College Tour 4 - Pembroke College

Pembroke College was founded on Christmas Eve, 1347 by Mary de St Pol, daughter of Guy de Chatillon and wife of Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke.

The first buildings were comprised of a single court (now called Old Court) containing all the component parts of a college - chapel, hall, kitchen and buttery, master's lodgings, students' rooms - and the statutes provided for a manciple, a cook, a barber and a laundress. Both the founding of the college and the building of the city's first college chapel (1355) required the grant of a papal bull.

College Crest Above

The college's gatehouse is the oldest in Cambridge. The original chapel now forms the Old Library and has a striking seventeenth century plaster ceiling, designed by Henry Doogood, showing birds flying overhead. The college chapel was built by Sir Christopher Wren (one of his first buildings) as a promise to his uncle Matthew Wren, a Pembroke fellow who was imprisoned by Oliver Cromwell during the civil war.

Pembroke's enclosed grounds also house some particularly well-kept gardens, sporting a huge array of carefully-selected vegetation. Highlights include "The Orchard" (a patch of semi-wild ground in the centre of the college), an impressive row of Plane Trees and an immaculately-kept bowling green which is reputed to be the oldest in continual use in Europe.
Some famous alumni from Pembroke college are William Pitt the Younger (youngest Prime Minister in England’s history at the age of 24), Naomie Harris (acted in Miami Vice and Pirates of the Carribean) and R.A. Bulter (politician who lent his name to the term Buskellism).

Pitt the younger

Oh just a small note, I almost applied to Pembroke college 3 years back. Hmm, I think it was because it is well-located (almost in the heart of Cambridge) and also because they had some eminent Economics professor there (I forgot whether it was Amartya Sen, but it doesn't matter since he's now in Harvard). Ha, but i got talk out of it by Ms Tay. He he.