Old Buildings in Cambridge

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2024-11-06 13:00:08

Cambridge is associated with the university of Cambridge, so the assumption is that all old buildings in the city belong to the university. In fact, Cambridge has several buildings older than the university. The University of Cambridge was founded in 1209 and the oldest college, Peterhouse, was founded in 1284. Most of the buildings on this page are older than this. I have included a couple of 14th century buildings. Most of the famous university buildings are much later. Kings College Chapel was started in 1446 and not completed until 1531. Queens College has the oldest gatehouse, dated 1448.

Cambridge has no good local building stone. The earliest buildings were often made of a collection of material joined together with mortar, and sometimes reusing material from earlier buildings. Perhaps because of this, none of these buildings are exactly as they were built. All have been repaired or even rebuilt at times.

The buildings on this page are arranged in chronological order, so this is not a walk. The buildings are fairly widely dispersed throughout Cambridge with busy roads in between. I suggest that you visit these buildings when you are close to them, or make an effort to visit any building that particularly interests you, rather than tackling the whole lot at one go. There is a scale at the bottom of the map. A kilometre is just over half a mile. Click on the red on the map, or on the links, for descriptions and pictures.

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