady Margaret, after the founder of the college, Lady Margaret Beaufort.

Jesus College Boat Club (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Jesus College Boat Club is responsible for Fairbairns, the favourite event in Michaelmas term. Jesus alumni race as the Disciples.

Trinity Hall Boat Club (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Pembroke College Boat Club (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Emmanuel Boat Club (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

The Rosie passes Downing College boathouse (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Downing College boathouse has been close to the water in more ways than its member may care to remember ... the boathouse flooded while it was still being built.

The Cambridge ’99 boathouse and the Cambridgeshire Rowing Association boathouse (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

The Champion of the Thames Boat Club is not a London club, but a Cambridge club. It takes its name from a pub in King Street and uses the the Cambridgeshire Rowing Association boathouse.

A curious question leads to the story of the Jews of Cambridge

The Cambridge Synagogue and Jewish Student Centre (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Patrick Comerford

During these warm summer evenings, some of us have walked from Sidney Sussex College up Sidney Street and Bridge Street in Cambridge to the Mitre to enjoy each other’s companies and to discuss and debate the day’s proceedings at the summer school organised by the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies.

The Mitre is an anomalous name for a pub in Cambridge. After all, there is no Bishop of Cambridge, and the university and the city lie within the Diocese of Ely.

A quiet corner in Portugal Place … place names can lead to curious searches (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Some evenings, I have wondered whether Portugal Place and Portugal Street, which are beside the Mitre, were so named because Sephardic Jews from the Iberian Peninsula found a welcome in Cromwell’s England. This conundrum had added interest for us this week, given that Oliver Cromwell was an alumnus of Sidney Sussex College.

Indeed, in my rambles this week, I soon found out that the Cambridge Synagogue is in Thompson’s Lane, close to the Mitre and to Portugal Place and Portugal Street.

The first Jews arrived in England in the wake of the Battle of Hastings and William I’s conquest of England. The majority of these Jews initially settled in London, but Cambridge may have soon become the centre of one of the earliest provincial Jewish communities. Fuller, in his History of Cambridge puts the date of the first Jewish settlement at 1073.

The Round Church on Bridge Street … did the site ever belong to the Jews of Cambridge? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

There is a tradition that the Round Church on Bridge Street, opposite Saint John’s College, was a synagogue, and the parishes of All Saints’ and Saint Sepulchre were once known as “in the Jewry.”

Although 13th century Cambridge Jewry is better documented, it appears Jews were more active in 12th century Cambridge, and the first recorded medieval Cambridge Jew. Theobold of Cambridge (Theoboldus Kantebrugie). He is mentioned in 1144 as an alleged convert to Christianity and a monk. He played a crucial role in establishing the case for Saint William’s martyrdom at the hands of the Jews of Norwich, and so he became a key figure in disseminating the first-known propaganda alleging ritual murder.

Another early episode mentioned in the life of the Cambridge Jewry is of a fine inflicted upon Comitissa, a Jewish woman in Cambridge, for allowing her son to marry a Jewish woman from Lincoln without the king’s permission. It is probable that this Comitissa was the mother of Moses ben Isaac Hanassiah, the author of the Sefer ha-Shoham.

The Jews of Cambridge do not seem to have suffered much during the riots of 1189-1190.

The Guildhall on Market Hill … part of the site once belonged to Magister Binjamin and the old synagogue stood nearby (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

A grammarian known as Benjamin of Canterbury may have been from Cambridge, since the Latin records make mention of a Magister Binjamin in Cambridge. In 1224, King Henry III granted the house of Benjamin the Jew to the town as a jail. This was on the site of the present Guildhall.

The Jews of Cambridge were victims during the revolt of the barons in 1266, and the official records of Jewish life in Cambridge were removed that year to Ely. Within a decade the Jews were banished from Cambridge in 1275.

King Edward I issued an edict in 1290, expelling all 5,000 Jews from England and confiscating their property, and the Jews who were expelled crossed to France and Flanders.

The old synagogue was near the prison – later the site of the Guildhall on Market Hill. It was given to the Franciscans, who had their main house in Cambridge on the site of Sidney Sussex College.

Oliver Cromwell’s portrait in the Hall in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

However, Jews started returning to England in the 1650s under Oliver Cromwell, an alumnus of Sidney College. Jewish scholars began visiting Cambridge to teach Hebrew as part of the Cambridge BA, and by the early 1700s stable Jewish communities were emerging in Cambridge.

Well-known Jewish teachers at the university include Israel Lyons (1739-1775), Solomon Marcus Schiller-Szinnessy, and Solomon Schechter. By 1847, a tiny resident congregation was worshipping in the Union Society’s premises in 1847.

Although Professor JJ Sylvester took high honours in mathematics in 1839, he was debarred from taking his degree by the university statutes. Arthur Cohen entered Magdalene College in 1849. An Act of Parliament in 1856 opened up Cambridge BA degrees to Jews, Muslims, and others, “without violence to the conscience,” and in 1858 Arthur Cohen became the first Jew to take his BA at Cambridge.

In 1869, Numa Hartog gained the position of senior wrangler, the highest mathematical triumph a Cambridge student can obtain, and so he helped to secure the passage of the University Tests Act allowing Jews to take their degrees.

Petty Cury today … in 1873, a small Jewish congregation was meeting here (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

By 1873, the Jewish congregation in Cambridge was meeting in Regent Street. There was a brief move in 1888 to Petty Cury, a narrow street that links Sidney Street and Saint Andrew’s Street to the east, Market Hill and Guildhall Street to the west, and Hobson Street on the corner of Christ’s College.

After the death of Solomon Marcus Schiller-Szinessy, the Romanian rabbi Solomon Schechter (1847-1915) was appointed to the faculty at Cambridge University in 1890, serving as a lecturer in Talmudics and reader in Rabbinics.

His greatest academic fame came from his excavation in 1896 of the papers of the Cairo Geniza, a collection of over 100,000 pages of rare Hebrew religious manuscripts and mediaeval Jewish texts that were preserved in an Egyptian synagogue. The find revolutionised our understandings of Mediaeval Judaism. The story is told in Janet Soskice’s book Sisters of Sinai (London: Vintage, 2010).
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Saint Mary’s Passage near King’s College, Cambridge, today … in 1900, the Jewish congregation was meeting here over a china shop (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Professor Alfred Philipp Bender (1863-1937), who was born in Dublin and educated at Saint John’s College, Cambridge, was instrumental in founding the Cambridge Hebrew Congregation and conducted its services for many years. His father, the Revd Philipp Bender, was the minister of Mary’s Abbey Synagogue, Dublin.

In 1899, the university students took over from the residents of Cambridge in running the synagogue. A year later (1900), residents and students were managing a minyan in a room over Barrett’s china shop in Saint Mary’s Passage, on the corner of Market Place. They then moved to a studio in a garden in Camden Terrace (Park Terrace).

A bicycle outside the entrance to Sidney Sussex College … in 1912, the Jewish community was worshipping in premises behind a bicycle shop on the site where this photograph was taken (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

By late 1912, the Jewish community on Cambridge had moved into premises behind a bicycle shop opposite the entrance to Sidney Sussex College, possibly in premises on the site that is now part of Sainsbury’s.

A purpose-built synagogue in Ellis Court (as it was called then) in Thomson’s Lane, off Bridge Street was consecrated on 21 October 1937 by the Chief Rabbi, Dr Joseph Herman Hertz. There were some 50 active Jewish students at the time.

Today, the resident Jewish population of Cambridge has a high percentage of members from the university, ensuring there is a good intellectual and social atmosphere in the shul.

During university term, the services are run by the students, with a touch more boisterousness than out of term. Outside university term, the shul reverts to the residents, who also run the High Holy Day services.

The Jewish community in Cambridge says it is unique, and it provides its own self-description by saying: “It is serious without being pompous, friendly without being happy-clappy, open without losing sense of the necessary boundaries – and, above all, a true community, where people look out for each other, and enjoy each other’s company.”

The Mitre, Bridge Street … the pub with an anomalous name which set me in search of the story of the Jews of Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Revised 1 October 2019

Visiting the Round Church ... a landmark building in Cambridge

The Round Church is a landmark building on Bridge Street, close to Sidney Sussex College (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Patrick Comerford

I have often passed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on the corner of Bridge Street and Round Church Street, close to Sidney Sussex College and Saint John’s College. Popularly known as the Round Church, it is a landmark building in Cambridge.

During a break earlier this week in the summer school at Sidney Sussex College, I took an opportunity to visit this intriguing building, which is one of only four round churches that survive to this day in England.

The popular mythology that all mediaeval round churches belonged to the Knights Templar is without historical foundation. The Round Church was built in Cambridge ca 1130 by the Fraternity of the Holy Sepulchre.

The brothers of the fraternity were probably a group of Austin canons, and were given the land by Abbot Reinald of Ramsey between 1114 and 1130. The Austin Friars had their principal house in Cambridge at the nearby Hospital of Saint John, later the site of Saint John’s College, across the street from the Round Church.

They were influenced by the design of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a round church or Rotunda in Jerusalem, built by the Emperor Constantine in the fourth century on the site of Christ’s tomb and the Resurrection.

Most churches in Western Europe are cross-shaped in their floor plan and in England there are only four other round churches like this one, all built after the First Crusade.

The church was built in the Norman or Romanesque style, with thick pillars and rounded arches. At first consisted of a round nave and an ambulatory, with a short chancel, probably in the shape of an apse.

Initially, the church was a wayfarers’ chapel serving travellers along the main Roman road – the Via Devana, now Bridge Street – just outside the town.

By the mid-13th century, the Round Church had become a parish church under the patronage of Barnwell Priory. Around this time, structural alterations were made to the church, with the rebuilding of the chancel and the addition of a north aisle, with the aisle shorter than the chancel.

During the 15th century the Norman style windows in the nave were replaced by larger Gothic style windows. The carvings of angels in the roofs of the chancel and aisle were added. A heavy, polygonal gothic tower or bell-storey was built over the round nave in the 15th century.

In 1643-1644, during the Civil War, the Puritans destroyed many of the images in the church they regarded as “idolatrous.” William Dowsing refers to the destruction of the church in his journal on 2 January 1644: “We break down 14 superstitious Pictures, divers Idolatrous Inscriptions, one of God the Father, one of Christ and of the Apostles.”

The weight of the massive the 15th century Gothic tower was too heavy and it collapsed in the round ambulatory in 1841. The Cambridge Camden Society offered to repair the church and appointed Anthony Salvin to carry out the work.

Salvin replaced the bell-storey with a conical spire which he believed was similar to the original roof faithful to the nave’s Norman origin. At the same time, the 15th-century Gothic windows were replaced by windows in Norman style, and a formerly-inserted gallery was removed, together with the external staircase leading to it.

To compensate for this, a new south aisle was added. It was found that the east wall of the chancel was unstable and this was replaced. Then the north aisle, by that time in poor condition, was also rebuilt, extending it to the same length as the chancel.

The original estimate for the cost of the restoration was £1,000 (£70,000 in today’s terms in 2013), with the parish paying £300 (£20,000 in 2013). Finally, the restoration cost almost £4,000 (£290,000 in 2013), with the parish providing only £50 (£4,000 in 2013).

The communion table, dating from 1843, was made by Joseph Wentworth. In 1899, a vestry was added to the north of the north aisle.

The East Window depicts the Risen Christ in Majesty (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

During World War II, the Victorian East Window was destroyed by a bomb in 1942. It was replaced by a modern window portraying the Risen Christ in Majesty, triumphant over death and suffering. The cross is depicted as a living tree with leaves that are for “the healing of the nations” (Revelation 22: 2).

The decorated Norman west door into the Round Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

The church is entered by a Norman west doorway with three orders of colonnettes, decorated with scalloped capitals and zigzags, and crenellations in the voussoirs.

The church is built in stone. Its plan consists of a circular nave surrounded by an ambulatory, a chancel with north and south aisles and a north vestry. Over the nave is an upper storey surmounted by a conical spire. To the north of the church is an octagonal bell-turret containing two bells.

The Romanesque arches inside the Round Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Between the ambulatory and the nave are eight massive Norman columns and round arches. Each of the capitals of the columns is carved with a different design. Part of the vault of the ambulatory has dog-tooth ornamentation. In the ambulatory and nave are carved human heads dating from the 19th century. Above the nave is a triforium containing double Norman arches.

To the east are the chancel and aisles. In the chancel and the north aisle are carved angels dating from the 15th century which are attached to the corbels supporting the roof. Some of the angels are holding or playing musical instruments.

There are two bells in the bell-turret. One of these is dated 1663 and was cast by Robard Gurney; the other is a priest’s bell, possibly cast by J. Sturdy of London between 1440 and 1458.

Most of the stained glass in the church was introduced during the 19th century restoration and was designed and made by Thomas Willement and William Wailes.

The vestry added to the north of the north aisle in the 19th century was extended in 1980. But by then the congregation in the Round Church was overflowing, and the building was too small for their numbers. In 1994, they moved down Bridge Street and Sidney Street to the much larger church of Saint Andrew the Great, by Lion Yard, opposite the gate of Christ’s College.

The church is designated by English Heritage as a Grade I listed building. Christian Heritage now manages the building, with an exhibition on the story of Cambridge and the impact of secularism on western culture. Behind the church is the Union Building, the red brick Victorian home of the university debating society.

The other surviving mediaeval round churches in England are the Temple Church in London, Little Maplestead in Essex, and Saint Sepulchre’s in Northampton.

The Round Church at night (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)