Blog

8 January 2025

Last week, the Garden Department returned to work after a very well-deserved break. Prior to Christmas, the team had the annual big push to try and clear up all the leaves by the Christmas cut-off point. This brings to the end a gigantic task that starts in October.

What this does mean, though, is that we can start the new year fresh. It certainly is a myth that gardeners have a chance to put their feet up in January and February! This period is often one of the Garden Department’s busier times. We have a winter pruning schedule ahead of us now that will take around two to three months to complete.

The department turns its attention to the more formative pruning that is required at this time of year. We have many Wisteria plants on site that require their seasonal prune as well as tying back into the plant supports. The apple trees need pruning, the new Plane trees will need the seasonal trim, the climbing roses will need pruning and training, the lime trees will need pollarding, the hazels will need thinning out and the trees around the site will need attention.

At this time of year, we look to start cutting back our herbaceous borders where we can. We leave as much growth as we dare so the insects have somewhere for shelter. There are so many borders within the college that we simply cannot leave it all until springtime to do. We must start in the winter periods to ensure we complete it all. With some of the borders having been trimmed down, we can then apply some mulch to the borders. This is in the form of our homemade compost that the departments create throughout the year.

This not only smartens up the appearance of the borders but also suppresses the weeds, locks in moisture and adds some additional nutrition to the soil. The Garden Department tries to be as sustainable as possible by using its own compost and leaf mold. This means that there is less garden waste being taken away off site. We process more garden waste than ever now, meaning that we buy less compost and do not contribute to unnecessary transportation.

The first task of the year always starts with taking all the Christmas trees down around the college. This is a stark reminder that all the partying is done and time to roll up our sleeves and focus on the pruning!

Best wishes.

Brendon Sims, Head Gardener

8 January 2025

I is for … Inscriptions

Inscribed stones and plaques can be seen all around the college, celebrating such things as Emmanuel worthies and benefactors, the planting of notable trees, and the completion of new college buildings. An example of the latter is the Latin datestone set into the library façade (pictured). This records, a touch cryptically, the building’s completion in the 325th year of the college’s foundation (i.e.1909). Prior to the twentieth century, nearly all the college’s inscriptions consisted of memorial tablets or gravestones, and were confined to the chapel and its cloister. There was one exception, however: the Latin epigraph displayed on the imposing stone archway housing the main college entrance gates, in Emmanuel Street. Shortly before the college’s 1587 dedication feast, at which the Founder, Sir Walter Mildmay, was to be present, workmen were paid to take ‘downe the great gates and sett them up agayne’. There is no mention of the inscription, though, so it is not certain whether it was installed then, or subsequently. According to Francis Blomefield’s 1751 work, Collectanea Cantabrigiensa, the wording of the inscription was: Sacrae Theologiae Studiosis, posuit Gualterus Mildmaius Ao. Dne. 1584 (‘Founded by Walter Mildmay for the study of sacred theology in the year of our Lord 1584’). When the main college entrance was translocated to St Andrew’s Street in the 1770s, the original gateway presumably became largely redundant, but is thought to have survived until 1824, when New Court was constructed. The inscription appears to have then perished with the rest of the archway. One day, if the opportunity arises, it could perhaps be carved anew somewhere in college.

I is for … Inventories

Any large institution needs to know what it owns. Four years after Emmanuel’s foundation, the following payment appears in the college accounts: ‘For two paper… inventorie books for the College - vs iiid’. The earliest inventory was made in 1589, immediately after these books had been purchased. It comprised a list of moveable goods kept in the chapel, hall, parlour and kitchen complex. Similar room-by-room inventories continued to be made for some years, but as the college grew, so did its collection of valuables, and before long it became necessary to have separate listings of things like library books and silverware. These early college inventories are both fascinating and frustrating. They record many objects that have since been lost, sold, or melted down and re-fashioned. We read, for instance, of the ‘doble gylt’ cup used at high table by the first Master, the dozen ‘knopt spoones with Lions head att the end’, the stained-glass panels in the chapel windows showing ‘the Queenes armes’, the ‘movable hearth of Ironn’ in the dining hall, and the ‘Celestiall maps in frames’ hung in the library. Conversely, the inventories omit many things that were certainly here.  The celebrated Founder’s Cup, for instance, is not mentioned until 1622, but only because the treasury, where it was kept, was not included in the room listings before that date. Similarly, a good many college paintings are not recorded until the first comprehensive picture inventory was compiled in the late eighteenth century, even though some of them had certainly been in college ownership for many years. Emmanuel has a particularly fine series of early library book inventories (a detail from one is pictured), which record an impressive range and quantity of scholarly works. What the inventories don’t show, of course, is how many students actually read any of the books!

Amanda Goode, College Archivist

8 January 2025

                                   Nikolaus von Heideloff, ‘The Gallery of Fashion’ (1794-1802): ‘Opera Dress’, June 1796

As those jumpers emblazoned with reindeer and Santas are mothballed again for another year, and as retailers report ever-declining sales of suits, ties and formal shirts (due partly but not entirely to ‘Working from Home’), Emmanuel’s Graham Watson Collection of illustrated books witnesses to almost unrecognizably different assumptions about clothes, the wearing of which were governed by conventions of formality and decorum.

Most formal of all was the court dress required when wives and daughters of peers and the landed gentry were presented at court. By the second decade of the nineteenth century this had become fossilized into the fashions current fifty years before, because Queen Charlotte resisted any change to the old ways. Dress for women was an outfit with a very wide-hooped petticoat, a train, and ostrich feathers in the hair.

                                                             ‘Gallery’, ‘Court Dress’, July 1796 and February 1796

Presentations were fraught occasions (fraught too for ostriches perhaps), entailing standing for hours and, after being presented, walking backwards out of the room while trying not to trip over one’s train (one could not turn one’s back on the Queen). British court dress of the period for men is the ancestor of some traditional attire of the judiciary.

Another formal observance manifested through clothing, which became progressively more widely observed, was that of mourning.

                                                                   ‘Gallery’, ‘Mourning Dress’, January 1797

In the earlier nineteenth century mourning practice was not yet as codified as it later became once the widowed Queen Victoria adopted mourning as a vocation and lifestyle. Periods of mourning were as yet more flexible and open to individual discretion, but already some of the expected durations of mourning were broadly in place. Widows and widowers were to mourn for a year and a day. For a parent or child, mourning was six months to a year. For a sibling, three to six months. For a grandparent, six months. For aunts and uncles, three months. For a first cousin, six weeks. For a second cousin, one week. Considering the fragility of life at the time, people could easily spend a good proportion of their time in mourning, and mourning was also worn for members of the Royal Family. However, there was the useful gradation of ‘half-mourning’ in attire, into which one might move for the latter part of the mourning period.

                                                                    'Gallery’, ‘Half-Mourning Dress’, May 1798

                                          ‘Gallery’, ‘Mourning Dress (left) and Half-Mourning Dress (right)’, August 1794

Although black with some allowable white characterized full mourning (with no jewellery except jet), the concept of half-mourning allowed a transitional period when clothes in lavender, grey, brown, and black and white mixtures were allowable (and pearls and amethysts might be worn).

Only the affluent, of course, could afford the outfits in the fashion plates, but such publications made images of such mourning fashions available to be imitated throughout the country in amateur dress-making. Jane Austen’s letters indicate how much improvisation and make do and mend went on regarding the observance of mourning through attire in genteel circles in Hampshire.

Many fashion plates illustrate what are termed ‘Morning Dresses’, though these do not define a specific design, only the time of day they might be worn, since mornings were for such different activities as walks, visits to shops, and church services.

                                                                      ‘Gallery’,  ‘Morning Dresses’: June 1800

                                                                                           October 1801

                                                                                          August 1799

                                                                                              July 1800

Mornings were also for down time at home, in accordingly simple attire, very often in white. (The wider fashion for white may go back to a white dress worn by Marie Antoinette in the 1780s which, in its very simplicity and lack of ornament, was considered risqué). Afternoons were for the paying and receiving of formal calls, with clothes to match.

                                                                       ‘Gallery’, ‘Morning Dress’, August 1799

                                                                      ‘Gallery’, ‘Afternoon Dress’, March 1798

There were also fashionable outfits for going riding, and for such evening occasions as operas and concerts.

                                                                             ‘Gallery’, ‘Riding Dress’, June 1799

                                                                       ‘Gallery’, ‘Evening Dress’, June 1795

To a modern eye all these Regency fashions exemplify extremes of the very high or ‘Empire’ waistline, associated with the Empress Josephine. Fashionable waistlines were actually at their highest between 1816 and 1819, but most fashion plates of the whole period exaggerate for effect the drop between waistline and floor.

All the aquatint plates in this blog are from the preeminent fashion plate book of the age, The Gallery of Fashion, issued in monthly instalments between 1794 and 1802.

It was the work of Nikolaus von Heideloff (1761-1839), born in Stuttgart and trained as an engraver. As a young man he worked in Paris painting portrait miniatures, but moved to London at the French Revolution. The hand colouring of his plates is exceptionally refined.

                   ‘Gallery’, ‘Morning Dress’, June 1798 (the display of cleavage is unusual in contemporary English fashion)

Heideloff claimed that the garments depicted ‘are not imaginary but really existing ones’ and as such form ‘a Repository of English National Dresses of Ladies’. In this present age of willed slovenliness it can seem like a lost world of elegance.

Barry Windeatt, Keeper of Rare Books

11 December 2024

The Christmas story is told in tinted drawings in one of the older of the medieval manuscripts in Emmanuel’s collection, some leaves from a Psalter (MS 250.2).

These were made around 1220-1230 in a workshop of London illuminators for the Benedictine abbey of Chertsey in Surrey. They are thus a little older than the church of the Cambridge Dominican friars, the church that later would be repurposed into Emmanuel’s present Hall. The Cambridge Dominicans are recorded to have received royal oaks for their church in 1238.

The story begins when an angel appears to Mary, telling her that she shall conceive a son, to be named Jesus, ‘and of his kingdom there shall be no end’.  To Mary’s question ‘How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?’ the angel replies ‘The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee’ (Luke 1: 28-38).  

The Annunciation. The angel’s scroll represents part of his speech. Interrupted at her reading, no wonder Mary’s gesture and averted gaze seem to convey astonishment at her destiny

The angel further tells Mary that her cousin Elizabeth, previously called barren, is already six months pregnant in her old age, ‘for with God nothing shall be impossible’. Mary hastens to visit her cousin, and when Mary comes in, Elizabeth feels her baby leap in her womb at Mary’s salutation, and cries out to Mary ‘Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb’ (Luke 1: 39-56).

                                     The Visitation. Note the hand reaching forward towards the other woman’s womb

Joseph travels with his expectant wife Mary to Bethlehem in order to be taxed. But Mary is due to give birth, ‘and she brought forth her firstborn son and, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn’ (Luke 2: 1-7). 

The Nativity. In medieval depictions Mary is sometimes shown, as here, turned away from her newborn baby to pursue her own thoughts. Joseph, leaning on a stick, wears the pointed hat that in medieval illustration indicates a Jewish man

Meanwhile, the angel of the Lord appears to shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night, and tells of the birth of a Saviour, whom they will find lying in a manger (Luke 2: 8-20). 

The angel, bearing a palm, addresses three shepherds, who stand on a stylized landscape of three hills with sheep – their dogs are very interested in the angel

‘Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem … behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is he that is born King of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him”’ (Matthew 2: 1-2).

Although guided by a star according to scripture, the artist shows the Magi – here depicted as crowned kings – in some confusion about the right direction to go

Rattled by this news of a rival Jewish king, Herod summons the wise men and sends them to Bethlehem to seek out the child, adding duplicitously ‘and when ye have found him, bring me word again, that I may come and worship him also’ (Matthew 2: 3-8).

A crowned King Herod, seated in a swaggering posture, and with a tiny page holding his sword before him, seems to be almost squeezing the crowned Magi against the righthand edge. (They are depicted, according to tradition, as representing youth, middle age, and old age)

‘Lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was’. The wise men fall down and worship the child, presenting him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh (Matthew 2: 9-11).

Adoration of the Magi.  Mary is shown crowned and enthroned, holding up an orb from which a plant springs, while the three kings hold their gifts aloft

‘And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way’ (Matthew 2: 12). 

Slumbering on luxurious pillows, the three kings have gone to bed while still wearing their crowns (as one does). But, contrary to scripture, the artist represents the youngest king awake to receive the angel’s warning

Joseph is similarly warned by an angel in a dream to flee with Mary and Jesus to safety in Egypt, beyond the reach of King Herod (Matthew 2: 12-15).

The Flight into Egypt.  Joseph leads the donkey, with an assistant behind. Many apocryphal miracles became associated with this refugee journey

Then Herod – enraged ‘when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men’ – orders the massacre of all children under the age of two in the vicinity of Bethlehem (Matthew 2: 11). 

The Massacre of the Innocents.  Two knights wearing contemporary chainmail murder children in their mothers’ arms with sword and spear. To the right, Herod supervises, crowned and sceptred, and in a lordly cross-legged posture

The Christmas story closes at Candlemas on 2 February, when Mary and Joseph present the child to the Lord in the temple. A devout old man, Simeon, to whom it has been revealed that he shall not die until he has seen Christ, takes the child in his arms, blessing God and uttering the words ‘Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace’. 

                                                   Presentation in the Temple.  Joseph carries an offering of doves

Although these fragile leaves, eight centuries old, visualize the Christmas story in some different ways than later art has shaped later imaginings of the episodes, they possess their own energy, directness and power.

Barry Windeatt, Keeper of Rare Books

11 December 2024

The Christmas cards sent out in 1911 by the Master of Emmanuel College and his wife (Dr Peter Giles, and Mary) featured a photograph of the rather dilapidated tenements fronting the eastern half of Emmanuel Street. This un-Christmassy image was presumably chosen because it offered a ‘Last Chance to See’. Indeed, by the time the cards were sent out, the entire row of buildings had been razed to make way for North Court.

The plot of land on which North Court now stands had been purchased by Emmanuel College from John Atkinson, yeoman, for £400 in July 1612. It comprised ‘Nyne messuages or tenements with gardens and two barnes adioyning…next the lane late called Preachers lane and nowe called Emanuell Colledg lane on the south’. The sitting tenants comprised a clerk, a widow, a yeoman, a brasier (brass worker), a tailor, two cooks, a baker, a bricklayer and an ‘aquaviteman’ (maker and/or seller of spirits). Perhaps Emmanuel’s Master and Fellows foresaw that the college would one day want the land for the purpose of expansion, but in any case, the college authorities were building up a rental and commercial property portfolio in Cambridge, and sites adjacent to the college precinct were particularly prized. Emmanuel already owned the cottages running along the western half of Emmanuel Street, for example, as well as the substantial dwelling-house, called St Nicholas’s Hostel, on the other side of the Atkinson property.

By the early 1900s, with student numbers rising steadily, Emmanuel badly needed additional accommodation, and commissioned designs for a new court from Leonard Stokes, one of the leading architects of the day. Stokes immediately got the bit between his teeth, and produced several grandiose building schemes that would have encroached on both the Fellows’ Garden and the Paddock – one of them even requiring the pond to be filled in! The college firmly rejected these high-flown proposals, deciding instead that the new court would be erected on the Atkinson site, once the existing buildings had been swept away. Stokes submitted a choice of new designs, the preferred option being formally sanctioned by Emmanuel’s governing body in October 1910. The building works were scheduled to be carried out in two phases, to allow the Emmanuel Street tenants as much time as possible to move out. Demolition work got under way in earnest in the summer of 1911.

At the time the Master’s Christmas card photo was taken, in late 1910 or early 1911, four of the nine tenements mentioned in the 1612 conveyance were still standing, numbered 13-16 Emmanuel Street. The remaining properties had been rebuilt at various times. While we might now regret the loss of the picturesque Elizabethan houses, the college authorities were unanimously enthusiastic at the prospect of replacing the tottering tenements with a prestigious new building. As it turned out, North Court even exceeded expectations and was much-praised, then and afterwards. The Architectural Review, for example, described it as ‘a remarkably effective piece of work, full of vigour’, while the architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner considered the court to be one of the finest Edwardian buildings in Cambridge. It is of some consolation then, that the historic properties in eastern Emmanuel Street were at least replaced with a structure of high architectural merit – something that cannot be said about a good many other ancient Cambridge properties that fell victim to the wrecking ball in the twentieth century.

Amanda Goode, College Archivist

28 November 2024

As I write this blog, I have just returned to the office having spent many hours clearing leaves. Even before I could get into the office this morning, I had to fight with the oriental plane tree leaves that had fallen over a very blustery weekend. The leaves were at least six inches deep and as far as the eye could see in the garden yards. It certainly wakes you up at that time in the morning. I typically arrive at work at 6:30am to plan my day.

The next step of the day involves a site tree survey. After a blustery weekend (gusts up to 60mph), it is essential to check the trees for damage and make sure that there are no dangerous limbs hanging. As much as this is an essential task, it is always a great excuse to stop and really look at our amazing collection of trees. The Emmanuel grounds are blessed to have so many wonderful trees. The beautiful autumn colours looked fantastic in the bright sunshine.

I often use this period when we are looking at trees to educate my staff at this time of year. Those who have been working with me for a while already have been taught, but there are the newer members of the team, the students we have working here.

As a Head Gardener, a lifetime of experience has drawn me ever closer to the fantastic nature of trees. I am a full on dendrophile. A dendrophile is a person who loves trees. A passionate dendrophile talks about the characteristics of different trees as if describing people. That’s me. A dendrophile.

It is so easy to set a task to the team of clearing leaves, but how many really think about it? I like to stop and teach the team about identification, characteristics, form and structure, botany and plant science and open discussions about tree management and the role that it plays in securing the future of our planet. Never in the history of the world have trees been more important.

At Emmanuel, there are many leaves to pick up. Day, after day, after day. For months on end. Weirdly, my team genuinely does not mind it. Yes, it is relentless, monotonous, and very much like ground hog day, but as gardeners we understand. We understand that you do not get the good bits without the collection. The by-product of beauty. We understand that teamwork will get us through. We share the passion for the trees, and we do this on behalf of all of you all, but also for ourselves.

The Ginko biloba (Maiden Hair Tree) has looked amazing this year. The sunlight hits perfectly to show off its radiant glow of gold. The fruits, however, are not so pleasant. They really do smell when they fall to the ground. The Ginko biloba seeds are protected by the fleshy sarcotesta. The sarcotesta is full of foul-smelling butyric acid, which also forms when butter goes rancid. Spare a thought for all our garden team as they clear the Ginko seeds along with the golden carpet that is the under canopy of the Ginko. 

Best wishes.

Brendon Sims, Head Gardener

27 November 2024

                                 ‘Kyles of Bute’, in J. C. Schetky and Lord John Manners, ‘A Cruise in Scotch Waters’ (1850)

Just before St Andrew’s Day seems an apt moment to explore depictions of Scotland’s scenery in Emmanuel’s collection of illustrated books. The transformation in taste has often been described, in which those upland parts of Britain that had previously been viewed as ugly and terrifying in their barrenness and isolation became venerated as sites of the picturesque and the sublime. That only a very selective glimpse can be provided here of all the images of Scotland’s mountains and coasts in the College’s Graham Watson Collection makes its own point about a developing admiration, in which its scenic beauty is a key part of modern perceptions of Scotland.

Even a volume presenting fine panoramas of Scottish cities and towns will necessarily include picturesque prospects, as in this view of Melrose in the Borders.

                                 J. Clark, ‘Views in Scotland’ (1824-25).  Now a very rare book, with 32 splendid plates

When it comes to depictions of Highland landscape, these tend to allow vastness its fullest measure by placing the viewpoint of the picture on the valley floor, surrounded and towered over by mountains.

           ‘In Glen Nevis’, in Schetky and Manners, ‘Scotch Waters’. This book is illustrated with fine hand-coloured lithographs

                                          ‘Inverlochy Castle, by Fort William’, in Schetky and Manners, ‘Scotch Waters’

Some of these towering mountains rise with jagged dark peaks seen against the sky. Expanses of water are frequently emphasized, on which boats look like toys in the shadow of the mountains. 

    ‘The Coolin from Loch Slapin, Skye’, in William Daniell, ‘A Voyage round the North and North West Coast of Scotland’ (1820)

                                                                         ‘Loch Scavig’, in Daniell, ‘Voyage’

Both uses of colour and absence of colour underline the stark strangeness of some of the formations depicted. 

‘Loch Avon, in G. F. Robson, ‘Scenery of the Grampian Mountains’ (1819). Robson’s original sketches survive for the plates in this book. Engraved by Henry Morton, the plates were ‘coloured from original drawings made on the spot by the author’.

                                 'Entrance to Fingal’s Cave’, in William Daniell, ‘Illustrations of the Island of Staffa’ (1818)

Nor does the colouring in a volume devoted to views in the Grampian Mountains shy away from depicting landscapes in light that suggests that rain is never far away.

                                              ‘Ben Vorlich from the north side of Loch Earn’, in Robson, ‘Scenery’

                                              ‘Ben More from the north side of Glen Dochart’, in Robson, ‘Scenery’

The special place of water, mobile and potent, is represented in numerous images of the Scottish coastline, whether this is sheer cliffs in Shetland or the distinctive geology of the island of Staffa with its Fingal’s Cave. 

                                                           ‘Knoop of Noss, Zetland’, in Schetky, ‘Scotch Waters’

                                                                   ‘Near Fingal’s Cave’, in Daniell, ‘Staffa’

Also part of seascapes are striking natural features like Clett Rock, with flocks of wheeling seabirds, or a picturesquely ruined castle, perched precariously on a beetling crag on the Hebridean island of Raasay. 

                                                                          ‘Clett Rock’, in Daniell, ‘Voyage’

                                                                 ‘Castle Broichin, Raasay’, in Daniell, ‘Voyage’

In these landscapes and seascapes, human figures, where they appear, are dwarfed. But there are other volumes – devoted to customs and costumes, pastimes and employments – where this is reversed, and landscape forms the background to a human focus. Here are Highlanders collecting dulce, a kind of edible seaweed that was a staple of their diet. The accompanying text recalls the hunger and privations of past times of famine, celebrating the mutual support between one member and another that is part of the clan system. 

R. R. McIan, ‘Picturesque Gatherings of the Scottish Highlands’ (1848). The title-page promises ‘Picturesque Groups engaged in their social employment, their sports, and pastimes’.

                                                                              McIan, ‘Picturesque Gatherings’

Here too are young Highland men competing in the sport of throwing the stone, watched by demure young women who are less colourfully dressed and all with identical hairstyles.  In the distance people make their way to the gathering, strung out across a Highland path.

Barry Windeatt, Keeper of Rare Books

27 November 2024

H is for … Henry VIII

Given that Emmanuel College was not founded until 1584, any connection with Henry VIII might be thought somewhat tenuous. Yet Emmanuel owes both its existence and its location to the events of Henry’s reign. The momentous break with Rome ultimately allowed Protestant reformers to flourish, including Emmanuel’s founder, Sir Walter Mildmay, who would later possess the zeal (and money) to foster the dissemination of the new faith. Furthermore, had Henry VIII not authorised the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s, the premises occupied by the Dominican order in Cambridge would not have come onto the open market, and later been acquired as the site of Mildmay’s new college. The college archives contain two royal charters sanctioning the sale of confiscated monastic property. These deeds, known as licences to alienate, bear the ‘Great Seal’ of Henry VIII. The earlier one, dated 1540 (above left) relates to an estate in Eltisley, Cambridgeshire, formerly owned by the nunnery of Hinchingbrooke.  This property was later acquired by Emmanuel, but the grantee in 1540 was ‘Richard Williams alias Crumwell’, nephew of Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s chief minister. The grant was sealed a few days before Cromwell was created Earl of Essex, a title he did not enjoy for long. The other licence to alienate (above right), dated 2 March 1545, authorises the sale of the Dominican premises in Cambridge, later home to Emmanuel College. A comparison of the two seals shows that a new matrix had been created during the intervening period. Designed in 1542 by Morgan Phillips alias Wolfe, the king’s goldsmith, the new seal reflected - somewhat belatedly - the changes that had taken place in the king’s appearance, including the style of his robes, his hair (shorter) and his weight (much heavier).

H is for … Hobson

The phrase Hobson’s choice, meaning ‘take it or leave it’, is still in popular use, centuries after it was coined. It alludes to Thomas Hobson, a wealthy Cambridge carrier and livery-stable owner, who hired out his horses in strict rotation, regardless of a client’s preference. Hobson is mentioned several times in our college accounts. In 1588 he was retrospectively paid for transporting pewter and other chattels from London, doubtless in connection with Emmanuel’s December 1587 dedication feast. The cartage included a payment of 16s 6d ‘for carrying the parlor table waying 500 & a half’. Later in the same year Hobson supplied the college with three horses, ‘one to goe upp, th’other to come down’ (but what about the third?), at a cost of 5s per horse. Soon afterwards he delivered ‘D[r] Fulks book’ to the college, doubtless one of several volumes by William Fulke listed in an early library inventory. In 1590 Hobson was entrusted with ‘bringing downe O[u]r founders picture hampiers 4 with books & other things unpaid for waying ten hundredth. xxiii s 4d’. This was shortly after the death in London of Sir Walter Mildmay, and the hampers may well have included the founder’s bequests to Emmanuel of plate and money. Thomas Hobson was active in, and a financial supporter of, various Cambridge civic enterprises. In 1606 our accounts record a payment of £3 10s ‘To the vicechanslar for bringing the river through the towne’. This was the college’s contribution to the costs of the proposed scheme to bring clean water from Nine Wells to Cambridge, via a new aqueduct known to posterity as Hobson’s Conduit. In 1631, the year of Hobson’s death, a branch channel from the conduit was cut across what is now Chapman’s Garden. This watercourse was originally a straight, narrow channel (pictured), but was later widened and given a curved shape.

Amanda Goode, College Archivist

30 October 2024

G is for … Gillick

The name of Royal Academician Ernest Gillick may not be well-known beyond the art world, but resident members of Emmanuel pass one of his sculptures nearly every day, and even the most library-averse student will occasionally encounter his two other college commissions. His most familiar work is the First World War memorial in the chapel cloister. This wall-mounted slab of Purbeck marble records the names of Emmanuel’s Fallen with minimal ornamentation, but the quality of the incised lettering, with its clever use of ligatures, is of the highest. Gillick’s first artwork for the college had been a bronze plaque, now installed above the main library staircase, depicting Evelyn Shuckburgh. A Fellow, librarian and historian of Emmanuel, Shuckburgh died in 1906. When Emmanuel’s Classics don, James Adam, died (at a relatively young age) the following year, the college initially contemplated asking Gillick to produce a companion plaque, but soon decided that a ‘symbolic design’, alluding to Classical antiquity, would be a more fitting memorial. Gillick consequently proposed a figure of Philosophy, standing before a bas-relief gilded panel depicting the nine Muses. The original design was not fully adopted, as neither the college nor Dr Adam’s widow, Adela, was entirely happy with it (she thought the principal figure looked ‘pinched and suffering’). Consequently, the sculpture was not completed until 1912, but it was worth waiting for, as it forms a striking and beautiful focal point in the main library reading room. ‘Sophy’ was originally to have held a circular marble plaque, but Gillick’s revised design substituted a laurel wreath. This gilded garland is detachable, resulting on occasion in its mysterious relocation to the figure’s head.

G is for … Graffiti

Stone-carving is best left to professionals like Gillick, although context or antiquity can certainly endow graffiti with a degree of interest. Several examples of this form of self-expression can be seen about the college. The inscription ‘R F 1670’, still faintly visible on the external east wall of Christopher Wren’s chapel, was made well before the building was completed. It was presumably carved by one of the masons, as no student with those initials was resident that year. A graffito in the chapel bell turret reads: ‘Thomas Holbech 1680’. We can safely assume that this was not the handiwork of the septuagenarian Master of Emmanuel, who died in autumn that year, but that of his great-nephew, who had matriculated in 1678. The smooth creamy-pink oolitic limestone of the chapel cloister has inevitably proved irresistible to graffiti ‘artists’ over the centuries, but fortunately their scrawls have usually proved easy to efface. A more erudite inscription can be attributed to Frederick Attenborough (father of Sir Richard, Sir David, and John). Frederick was at Emmanuel between 1915 and 1925, firstly as a student and then as Fellow. He was an Anglo-Saxon specialist, and for many years the name ‘Attenboro’, lightly carved in Old English runes, could be seen on the stonework near his rooms on B staircase. No trace of this inscription now remains, but fortunately a photograph of it survives. The arches above F and G staircase entries in Old Court have attracted several amateur chisellers over the centuries. As well as random incised letters, G’s arch displays a quadruped of some sort and a human face. Woodwork and glass also offer opportunities for graffitists. The back of a panel in the Welbourne Room bears the epigraph ‘Barkley 1647’, courtesy of William Barkley, admitted to Emmanuel in June of that year. A window pane in G5 displays the etching made in 1922 by the set’s occupants, John Vorley and Frederic Maxwell Harris. The mysterious lady presumably represented by the initials ‘D.E.H.’ has not been identified.

Amanda Goode, College Archivist

30 October 2024

It all began when, while I was Vice-Master, I had the interesting experience of being a member of the Working Party that oversaw the design and implementation of the new and refurbished buildings on the College's southern edge. These include the social hub created out of the former bar and now named Fiona’s. On one side this new College café looks out over Chapman’s Garden, and I decided that a sundial on the sober brick elevation of the Westmorland Building, visible from Fiona’s, would be my contribution to the new building project.

The first step was to discuss a design appropriate to the location with the distinguished letter-cutter Dr Lida Lopes Cardozo at the Cardozo Kindersley Workshop in Cambridge (www.kindersleyworkshop.co.uk).  Lida soon sketched her suggested design, with a break-arch slate dial plate.

There would be a golden sunburst, within a sky-blue disc that references the blue clock face on the Chapel front. The silhouette of the brass gnomon would echo the wavy beams of the sunburst. The hour lines on the dial would be golden rays descending from the sunburst to the Roman numerals marking the hours, with an inscription below. It would be essential for the accuracy of the time-telling that calculations were made for the exact location of the sundial. For the many sundials that the Workshop has made at home and abroad, Lida works with the diallist Dr Frank King, of Churchill College.

Meanwhile a protracted process was underway to gain Listed Building Consent from the City Council. Once this was received, the piece of slate was ordered from a quarry in North Wales. When the slate had arrived, Lida drew her design on the slate in chalk.

All work at the Cardozo Kindersley Workshop is carried out by hand, so Emily Bunton then began the time-consuming task, with mallet and chisel, to remove the slate between the sun’s rays, so leaving the sunburst in relief.

After this had been completed, the hour lines and the numerals marking the hours were also cut into the slate with mallet and chisel, along with an inscription cut in italic lettering at the foot of the dial.

After the cutting was completed, the sunburst and hour lines were gilded by application of gold leaf, and the background to the sunburst was painted sky-blue.

The lettering and numerals were painted off-white, before the excess was cleaned away to reveal the completed sundial.

Finally, there was the little matter of lifting this heavy piece of slate into position and fixing it to the Westmorland Building. Scaffolding was erected, and the sundial was hauled up and fixed using three pins into the mortar, so that its installation is at any time ‘reversible’ – a condition of Listed Building Consent.  The lines from the revelations of the medieval English mystic Julian of Norwich (c.1342-c.1416) were chosen as an expression of hope and confidence whenever in time they are read.

Barry Windeatt, Keeper of Rare Books

30 October 2024

As I write this blog about the gardens, the sun has gone in, and the clouds have come out. We have been experiencing some very warm days for this time of year, mixed with, at times, some glorious spells of sunshine. It was officially the wettest 18 months on record and, if there is a positive to come out of that, it would go somewhat to redressing some of the damage done from the droughts of a couple of years ago.

I have just come back from a conference at Kew Gardens. The subject of the conference was ‘Horticultural Solutions for the Planet’. The key topics were about climate change in the industry, and how the industry intends to adapt towards sustainability and climate change. One of the topics covered was how Kew Gardens uses modelling to predict which species to plant in the gardens.

In 2022, there were over 550 tree deaths in Kew Gardens alone; this is an enormous tree mortality figure. Tree species that would usually cope with the climate in the United Kingdom have been really struggling. Our native trees are under threat like never before.

Oak trees, beech trees and rowan trees are at greatest risk. It is predicted that the climate by 2050 will be nearer the climate of Barcelona than the usual cooler days of what was traditionally our climate. It is inevitable that the college will suffer further tree mortality, but we will have to consider which species to plant in the future.

It would also certainly explain the wonderful colours of the leaves this year – they are falling rapidly now, though. Please spare a thought for the Garden Team at this time of year. We are working our socks off to try and clear as many leaves as possible! This can be a thankless task, and you can clear a huge pile of leaves one moment, only to turn around and see that the leaves have dropped another thousand more!

The department works so hard to try and get most of the leaves cleared by Christmas. This is a gargantuan task. There are multiple thousands of cubic meters of these that are collected. The majority of those are stored and composted to be reused on the beds. This is a wonderful thing to do and makes the garden much more sustainable. Next spring, most of the compost will be spread on the flower beds as mulch. This, in turn, will help with other things, such as suppressing the weeds, holding in moisture (less watering for us to do, thereby saving a valuable water source) and adding valuable nutrients back to the soil. The whole process is very labour-intensive but essential.

Elsewhere in the gardens, I am delighted to see the Emmanuel College Community Gardens being used by the students for the first time. I attended the Freshers' Fair at the start of term and was encouraged to engage in some great conversations with some fabulous students.

As a result of the publicity, we held our first ‘come along and try’ meetings, and these were very well attended, one of them on a beautiful sunny autumn afternoon. It was fantastic to see the students who participated engaging in the practical and healthy benefits of gardening. It really has created a buzz of excitement!

If anybody else is interested in becoming involved, then please contact me via email. Please leave a message on the gardeners' contact email or use the QR code on the shed in Park Terrace for more details. Please also speak to our student representative, Sasha Carter.

I look forward to seeing more of you all soon.

Kind regards.

Brendon Sims, Head Gardener

1 October 2024

The last few weeks have been a bit tricky in the college gardens. The late summer sunshine did not get the memo, and the team have been hampered by some unseasonal wet spells and high winds. This weather couldn’t have made itself more apparent than a couple of weeks ago, when we noticed something strange about our beloved pterocarya tree (Caucasian Wingnut) in the Jester Garden by the pond.

We had noticed that, the last time we mowed the grass under the tree, the branches seemed a little lower to the ground than what we had noticed before. At that stage, the difference was very subtle, and we put that down to the exceptional year of growth that we have experienced in all areas of the gardens.

On the Monday morning, we noticed that the branches were lower still. On closer inspection, we noticed a crack in the bottom of the trunk. We decided to call out the tree surgeons for a closer inspection. As a precaution, we barriered this area off just in case. The tree was diagnosed with something called bark inclusion and that was the reason the branches were slightly lower than before. We agreed a plan to take some weight from the lower branches.

As it happened, it was wise to barrier that area off. At around 8pm, the tree literally fell in half and into the Jester Garden. On closer inspection on Tuesday morning as I returned to work, the damage was clearer to see. The area that was split at the base of the tree had completely fallen apart and caused a basal failure.

Bark inclusion occurs mainly on a multi-stem tree. It happens when two lower branches grow together and almost grow into each other. As the branches forge together the bark continues to grow and the bark becomes included. Over time, this produces enormous force upon the tree, literally pulling itself apart as it grows. Trees with included bark are, on average, 25% weaker than those with one solid union. The pterocarya tree in the Jester Garden had included bark at the base, but this was not obvious and looked just like a gnarly tree trunk. The tree survey that was carried out less that two years ago showed that the tree was still in good health. The survey did note a small area of mycelium growing around the base of the trunk, but this did not seem to be in danger.

The tree fell because of two things. The first was that it was under a large amount of force due to the bark inclusion and, secondly, that the tree's brace had failed and snapped. At some point, the tree had been pulled back in line with the aid of a tree brace placed high up into the tree. This problem had obviously been an issue in the past. However, there were no tree records nor survey records when I took over as Head Gardener. The tree braces are supposed to be checked every five years. The braces were placed so high in the tree that they were not visible on a ground inspection. Even the tree surveyors did not pick up the tree braces in the tree. There was so much force on the tree braces with the force of the tree growing apart that they eventually failed. The weight of the branches in the tree and the force growing apart pulled the tree apart, almost like somebody pulling on a wishbone of a chicken. The tree could not take the force.

I took professional advice from several tree consultants and tree surgeons about the best way to tackle the problem. The initial thought was that we could reduce some of the weight and tree and winch the tree back together and strap it. The break was in a position that theoretically meant this may have been possible. However, it soon became evident that this approach would not be possible. There was simply too much weight in the tree and, as the tree surgeons started work, the tree shifted once more, revealing even more damage. Collectively, we had to make hard decisions and, although this is a prominent and important tree within the Emmanuel gardens, safety had to be our primary concern. It was agreed that, in the first instance, we would try and save the tree at all costs.

There was significant basal failure and multiple breaks in the lower trunk. We had to remove approximately 80% of the tree at a time of year when it was not ideal. Time will tell how the tree will recover, if at all. The tree will likely send up multiple shoots from the ground as a response. This tree does that naturally anyway, but we expect the tree will send up many more shoots as a survival response. This shooting is called epicormic growth (water shoots). Usually, our management techniques would see us remove these shoots. However, we will leave the shoots for now as they will capture essential sugars in the leaves that will aid the tree’s recovery.

This tree will not look as before for many years, but we will try and keep it. The tree will hold many memories for all that have stood under it in the shade. I think I have a responsibility to try and fight for the tree. The immediate look of the landscape will change and there is nobody more upset about this than myself. I do have to remind myself that I work alongside nature every day, that these are living, breathing specimens. Veteran trees become part of our lives forever, but now and again they fail. Climate change will have played a huge part in the life of the tree. Everywhere is seeing premature tree deaths and problems with branch necrosis. At Emmanuel College, we are not alone in these factors. Tree stress will usually not manifest until several years after extreme weather events. The hottest summers, the driest spells, the wettest springs, the record wind strengths and the multiple number of storms will inevitably take their toll. The average life span of veteran trees has been shortened. Tree failure will become more commonplace. I have not given up on our pterocarya tree yet, though - although failure may be its inevitable fate.

Best wishes.

Brendon Sims, Head Gardener

1 October 2024

F is for … Founder’s Cup

The silver-gilt tazza given to the college by the Founder, Sir Walter Mildmay, is one of Emmanuel’s greatest treasures. The hallmarks show it to have been made in Antwerp in 1541/42, and its repoussé decorative work, depicting fabled sea monsters and other creatures, is of exceptional quality. Recent research indicates that the famous cup of Veere (Zeeland), thought to have been commissioned by Emperor Charles V, and closely associated with the Dutch royal family, is almost certainly by the same (unidentified) maker. Emmanuel’s cup is, if anything, of even finer workmanship, and certainty fit for a king’s table. It is therefore tempting to speculate that it may once have been owned by a Tudor monarch, which begs the question of how Sir Walter got his hands on it. He had worked as a crown financial officer since leaving Cambridge University in the 1540s, and his abilities were such that he was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer by Queen Elizabeth I in January 1559, just a few weeks after her accession. From 1566 he was also a Privy Counsellor. These were important offices, and Sir Walter became a very wealthy man. He also had important contacts at the royal court, as his brother-in-law was Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth I’s famous spymaster, and his good friend and Northamptonshire neighbour, William Cecil, was the Queen’s chief minister. All that can be said for certain, though, is that at some point in his career Sir Walter either created, or took advantage of, an opportunity to acquire this exquisite tazza, which he personalised by adding his coat of arms to the finial of the cover. The Founder’s Cup is still used during important college ceremonials.

F is for … Fives

Fives is a handball game involving four participants (two to a team), played in a small, contained court – a sort of squash without rackets. Variants of the sport originated at Eton and Rugby schools, and when Emmanuel’s squash court complex was constructed in 1933, it incorporated an Eton fives court at one end and a Rugby fives court at the other. The building was erected on the site of an even earlier Eton court. This little structure features in no known photographs, but in December 2016 the original designs were discovered in a roll of architects’ plans of the Victorian Master’s Lodge. They comprise workmanlike drawings by John Gray & Son, builders, and are dated 1875 (one is pictured). We know from later correspondence that the court had been built of high-quality Clipsham stone, which might seem surprising, given the unpretentious nature of the building. The most likely explanation is that this was a re-use of redundant stone from the original Master’s lodgings, part of which had been demolished to make room for the Victorian Lodge (this could also account for the plans of the buildings being stored together). The demolition of the Eton court to make way for the swish 1933 suite, occasioned ‘keen regret on the part of some, to whom it had been a great boon’, but the new facility was a resounding success, and its humble predecessor was soon forgotten. The popularity of fives began to decline at Emmanuel during the 1950s, however, and by the end of the following decade the games were defunct at club level. The college authorities therefore agreed that the Rugby court would become a storeroom, and the Eton court should be extended to form a second squash court. This decision was unquestionably pragmatic, but from an aesthetic point of view the alterations are rather regrettable, as the original 1933 building was a fine example of inter-war sports architecture.

Amanda Goode, College Archivist

4 September 2024

For all their importance, cooking and kitchens are illustrated rarely and almost incidentally in the College’s collection of illustrated books. The few pictures to be found represent a very different world from the idea of the modern kitchen, whether that is the sleekly gleaming idyll in the interior design magazines or the worn and messy reality in the home. 

How most people cooked happens to be depicted incidentally in a seriocomic book about naval life entitled Greenwich Hospital (1826), which has the lengthy sub-title ‘A Series of Sketches, Descriptive of the Life of a Man-of-War’s Man, by an Old Sailor’. One of the ‘sketches’ is the tale of a sailor who is reluctant to board his ship when she sails because he is busy roasting a plump goose.

                                    Greenwich Hospital: A Series of Naval Sketches, Illustrated by George Cruikshank (1826)

The goose is shown suspended by a wire from a rotating wheel in front of the fire in a cluttered living room. The coal is banked up in a kind of range, fronted by a grille. A large saucepan is perched steeply on top of the coals. A large kettle is on the side. The sailor is basting the fowl over a bowl below to catch the fat. A black cat is gazing intently at the roasting meat. With variations, cooking over a domestic hearth like this would be the norm in many households. 

Other illustrations of kitchens and cooking tend to occur in books illustrating grand and historic buildings. Such pictures are found rather occasionally and are perhaps included for a kind of negatively picturesque value. These kitchens of large households are spaces of a smoky grandeur that complements depictions of the interiors and exteriors of castles and colleges that figure on the other pages of illustrated books. In the deluxe illustrated volumes for both Oxford and Cambridge that the publishing entrepreneur, Rudolph Ackermann, produced in the early nineteenth century, there is only room for pictures of the kitchens of the largest college in each university, probably because these cavernous spaces had a picturesque dimension absent from smaller college kitchens. The picture of the kitchen at Christ Church, Oxford, certainly suggests how the fires, heat and smoke of kitchens had traditionally been associated with hell.

                                     Kitchen, Christ Church, in R. Ackermann, History of the University of Oxford (1814)

Clouds of smoke are issuing from an enormous open fire, before which numerous fowls are being roasted on a grille, with a pan below for the fat. There appears to be nowhere for the smoke and condensation to escape, apart from through the large open shutters, which presumably needed to be open in all weathers. In the foreground a man prepares yet more fowl for roasting at one table and a woman prepares a small mountain of green vegetables at another. The walls appear to be predictably grimed with smoke and soot from generations of cooking in the space.

The illustration of the kitchen at Trinity College, Cambridge, shows a similarly gloomy and cavernous space, although the inclusion in the picture of the kitchen roof with its lantern might suggest that there was some provision for the escape of smoke and smell through that.

                                Kitchen, Trinity College, in R. Ackermann, History of the University of Cambridge (1815)

To the left, before a raging fire, some staff are working in what would be scorching heat. There appears to be a system of pulleys over the hearth in order to rotate the roasting meat on spits. A woman takes a break with a dog; a maid sweeps up. A man seems to be preparing a large fish. At an ‘island’ others may be preparing pastry; three headless fowl droop over the edge. Vegetables lie unceremoniously on the floor.

The ‘Ancient Kitchen’ at Windsor Castle shows another distinctly grimy and cavernous space, although it is generously top-lit with windows.

                               ‘Ancient Kitchen’, Windsor Castle, in W. H. Pyne, The History of the Royal Residences (1819)

To the left, meat is being roasted before a huge fire on spits worked by pulleys above, while more is being roasted at another hearth in the far wall. There is a weighing machine and a table groaning with meat in the centre. People prepare food at a further table. Game is being hung on the wall, and vegetables lie in a heap on the floor.

By contrast, the kitchen at St James’s Palace presents a more wholesome regime.

                                   Kitchen, St James’s Palace, in W. H. Pyne, The History of the Royal Residences (1819)

There is much more light, even if the walls do bear the stains of smoke and steam.

Things seem a lot cleaner, including the staff, who are crisply attired for their work. The surfaces and fittings are uncluttered and orderly, designed for the space with drawers. Serried rows of copper pans gleam on shelves and utensils hang neatly in their places. Meat is still being roasted in front of a roaring fire in the hearth, and it looks like a spit is being loaded in front of the window.  But this kitchen does look rather more like the later nineteenth-century kitchens that readers will have seen in tours of country houses. Still to happen are all the innovations in ovens and other cooking appliances, not to mention societal changes, that have helped put the kitchen at the core of modern homes, even if that kitchen may not always look quite like the interior design magazines.

Barry Windeatt, Keeper of Rare Books

4 September 2024

As we approach the start of term, we do not have too much to report in terms of gardening. We have been quietly ticking over and trying to complete our very busy workload, whilst trying to balance the period of the staff summer holidays. It is such a busy year in general and, as Head Gardener, I do not take much time off over the summer. I tend to cover the absences in the department as some of the team have families and must juggle the school holidays. In any other workplace, the summer holidays can just be managed accordingly but, unfortunately, in gardening, this isn’t so easy.

We have all been there when you returned from holiday and your garden has grown far beyond your expectations! In the summer, we can have as many as three gardeners off at any one time, so you can imagine that the workload just keeps piling up. We would like to thank everyone for their patience in this busy period.

In the last few weeks, we have seen the end of the contracts for some of our learning staff. Last week, we had to say goodbye to our apprentice, Izzie Hare. She successfully completed her apprenticeship, and we are pleased to announce that she passed with distinction. I am extremely proud of her and would also like to thank the rest of the Gardening Team for taking the time to pass on their knowledge as well. Izzie is now exploring the option of becoming a self-employed gardener. We all wish her well and thank her for her time tending our gardens. We have had an extraordinarily large number of applicants to replace Izzie as this year’s apprentice gardener. We shall be recruiting shortly.

This week we also say goodbye to our WFGA student, Emily McMullen. Emily has successfully completed her one-year programme with us here at Emmanuel College. Emily has been studying for her RHS exams alongside the placement she had with us. Emily starts her new permanent job at Girton College in a few weeks. This really does prove that the positive environment within the College Garden Department really gets the candidate industry ready. This is important: as an employer, we need to be responsible for addressing a skills shortage in the industry. Education and experience are an enormous part of this. Although we are not retaining the trainees, we can have a full heart knowing that we have been a huge stepping stone in somebody’s life. Hopefully they will remember Emma with fondness and, you never know, they may return in the future as vacancies arise. We have successfully recruited Emily’s replacement, and she starts on 11th September. More news to follow.

In other news in the gardens, we have had quite a lot of tree work done recently. The wet spring and windy weather have challenged some of our trees this year and we have had quite a bit of emergency tree work done. We are not alone, though: at a recent Head Gardener’s forum meeting that I attended, the other Head Gardeners from the colleges shared similar stories. I feel we are paying for the drought season we had a couple of years ago. Trees tend to only show signs of stress a couple of years after severe weather events. The next few years could be quite interesting!

Best wishes.

Brendon Sims, Head Gardener

4 September 2024

E is for … Emmanuel

When Sir Walter Mildmay founded a new Cambridge college in 1584, it was a safe bet that its name would allude to the Christian faith, as his intention was to found a school of ‘prophets’, i.e. moderately Puritan clerics. The name Emmanuel is a transliteration of the Greek rendering of a Hebrew phrase meaning ‘the Lord [is] with us’, but should it have one ‘m’, or two? The most important early college documents, including the foundation charter, the grant of arms (pictured) and the statutes, all employ the spelling ‘Emmanuel’. The first Master, Laurence Chaderton, tended to save time and ink by writing only one ‘m’, but adding an abbreviation mark above it to denote the omitted letter. He was not alone in this habit. Conversely, the early nominations to college scholarships and fellowships, signed by Sir Walter although written by his clerk, invariably employ the longer variant ‘Emmanuell’, and this spelling is also commonly found in early college correspondence. Another popular rendering of the name was ‘Emanuel’ (without any abbreviation mark). This minimalist version was widely used for several centuries, and even as late as the mid-nineteenth century it can be found in Cambridge guidebooks and in the captions to printed engravings of the college. The closest transliteration of the original Hebrew is, in fact, ‘Immanuel’. Cotton Mather, an early alumnus of Harvard College (BA 1678), when reflecting on the large number of Emmanuel graduates who had emigrated to North America, wrote: ‘If New-England hath been in some respects Immanuel’s Land it is well; but this I am sure of, Immanuel College contributed more than a little to make it so..’. It is a striking thought that if Sir Walter Mildmay had favoured this spelling, we would now be using the pet-name ‘Imma’, not ‘Emma’!

E is for … Eltisley

The small village of Eltisley lies eleven miles west of Cambridge. An estate there, known as the manor of Papley alias Papworth Everard, was purchased by Emmanuel College in 1593, for the substantial sum of £900. The manor comprised three messuages, two cottages, one dovecot, three gardens, three orchards, 200 acres of arable land, 40 acres of meadow, 30 acres of pasture, 30 acres of wood, and 200 acres of furze and heath. Although there is nothing especially remarkable about the property itself, it is of unique historical interest in one respect: the title deeds recording its changes of ownership date back more than eight and a half centuries. Indeed, they include the oldest documents held in the college archives. The first four deeds in the series are undated, as was quite usual at that time, but they contain references to well-known individuals such as Roger de Mowbray and ‘Nigel’ (Neil), Bishop of Ely, that date them to the third quarter of the twelfth century. Written at a time when parchment, ink and scribes were all expensive, the documents are admirably concise, with none of the verbosity that is such a baneful feature of later title deeds. The Christian names of the parties who feature in the deeds are predominantly Norman, rather than Anglo-Saxon, reflecting the wholesale replacement of the landowning class after 1066. Some of these names are still in use today, but others fell out of favour by the end of the Middle Ages: Folco, Ivo, Lisiard, Pagan, Gerbert. Complete oddities are Stor, Wimer and Helyd. The most unusual woman’s name found in the deeds is ‘Argencelina’. This rather heathen-sounding name (‘silver moon’?) was very rare even then, but it survived as ‘Argent’ in Cornwall. Although some of the earliest Eltisley deeds have lost their wax seals, they are otherwise in almost perfect condition, despite their great antiquity.

Amanda Goode, College Archivist

31 July 2024

                  J. C. Nattes, Versailles, Paris, and St Denis (1810), ‘Bridge of the Hôtel Dieu, with the Church of Notre Dame’

This year’s Olympic Games have put the spotlight of world attention on the iconic cityscapes of Paris. British fascination with the French capital is already attested by the early nineteenth-century illustrated books in Emmanuel’s collection. One of the interests in these books now is that the Paris they record – and the perceptions of it – are not the city as it would be re-fashioned later in the century and is broadly still. There is, of course, no Eiffel Tower (1889) and no Sacré-Coeur (1876-91). Even the Arc de Triomphe, though begun in 1806, took 30 years to build. Construction of the great boulevards of the Second Empire (1852-70), which flattened large areas of the old Paris, were still in the future. So too were the new green spaces – Bois de Boulogne, Bois de Vincennes etc – which Napoleon III ordered to be made at the four compass points, because he wanted Parisians to have the green spaces that he remembered from his exile in London, especially Hyde Park. The Emperor gave orders that Paris be beautified, and it was.

Illustrations of Paris produced rather earlier in this country therefore have a different focus. Some dwell on customs and characteristics, on street life. Some are interested in recording the jumbled and quaint in ancient buildings and streetscapes. As so often, the focus is on the picturesque, and books that are concerned with ‘views’ of the significant buildings of the old Paris will present them with some picturesquely decayed and shabby aspects.

The frontispiece to David Carey’s Life in Paris (1828), with illustrations by George Cruickshank, is a revealing cartoon of British perceptions of the French and hence of their capital.

                                                                 D. Carey, Life in Paris (1822). Frontispiece

At the top is a balloon because ‘their light ascending spirits are appropriately figured by a Balloon'. There are song, music and dancing, to which the French are ‘very partial’, and then a duel, under the heading of ‘Honour’, about which the French are reported to be very touchy. Glory is inscribed on a flag because the French think no one possesses it except them. Politeness is signalled by two obsequious figures. Below is Love, with a blindfolded Cupid behind an amply endowed barmaid in a café. Beneath are some gamblers because ‘the vice of gambling pervades all classes in France’. Two French women bear up industry, which the male figures neglect.

The sub-title to Carey’s book summons up a kind of British engagement with ‘abroad’ that is perhaps still alive in mass tourism: it comprises ‘the Rambles, Sprees, and Amours of Dick Wildfire … and his Bang-Up Companions … with the Whimsical Adventures of the Halibut Family, including Sketches of … Eccentric Characters in the French Metropolis’. The sub-title of William Combe’s Dr Syntax in Paris, ‘or A Tour in Search of the Grotesque’ (1820) indicates that this is a spin-off from the hugely popular satires that spoofed the contemporary fad for the picturesque, but here the gullible doctor is a tourist in Paris, where Mrs Syntax has a fit of the vapours while visiting the tourist attraction of the catacombs. 

                                           W. Combe, Dr Syntax in Paris (1820), ‘Dr Syntax visits the Catacombs’

For armchair travellers, or those who wanted a reminder of their time in Paris, there were books with plates of exceptional accomplishment and beauty. The Versailles, Paris and St Denis (1810) of John Claude Nattes, a French topographical draughtsman and water colour artist based in London until 1822, gives many insights into the topography and social history of Paris at the start of the nineteenth century.

Nattes is especially fond of views from under the bridges of Paris, allowing close-ups on ordinary activities from out of the ordinary perspectives.

                                                Nattes, Versailles, Paris, ‘From under the arch of St Michel’s bridge’

                                  Nattes, Versailles, Paris, ‘The washing place belonging to the Hospital of L’Hôtel Dieu’

This is a very much less spruce, polished and finished Paris than that of modern expectation and all the more interesting for that.

                                                  Nattes, Versailles, Paris, ‘From one of the arches of Notre Dame’

                                              Nattes, Versailles, Paris, ‘View drawn from under the Arch of Givry’

Other publications present the customs and costumes to be seen on Paris streets.

A Tour through Paris (1828) does this in aquatints with particularly skilful and vibrant colouring.

                                         Sams, A Tour through Paris (1828), ‘Dancers on Stilts in the Champs-Elysées’

                                                                Sams, A Tour through Paris, ‘The Office of Nurses’

One plate features the historic institution of the Office of Nurses (i.e. wet nurses). The English commentary tuts that ‘this is a market for human milk … where so many women are seen flocking with full breasts, in order to supply children to whom they are strangers’. What was founded by Louis XIV as a philanthropic project has been turned into a profitable business controlled by men. Nurses sleep in one large dormitory between the cradles of the two babies that each nurse sustains at any one time. A plate of itinerants on the boulevards includes, on the left, a dealer in tisane with his stove on his back, and a blind man with his dog. Another plate shows the ceremony in which disgraced soldiers are cashiered in the Place Vendôme. 

                                                     Sams, A Tour through Paris, ‘Itinerants on the Boulevards’

                                           Sams, A Tour through Paris, ‘Military Degradation in the Place Vendôme’

By 1839, in his Picturesque Architecture in Paris, Thomas Shotter Boys (1803-74) accomplishes an early triumph of lithography technique, achieving cool, transparent, graduated tints, subtle in colouring. King Louis Philippe sent Boys a ring in token of his admiration for this book.

                                                        Shotter Boys, Picturesque Architecture (1839), ‘Notre Dame’

                                                       Shotter Boys, Picturesque Architecture, ‘Hôtel de Cluny’

The image of Notre Dame is especially interesting in setting the cathedral in the same picture with buildings festooned with drying washing and with the banks of the Seine cluttered with everyday trade and activity. The image of the Hôtel de Cluny notes that it has ‘been recently bought by the French Government to preserve its remains as a national monument’.

Similarly subtle in colouring, the image of the Rue Notre Dame is a record of streets in the old Paris, long replaced (note the boots for sale outside a shop).

                                                      Shotter Boys, Picturesque Architecture, ‘Rue Notre Dame’

                                       Shotter Boys, Picturesque Architecture, ‘St Etienne du Mont, with the Pantheon’

The plate of the Church of St Etienne du Mont and the Pantheon by moonlight is a rare attempt at a nocturnal cityscape, which inevitably seems to anticipate the later characterization of Paris as the ‘City of Light’.

Barry Windeatt, Keeper of Rare Books

31 July 2024

As I sit to write this blog entry, we are in the hottest spell so far this year. There is not a cloud in the sky and the weather is perfect for being outside or taking a dip in our refurbished swimming pool. Instead, I am in a hot office writing a garden blog.

We seem to have got through the height of the garden party season and navigated through the wedding season. Pressure is off a little now but that just means catching up on so many of the jobs we have been putting off. It really is hedging season now. It is usually best to wait until August to cut the hedging as many of the birds have flown the nests by this point. August is a great month for beech hedging. We have recently finished trimming the box hedging in New Court. It remains to be seen how many more times we can keep cutting this hedge as the box moth caterpillar damage seems to get a little worse each year. The next 12 months will be critical to how long we keep these hedges. It will be a massive shame to lose them, but we are one of the few college gardens who have not ripped theirs out yet. I fear it is only a matter of time.

We are entering the stage when our Garden Department apprentices have almost completed their time with us. Izzie Hare has just passed her final Level 2 Horticulture exam. This is a considerable achievement having only been with us for almost two years. Izzie will leave us at the end of August, and we are now looking to replace her with the next intern apprentice. Horticultural education is very important, and it was so pleasing to deliver what was promised and get Izzie at the point at which she can evolve in the industry as a professional gardener. We all wish her the very best of luck in the future and will miss her enormously.

Our other trainee, Emily McCullen has also nearly finished her one-year placement with us. Emily leaves in early September, having completed her ‘Work and Retrain as a Gardener’ (WRAG) Scheme placement with us in the Emmanuel College gardens. Again, we are looking to recruit for the next WRAG Scheme placement. One year really does go fast. It only seems a matter of weeks ago that Emily started with us. At the time of writing, Emily has completed her RHS Level 2 qualification but has not had the results through. We have every confidence in her that she has passed. Again, we wish Emily all the best in the future.

In other news, we have almost completed the Community Garden. The social gardens have been transformed and will give students, staff and Fellows a wonderful space to work and grow in. It really is very exciting indeed. Watch this space for more news.

Best wishes.

Brendon Sims, Head Gardener

31 July 2024

                                     L’Estrange family tombstones in the church of St Mary the Virgin, Old Hunstanton

John Venn’s Alumni Cantabrigienses, the comprehensive listing of all known Cambridge University men, contains the following entry: Roger Lestrange. Matric pens. from Emman. Mich 1601. Son of Sir Nicholas (1580) and Mary Bell. Drowned ‘at Emmanuel’ while at Cambridge. Brother of Hamon (1601). (Blomefield, x. 115). The sensational statement that a student drowned here – presumably in the Paddock pond! – naturally begs investigation, but in fact the entire entry is open to question.

The L’Estrange family, anciently settled at Hunstanton Hall, Norfolk, sent many of its sons to Cambridge. Emmanuel’s admission register contains no record of Roger, though, because for some reason the names of the 1601 entrants were not entered. Coincidentally, the university matriculation books were not maintained during this period, either, due to the laxness of the Registrary, Thomas Smith. The lists of matriculands sent to Smith every year by the praelectors of each college have survived, though, and these record a ‘Roger Straunge’ matriculating from Emmanuel at Michaelmas 1601. His parentage is not stated.

Venn’s identification of this Roger as the son of Sir Nicholas L’Estrange is presumably based on: (1) the fact that the family name was often spelled Straunge or Strange; (2) the perennial popularity of the name ‘Roger’ within the L’Estrange family; (3) information contained in Francis Blomefield’s History of the County of Norfolk, judging by the footnote. On inspection, however, it turns out that the L’Estrange section in that multi-volume tome does not mention Roger; indeed, it represents Sir Nicholas as having only one son: his heir, Hamon, who was admitted to Queens’ College in 1601.

Other nineteenth-century printed histories and pedigrees, however, state that Sir Nicholas had three sons: Roger, Henry, and Hamon, the elder two dying without issue. One source adds that they died during their father’s lifetime, and that Hamon, in consequence, inherited the lordship of Hunstanton from his father upon the latter’s death. This version of events is supported by the usually reliable History of Parliament Online. A problem arises, then, because Sir Nicholas died in December 1591, a decade before Roger was admitted to Emmanuel. Unless the sources are wrong, and Roger and/or Henry were in fact younger brothers of Hamon, the ‘Roger Straunge’ admitted to Emmanuel in 1601 cannot have been the son of Sir Nicholas L’Estrange.

Roger could, of course, have belonged to a cadet branch of the family, but whatever his standing, it is the case that none of the numerous L’Estrange memorials in Old Hunstanton church commemorates him. His dramatic demise is not recorded in Emmanuel’s archives, either. It was not until December 1913, when John Venn sent Emmanuel’s Bursar details of the intriguing entry he was preparing for Roger, that the college became aware of the young man’s existence. The Bursar forwarded the missive to the Master, with a jocular covering note: ‘Venn, supplementing our broken record for 1601, gives one Roger Straunge as admitted to Emmanuel in this year. Shall we drag the pond?’. 

Venn’s statement about Roger’s drowning ‘at Emmanuel’ is presented as a quotation, but of what, or whom, has proved impossible to trace. The source’s reliability cannot, therefore, be evaluated. Swimming had been strictly forbidden to Cambridge students by a Heads of House order of 1571, on pain of public whipping and (for a second offence) expulsion. If Roger Straunge voluntarily entered Emmanuel’s pond, then, it was in defiance of this decree. His true fate, like his identity, seems likely to remain a mystery.

Amanda Goode, College Archivist

26 June 2024

                                Compton, North Cambrian Mountains (1820 edn),  ‘Rhaiadyr Y Wennol, Caernarvonshire’

Emmanuel’s collection of nineteenth-century illustrated books – containing numerous Romantic depictions of what was perceived as picturesque landscape from around the world – includes so many representations of waterfalls as to prompt questions about what our forebears saw in these remarkable natural features. In cultures across the world, waterfalls hold cultural and spiritual significance. To take one example among many: in Shinto tradition in Japan waterfalls are held to be sacred and cleansing.

For searchers for the picturesque in Britain, waterfalls were part of those wild uplands that excited their admiration for rugged scenery and sublime perspectives of great height and distance.  Waterfalls gave rise to feelings of awe and apprehension of something greater than ourselves. Accounts of travels to wild Wales featured many depictions of famous waterfalls, which had often long been held to be sites of mystery and magic in local folklore.  Thomas Compton’s The North Cambrian Mountains (1817, 1820) includes some striking depictions that attempt to convey the sheer volume and force of waterfalls plunging through landscapes.

                                  Compton, North Cambrian Mountains (1817 edn), ‘Pistyll Rhaiadyr’, Montgomeryshire’

                                                                              ‘Rhaiadyr Du, Merionethshire’

Alongside such Romantic images, it is interesting to compare Classical Chinese painting, where waterfalls are a symbol of impermanence: the waterfall continues yet is never the same, implicitly contrasted with the changelessness of the rocks that surround and interrupt the water’s fall.

                                                                             ‘Pystyll Y Cain, Merionethshire’

                                                                         ‘Rhaiadyr Y Mawddach, Merionethshire’

In this way, the waterfall represents a persistence of form, notwithstanding a constant change of content. The cool and misty colours in Brian Broughton’s Six Picturesque Views in North Wales (1801) well convey this defining presence and energy in the waterfalls and cascades that he depicts.

                                                                      Broughton, Six Picturesque Views (1801)

                                                            T. H. Fielding, The English Lakes (1821), ‘Skelwith Force’

The many published accounts of tours to the Lake District that poured forth in this period also included frequent illustrations of waterfalls, as in T. H. Fielding’s

A Picturesque Tour of the English Lakes (1821), of which Emmanuel holds three different editions. The essence of such images is the impression of an unstoppable torrent, dashing against rocks, defining its location yet always in flux.

To depict water falling dramatically from a great height is a recurrent challenge to artists, particularly well met in the dramatic uncoloured lithographs in Harry Longueville Jones’s Scenery of the Snowdonian Mountains (1829), where each lithograph bears the imprint of C Hullmandel, the inventor of lithography.

                                                                             English Lakes, ‘Lowdore Fall’

                                                                            Jones, Snowdonian Mountains

A fascination with depicting waterfalls in Britain is carried with them by artists recording the picturesque in landscapes much further afield, as in James Hakewill’s now-rare A Picturesque Tour of the Island of Jamaica (1825).

                                                                             English Lakes, ‘Stockgill Force’

                                 Hakewill, Jamaica (1825), ‘Cascade on the Windward Road’ (seven miles from Kingston)

It is striking that a late example of a hand-coloured book, William Cullen Byant’s Picturesque America, or The Land We Live In (New York, 1874) features a waterfall as the design of its frontispiece (the small figure of the artist is seated on the right side, depicting the cataract ‘en plein air’).

                                                Bryant, Picturesque America (1877), title page, ‘Cascade in Virginia’

                                                           Picturesque America, ‘The Upper Yellowstone Falls’

Bryant’s book includes many accounts of waterfalls, which are mentioned on the title page among the defining features of ‘Picturesque America’.

The staggering immensity of falling waters in the hand-coloured images of Thomas Baines’s The Victoria Falls (1865) are a match for the awesome proportions of the Niagara Falls in the opening image that precedes all others in Bryant’s Picturesque America.

                                                                                     Baines, Victoria Falls

                                                                     Picturesque America, frontispiece, ‘Niagara’

Artists of images fixed on the page must convey the constant motion of unstoppable forces. They must assume that vision will summon up sound: that viewers will also hear in their inward ear the characteristic music of waterfalls, from tinkle and splash to awe-inspiring roar.

Barry Windeatt, Keeper of Rare Books

26 June 2024

At last, the good weather has arrived. The endless weeks of rain and wind, together with the grey skies, are hopefully behind us, as we cling on to what now feels like summer. The Garden Department’s busiest times are hopefully just over the horizon too.

It can be a relentless few weeks, preparing for garden parties, May Ball preparations (and repairs) and graduations. Yes, the work is hard and the hours long. It is a time, however, to showcase the gardens to as many eyes as possible. I have received many fine comments about the beauty of the gardens this year. Of course, I am very grateful, but this is a team effort made up of many pairs of hands, both past and present. It has been a challenging growing season because of the weather but, I must admit, the gardens look splendid.

I was working on this last Sunday, watering our plants (the sides that most people don’t see behind the scenes), and the peaceful nature of the site was at its best. Many students had gone home, and the gardens were still vibrant. The birds were my company and my morning’s soundtrack was enough to keep me enthused as I worked the weekend. This is the time I enjoy most in the gardens at Emmanuel. It almost feels like it’s my own garden at times like this. Just me, nature and the gardens. For those that are left here on site for the summer, please do enjoy the gardens in these quieter times. It is so good for one’s own mental health.

Mental health and gardening are always at the forefront of my thinking. Last week we had a soft launch of the new Emmanuel College Community Gardens. Although the project is not quite complete, it was nice to get together to celebrate our achievements so far. This will be a good stress reliever when the project reaches its final stages. It will give students, staff and Fellows a space within the college grounds that they can take ownership of. A place that they can nurture. A place that they can decide what to grow (and keep). A place that is non-hierarchical and a place to come together. A place to learn (through successes or failures). A place to contemplate. A place to share.

The community gardens will continue to be built over the remainder of the summer and will be fully functional from next academic year. There will be more correspondence over the next few weeks and months but please do get in contact with me with any questions you may have.

The rest of the summer will be made up of garden tours, continued maintenance and, later in the summer, we will turn our attention to recruiting the next cohort of training vacancies in the Garden Department. Emily will finish her one-year placement in September, and we are busy prepping Izzie for her end point assessments of the Cambridge University Apprenticeship in July. Izzie will remain with the Garden Department until December, drawing and ending her two-year placement. We also continue to support Danny Dudd with his work experience whilst studying his T Levels in Horticulture at Shuttleworth College.

Investing in the future of the next generation of gardeners is essential, giving career builders the next step in a fruitful (no pun intended!) career.

Best wishes.

Brendon Sims, Head Gardener

26 June 2024

D is for … Doves

Our archives contain a series of title deeds recording the changes in ownership of the college site between 1545 (a few years after it had ceased to house the Dominican monastic order) and 1584, when Emmanuel College was founded. All these documents, in their recital of the premises’ appurtenances, include a reference to a dove-house. This building, of uncertain location, continued in use after 1584 as it served an important function: the provision of fresh meat throughout the year. The first reference to it in the college accounts is dated 1594, when 28s 7d was spent on ‘New tiling, lathing, and mending the duffhouse’. These renovations lasted a couple of decades, but thereafter the building required regular maintenance. In 1614 the college laid out 16s 10d on ‘Tyling, claying & mending the duvhouse’, and minor repairs were needed in 1621, 1628 and 1633. We know the building had fenestration, for in 1630 a shilling was spent on ‘2 new latices for the pigeon-house’ and in 1635 the ‘glasse’ had to be mended. Substantial improvements were required in 1636, when a builder named Rively and his labourer were paid 19s 6d for ‘9 dayes worke about the dovehouse’, and yet more repairs were carried out by the same builder two years later. There are no more references to the dovehouse until 1659, when unspecified ‘work’ was carried out. The building presumably fell out of use soon afterwards, as it is not mentioned again. In 1890 a dovecote was set up in Chapman’s Garden, which at that date was only accessible via the set of Arthur Chapman, Fellow of Emmanuel from 1862 until his death in 1913. Populated with white fantails, Chapman’s picturesque dovecote features in several late-Victorian and Edwardian photographs.

D is for … Dr Who

On Wednesday 17th October 1979, Emmanuel was briefly transmogrified into St Cedd’s College, Cambridge, an institution harbouring an incognito Time Lord named Professor Chronotis. This scenario sprang from the fertile imagination of the well-known sci-fi writer and Cambridge graduate Douglas Adams, who was at that time script editor for the Dr Who show. The 1979-80 college Magazine records, under Gifts and Bequests: ‘B.B.C. TV kindly donated £100 to the College following their successful filming of a Dr Who episode on College premises’. Unfortunately, no paperwork survives in the archives to indicate why, or how, Emmanuel was selected as a suitable location. The filming took place in Front and New Courts (exteriors only). The photograph reproduced above has been provided by Dr Alan Baker, Senior Tutor in 1979, who can be seen standing on the steps to C staircase. The Emmanuel students’ newsletter, under the headline ‘Dr Why?’, noted the ‘production of another epic Dr Who episode in the College grounds’, but queried why P3 had been selected as the Professor’s room, concluding: ‘Perhaps it was the rumour about frequent sightings of “alien” life forms and the strange knocking noises in the night’. Alas, many years were to pass before Emmanuel’s moment of glory was seen by the paying public, as a technicians’ strike prevented this particular Dr Who serial (‘Shada’), from being finished. Such footage as existed was eventually released on VHS, followed by, in 2017, a DVD version in which the missing sections had been completed using animation, dialogue being dubbed by the original cast. When the DVD was played to an audience in the Queen’s Building a few years ago, the advent of the ‘baddie’, clad in silver lamé and billowing white satin, provoked howls of laughter from undergraduates and nostalgic smiles from anyone ancient enough to remember the 1970s.

Amanda Goode, College Archivist

29 May 2024

The weather has continued to play havoc with the gardens in the last month. The wet weather continues, and the growing season is rapid. It seems like a period when we are chasing our own tails a bit. No sooner have we completed maintaining an area within college, it grows as your back is turned.

The last few weeks have been tricky. The quiet period for exams stops us doing exactly what we want to do in a time when the growing season keeps us on our toes the most. The good thing about the wet weather is at least we have not had to rush around watering the plants, trying to keep them alive.

The team has been stretched this year trying to complete some small projects, such as the landscaping for the swimming pool and the Community Garden. This has meant that it is all hands on deck at this time.

As gardeners, we must remind ourselves to enjoy the gardens too. We have been delighted with the planting beds around the new buildings this year. They have really started to establish themselves nicely and look as if the plants have been there for a while. It is exciting to see the plants fill out and give us such a good show. It is always a relief when this works, rather than just being an imagined idea.

The tennis courts on the Paddock have remained popular and it is nice to see so many people enjoying the gardens when the sun occasionally comes out.

The Community Garden building will continue after the quite period ends, and we will work at this across the remainder of the summer, so that the students can take full advantage from next academic year. It is an exciting prospect and I hope that the areas get some good use soon enough. There will be a trial for some hot composting bins in this area. This will give the students the opportunity to dispose of food waste such as vegetable peelings to be turned into compost. We have also installed water butts for rainwater harvesting, so we are looking at a greener approach to sustainable gardening.

It is also the time of year for starting to fill the borders from our own nurseries from the Garden Department. We do spend a lot of time and effort across the year taking cuttings and growing items from seed. It is great to be able to use our own plants to produce more. This cuts down on extra plastic use for pots, air miles for distances the plants must travel, and time taken to collect the plants off site. We use our own compost produced here in college to pot on the plants, so sustainably we feel we are heading in the right direction.

The meadows also look fantastic. The wildflowers are starting to really grow well, and we should get an excellent display this year. Some of the wildflowers in North Court have grown as a result from us harvesting the wildflower seeds from the bales of hay, donated to us from King’s College. Each bale of hay contains around 1.5kg of wildflower seed. This is another example of how working collegiately can benefit us all.

All we need now is some sunshine.

Best wishes.

Brendon Sims, Head Gardener

29 May 2024

C is for … Chaderton

Laurence Chaderton, the first Master of Emmanuel, was a most remarkable man. His father Thomas, a minor landowner from Oldham, was a Roman Catholic, who cut off his son with the proverbial shilling when the young man embraced the Protestant faith. By the time Laurence became Master here, in 1584, he was one of the most renowned preachers of his day, possessing a ‘wonderful zeal for winning souls’. On one occasion, after a two-hour sermon, his enthralled congregation were said to have begged: ‘for God’s sake sir, go on!’. Sir Walter Mildmay thought so highly of him that his founding of Emmanuel College was contingent on Chaderton’s accepting the mastership. This he did, despite having received an offer of a more lucrative ecclesiastical appointment, and for 38 years he administered the college with ‘fidelity, prudence, and industry’. Even after relinquishing the mastership in 1622, when he was in his eighties, he continued to play an active role in college affairs. Widely respected and loved for his ‘active and fearless, and yet kindly and liberal’ spirit, Chaderton was sought out by many distinguished visitors to Cambridge, including King James I & VI and his son, Prince Charles. The King went further, by appointing him one of the authors of the 1611 Authorised Version of the Bible; he helped translate the section from 1 Chronicles to the Song of Solomon. Chaderton died in November 1640, at the great age of either 101 or 104 (he gave differing accounts of his year of birth, but either way his tombstone inscription is incorrect). According to his daughter, Elizabeth, he remained astonishingly robust until suffering the fall that brought on his death. He was buried in the original college chapel, and re-interred in the new one after its consecration in 1677.

C is for … Chalice

Above the shop frontage of 21 St Andrew’s Street, Cambridge, directly opposite the junction with Emmanuel Street, a fine sculpted stone panel can be seen.  It shows our college coat of arms, with the name ‘Emmanuel’ above and a carving of a goblet below, along with the words ‘The Chalice’. This tenement came to Emmanuel in 1585, one of several similar gifts and bequests bestowed upon the new college by generous benefactors. Most of these donors were what we would now call Puritans, who approved of the college’s founding ethos, but this was not the case with the owner of the Chalice. It was bequeathed to the college by Henry Harvey, Doctor of Laws, Master of Trinity Hall, Canon of Ely, and a prominent University man. In negotiating the political upheavals of the mid-sixteenth century, Harvey’s religious views embraced a degree of flexibility that the Vicar of Bray might have admired. As it seems unlikely, however, that he was ever a genuinely enthusiastic Puritan, his bequest of the Chalice to Emmanuel College would seem to be a mark of his personal regard for either Sir Walter Mildmay or Laurence Chaderton. All that can be said for certain, though, is that Doctor Harvey had helped with the complex legal procedures attaching to Mildmay’s acquisition of the college site in 1584. The title deeds to 21 St Andrew’s Street are held in our archives. They date back to 1295, but the earliest document in which the tenement is named ‘Chalice’ is a conveyance of 1578, which calls it a ‘messuage or ynne called the Challyce’. Later converted to a mixture of residential and retail occupancy, the property was completely rebuilt in 1895.

Amanda Goode, College Archivist

1 May 2024

B is for … Boathouse

The Emmanuel Boat Club, formed in 1827, did not acquire its own premises until the 1890s. Until then it had ‘cheerfully suffered the inconvenience’ of sharing Foster’s boat house with other colleges, but in 1894 a riverside site was acquired, upon which stood a dilapidated boathouse and several ramshackle cottages. In the 1895 college Magazine, readers were informed that: ‘The plot secured by the College and granted for the use of the Boat Club is situated just below the Cutter Ferry’. An appeal was launched to raise £1200, the estimated cost of constructing a new boathouse. The architects were Marshall and Vickers of Bedford Square, London, who produced ‘an effective design’. A year later the Boat Club was able to report that ‘it was with great pleasure that we got into our new boat house at the beginning of this term [Michaelmas 1896]; we need not describe it, as by this time there are very few who have not seen it’. Thanks were expressed to the ‘many old members of the boat club who have responded so heartily to the appeal’. The boathouse underwent a ‘splendid’ extension and refurbishment’ in 1994 under the aegis of the Master, Lord St John of Fawsley. The 1896 half-timbered frontage was retained, however, and the new sections were designed ‘to complement in form and materials the original boathouse…’. According to Lord St John, the building’s ‘blue and white exterior has become one of the dominating sights of the river’.

B is for … Bowls

The first Master of the college, Laurence Chaderton, was said by his biographer William Dillingham, writing in Latin, to have enjoyed pila utraque, but it is impossible to know whether this last phrase refers to bowls, or some other ball game(s). Bowls was certainly played at Emmanuel from its earliest days, if the antiquary John Aubrey can be relied upon. In his most well-known work, Brief Lives, he relates that the famous Elizabethan theologian Lancelot Andrews caught Emmanuel’s ‘zealous Preachers’ playing bowls in the Fellows’ garden on the Sabbath. Bowling was a notorious betting game, which explains Aubrey’s dismissal of the Emmanuel Fellows as ‘hippocrites’. Playing bowls on Sundays would, in fact, be banned by a Royal Declaration of 1618. The game never went out of fashion at Emmanuel, however, and is still played in the Fellows’ Garden. The college has a fine collection of woods, dating back to the late eighteenth century. A few of these quaint old bowls (‘mince-pie’ being a formerly popular shape) bear the initials or name of their original owners, e.g. ‘Blackall’ (Samuel, Fellow 1794-1812) and ‘RTC’ (Robert Towerson Cory, Master 1797-1835). The Parlour wager books record many bets made among the Fellows about bowling. On 20 May 1800, Richard Brassey, a fellow commoner student, lost the following bet: Todd v. Brassey - Blackall with three bowls will beat Brassey & Rogers two games out of three. N.B. By. & Rs. have the jack every lead. (Todd’s evidence - Blackall played one game & won it, Brassey refused to play any more.)

Amanda Goode, College Archivist

1 May 2024

                                                  New and Rare Beautiful-Leaved Plants (1870), ‘Rhapis flabelliformis’

In this country we like to think of ourselves as a nation of gardeners – by which we mean all those who busily and lovingly tend their town and suburban gardens, which are mostly modest in extent. But one, now largely forgotten, Victorian journalist and writer on horticulture had a key role in laying the foundations for this cult of small-scale ‘do-it-yourself’ gardening, and some of his many works are in Emmanuel’s collection of illustrated books.

James Shirley Hibberd (1825-1890) was born in Stepney, son of a sea-captain who had served under Nelson; he was apprenticed to a bookseller but moved into horticultural journalism, publishing as ‘Shirley Hibberd’. As he struggled to grow flowers, fruit and vegetables in his garden in Stoke Newington, despite the polluted, soot-laden London air, Shirley Hibberd noticed that the horticultural press of the day was directed at country house owners, their head gardeners, and the nursery men who supplied them. These professional garden writers ignored the possibility of gardening in towns and suburbs. By contrast, Shirley Hibberd saw gardening as open to all, and lambasted the Royal Horticultural Society for taking no account of the working-class amateur gardener. Shirley Hibberd saw a gap in the market for advice and self-help publications for amateur gardeners wanting to make something of their small urban gardens.

For this market Shirley Hibberd produced a stream of books and started three gardening magazines, including Amateur Gardening in 1884, which is still being published today. Titles included Rustic Adornments for Homes of Taste, The Rose Book, The Amateur’s Flower Garden. His The Fern Garden (1869) was particularly successful, promoting the Victorian predilection for these graceful plants. Other popular works included The Amateur’s Green House and Conservatory and Field Flowers, a month by month guide to the blooming of wild flowers.

                                                                    The Fern Garden (1869), ‘Asplenium viride’

                                                        The Amateur Greenhouse (1880), ‘Begonia diversifolia’

Being self-taught himself, and unimpressed by experts, Shirley Hibberd was a natural at writing for amateur gardeners, soon becoming a household name and a leader of fashionable taste in the modest garden. Anticipating today’s TV gardeners, Shirley Hibberd drew on trial and error in the renovation of his own Stoke Newington garden to demonstrate for readers the creation of a rockery or a fern garden, or how to secure a succession of colour, or a succession of fresh fruit and vegetables in times before refrigeration. His advice was practical: for his amateur readership he did not recommend the Victorian craze for ‘carpet’ bedding of massed annuals – it was too expensive and labour-intensive – instead preferring herbaceous perennials and shrubs.

In several of his most striking publications Shirley Hibberd emphasized the beauty of foliage in its own right, although he saw gardens as essentially artificial creations and (unlike the inane modern fad) he had no wish to recreate a meadow inside a garden. His The Ivy: Its History, Uses and Characteristics (1872) was among the first to make a study of ivy and promote its beauty for garden use. Like other of his books, the binding and illustration aimed to match the beauty perceived in the subject.

                          The exquisite binding of ‘The Ivy’ (1872), and the title-page, showing an ivy-covered Conway Castle

Shirley Hibberd had himself collected 200 varieties of ivy.

                                  The Ivy: Frontispiece showing five varieties of ivy, and a plate showing six further varieties

In his study of New and Rare Beautiful-Leaved Plants (1870) the 54 striking coloured plates do justice to their subject.

                                               Beautiful-Leaved Plants (1870), ‘Musa vittata’ and ‘Maranta illustris’

Their purpose is to inform and encourage the amateur gardener to experiment with new foliage effects in the urban garden.

                                              Beautiful-Leaved Plants, ‘Draecena terminalis’ and ‘Alocasia lowii’

In some of his enthusiasms Shirley Hibberd anticipates the present: he advocated a green belt around London; he fretted over the survival of wild flowers; he kept bees; he advocated systems whereby each household collected rainwater for domestic water supply; for a while he espoused vegetarianism (but lapsed). Apart from one surviving small park that he designed at Islington Green, all of Shirley Hibberd’s London gardens have been built over, but his legacy is the continuing and absorbing cult of amateur gardening in the modest plots gardened by most people.

Barry Windeatt, Keeper of Rare Books

30 April 2024

As I write this latest edition of my blog, the sun is shining and there is not a cloud in the sky. This feels like a welcome relief from the months and months of grey, wet weather that the Garden Department has had to endure. Reports say that there has not been a full dry week since September 2023. I can quite believe this. It has been the wettest period in my 35 years plus career. Let’s hope for a better late spring and summer.

The Garden Department has been extremely busy this year, more than ever. We have been trying to juggle several projects and still maintain the beautiful grounds that we are blessed to work in.

One of the largest projects that we are undertaking is the building of the new College Community Garden. These are being built at the rear gardens of Park Terrace, the idea being that this will become a non-hierarchical space to build a community of gardeners. The long-standing health benefits are widely reported and should help those that are wishing to undertake a gentle pastime to include growing vegetables and cut flowers.

The gardens will be available, within time, to the Emmanuel community, whether students, staff or Research Fellows staying with us. There will be a selection of raised beds along with composting solutions to help with food waste.

It is unfortunate that we must delay the building of this garden while the quiet period is on, along with the exams. We hope to have a soft launch towards the end of May, when some of the work will be complete. We will continue to build over the summer and should be up and running fully at the start of the new academic year.

We have also marked out two tennis courts on the Paddock. This sees the return of tennis to the Paddock after a break of at least four years due to building works. I have put only two courts up, specifically with the intention of an area to play a little light social tennis. They are to be used as a facility to relieve such pressures of exam stress and encourage students to get out of their rooms and take a short break. If serious tennis is required, then we have some fantastic facilities at the college sports ground on Wilberforce Road. Tennis bookings will soon be available to book via the college CASC booking system.

The rest of the gardens are really starting to come alive. The vegetation around the pond is growing fast, the mini meadows at the front gardens of Park Terrace are thriving, the spring meadows on the Paddock have been magnificent and the lawns are looking lush and green. Warmer weather is forecast this week so please get out and enjoy the gardens whenever you can.

We have been busy in the greenhouse growing plenty of seeds to be planted out later into the borders. The window boxes in Front Court will return in May too.

Kind regards.

Brendon Sims, Head Gardener

26 March 2024

                                                   Mayer, ‘Views’: Jerusalem, with the Church of the Holy Sepulchre

In Holy Week, thoughts turn to the Holy Land, and never more so than this year. Emmanuel’s collection of illustrated travel books from the late eighteenth and earlier nineteenth centuries contain only limited images of the area, which was just becoming an object of curiosity to more intrepid spirits, interested in travelling wider than Europe in search of the picturesque. The splendid exception is Views in Egypt, Palestine, and other parts of the Ottoman Empire (1804) by Luigi Mayer (1755-1803). Italian-born, of German ancestry, Mayer was commissioned by Sir Robert Ainslie Bt, British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire (1776-1792), to record landmarks and landscapes throughout the Ottoman possessions. (Ainslie presented Mayer’s original paintings to the British Museum).

As the nineteenth century wore on, advances in communications and much improved opportunities for tourism resulted in an enormous increase in the numbers visiting the Holy Land. A special interest of Mayer’s ‘views’ is that they record some of the sites famous from Biblical accounts as they still were before this onslaught. Mayer presents the Holy Places in a picturesque dilapidation, as they had apparently remained during the long centuries of the Ottoman Empire’s decline.

Mayer’s street scenes in Jerusalem can thus appeal to the age’s much wider taste for the melancholy inspired by the prospect of ruins, as well as recording the current state of places mentioned in the Bible’s narrative of events in Holy Week.

                                                  Pillar to which was affixed the sentence passed on Our Saviour

                                                                         Remains of a Tower on Mount Zion

For Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem the most important site has always been the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built over the site of Christ’s crucifixion on Mount Calvary. Inside the Church, pilgrims visited the site of the cross and the sepulchre, as well as the places where, it was believed, Christ was nailed to the cross and where his body was later anointed by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus. Mayer’s views catch the gloom of these interiors, lit by candles.

                                                                    Entrance of the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre

                                                                             Tomb of Joseph of Arimathea

This is also so of the reputed sepulchre of the Virgin Mary near the Garden of Gethsemane, over which a church had been erected by St Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantine. Pilgrims descended into the subterranean church to where the Virgin’s tomb stood in a chapel hewn out of the rock. Her tomb was venerated by local Muslims, who helped defray the cost of the eighteen lamps kept constantly burning in front of the Virgin’s tomb. Here, as in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, only the thresholds of the most sacred shrines are depicted.

                                                                               Tomb of the Virgin Mary

                                                                      The Pool of Bethesda, Jerusalem

Much less frequented was the Pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem, where Jesus bid a paralysed man ‘Rise, take up thy bed and walk’ and so he did (John 5: 8-9). At what was believed to be the site in Mayer’s day any springs of water had dried up and the site was overgrown.

At Bethany was the home of the sisters Martha and Mary, whose brother Lazarus Christ raised from the dead after four days (John 11: 1-45), a miracle that prefigured his own resurrection. Mayer also illustrates some subterranean tombs at Bethany, by implication the site of the miracle.

                                                                      The Village of Bethany and the Dead Sea

                                                                         Sepulchral Chamber near Bethany

Also illustrated are scenes at Bethlehem, where a church had been built over the supposed site of Jesus’ birth. There was a subterranean chapel of the Nativity, with a further chamber exhibiting the manger, along with a handy shelf upon which the Three Wise Men were believed to have deposited their gifts. A nearby cave contained a vault ‘where they say’ were buried the Holy Innocents, the children murdered by Herod. Also to be seen was the grotto ‘in which they report’ St Jerome remained for fifty years – rather understandably since he twice translated the Bible into Latin there.

                                                                                 Principal Street of Bethlehem

                                                                            Subterranean Church of Bethlehem

As Mayer travels around sketching and painting, he also records ruins, reputedly from Old Testament times, in states of picturesque decay, such as the tomb that Absolom had reportedly built for himself, or the supposed tomb of Rachel, the wife of Jacob, although in his accompanying commentary Mayer sniffs that she was certainly never buried in a building so relatively modern.

                                                                                    Sepulchre of Absolom

                                                                                       Sepulchre of Rachel

In Mayer’s record of the picturesque, stones are tumbled and vegetation sprouts from ruins. Outside, vistas recede, while in dim interiors gleam spots of light in a religious glow. It is an intriguing snapshot through western eyes of places familiar from the Old and New Testaments at the end of the eighteenth century.

Barry Windeatt, Keeper of Rare Books

26 March 2024

As I write this blog entry, it is a beautiful Spring morning. The sun is shining and there is not a cloud in sight. The morning is fresh, but the sunlight lifts the soul. The apricity of the sun against your face seems to make a job in gardening worthwhile.

This has not, however, been the case for the whole month that has preceded it. We have been battling the cold, grey skies and the plentiful rain. It certainly has been a challenge. Hopefully the weather will start to improve with a spell of dry weather forecast.

In the College gardens we have been busy all the same. March has been the time for many of the seasonal tasks, including pruning the shrubs grown for their winter stems, hard pruning of the buddleias, mulching of the beds and keeping on top of the early growth of grass.

The team have also been busy repairing damaged areas around the swimming pool. The grounds had been messed up a little from the construction work to the pool. It was a good opportunity to put things right.

We replaced some of the wooden path edges, laid some additional paving and graded some topsoil ready for grass seeding. Finally, we top dressed the gravel paths to bring the project together. The pool still must be relined when the weather improves but the areas surrounding it at least now look neater.

Around the grounds, the spring bulbs are in full effect, the Paddock is being framed by the daffodils and the successional bulbs under the oriental plane tree in the Fellows' Garden look amazing.

The magnolia in the Jester Garden is looking its striking best at present.

It’s well worth a look before the magnificent pale, pink flowers drop due to a heavy frost or a stormy night.

Earlier this month, I was delighted to welcome former alumnus and celebrity gardener, Charles Dowding, back to the College. I had arranged for Charles to spend a day and an evening with us, passing on his vast experience of his now world famous ‘no-dig’ philosophy.

Charles gave us a masterclass practical demonstration in the afternoon and valuable advice on our existing compost systems. For the masterclass, we were joined by many of the other colleges' Garden Departments. It was great to share this experience with many in our university garden community.

In the evening, Charles gave a talk to a packed audience in the Queen's Building Lecture Theatre. It was great to be part of this event and the feedback from the audience was very well received.

I had the pleasure of dining with Charles at High Table in the evening and it was another chance to pick his brains. Altogether a fantastic experience for the Garden Department.

Best wishes.

Brendon Sims, Head Gardener

26 March 2024

A is for … Acorn

The Founder of Emmanuel, Sir Walter Mildmay, liked to talk of his college as an acorn, ‘which, when it becomes an oake, God alone knows what will be the fruit thereof’.

Quoting this remark many years later, William Dillingham, Master of Emmanuel 1653-62, added that Mildmay’s acorn had indeed grown into an oak, ‘whose topmost branch adorns and revives the primacy of our Church’. This was a reference to the elevation of William Sancroft, a graduate and former master of Emmanuel, to the office of Archbishop of Canterbury in 1677. Acorn imagery can be seen on the bindings of both the college’s original copy of the founding statutes, and on the Founder’s personal copy.

Acorn motifs have also been used in the college’s newest building, Young’s Court, which opened in the summer of 2023. A beautiful carving of Sir Walter’s ‘acorn’ remark can be seen on the wall adjoining the entrance to the court, while a transparent plaque inside Fiona’s, the new college café and Hub, displays an ingenious representation of an acorn, made up of the names of donors who supported the Young’s Court building appeal.

A is for … Apethorpe

Like most Tudor self-made men, Sir Walter Mildmay converted his wealth into real estate at the earliest opportunity, purchasing Apethorpe (pronounced ‘Appthorpe’) manor house in Northamptonshire in 1551.

Sir William Cecil owned a nearby estate, where he was later to erect the gargantuan Burghley House. It was undoubtedly serendipitous for Sir Walter to be such a close neighbour of Cecil, who was to serve as Elizabeth I’s principal minister for almost her entire reign. There was, nevertheless, genuine friendship between the two men, who shared a common religious and political outlook. Apethorpe remained in the hands of Mildmay’s descendants until 1904. The costs of upkeep forced its sale after the Second World War, and it became an educational establishment. The contents were sold off, and Emmanuel College was able to buy several pieces of furniture in 1948, including the ‘Founder’s table’, now in the gallery.

A year later the new owners of the Hall gave the college the inscribed tablet, topped with a roundel showing the Mildmay coat of arms, that Sir Walter had set up over the fireplace in the great hall in 1562. It now overlooks the main staircase in the college library.

Amanda Goode, College Archivist

28 February 2024

A curious public inspects the curiosities in the museum at Trinity College Dublin; W. B. Taylor, History of the University of Dublin (1819)

Emma Connects has just passed its one hundredth edition since it was created in order to reach out to Emmanuel members during the isolation, and perhaps loneliness, of the first lockdown. Soon it will be four years since the first Rare Book blog appeared in April 2020, describing a book published in 1665, the year of the Great Plague, that recommended ‘It is advisable that all needless Concourses of People be prohibited …’  This is the sixty-fourth of these Rare Book blogs since that beginning, although they have barely scratched the surface of the College’s rare book collections. The positive outcome of what began prompted by adversity is that the interest and beauty of Emmanuel’s illustrated books – many now quite fragile to handle – can be appreciated by a much wider readership than ever before.  

What never ceases to impress is the sheer energy of curiosity represented by those who created these books and those who collected them. Two books written by intrepid women make this point. The title page of Narrative of a Residence at Tripoli in Africa (1816) gives the author as Richard Tully, but the introduction at once acknowledges that the memoir is that of his sister, recalling experiences from thirty years earlier, when Tully was the British Consul at Tripoli, and his young daughters grew up speaking Arabic and on terms of close friendship with the family of the Bashaw, or ruler, of Tripoli.

                                  Miss Tully, Narrative of a Residence at Tripoli:  Officers of the Grand Seraglio Regaling

Fanny Parks published extensive journals of her time and travels in India as the wife of a British official in Wanderings of a Pilgrim in Search of the Picturesque, during four-and-twenty years in the East (1850), but in a self-effacing gesture her name appears on the otherwise-English title page only in Urdu script. She is a sympathetic admirer of Indian culture and customs, sometimes allowing herself to criticize such English ways as the legal position of married women.

                                 Fanny Parks, Wanderings of a Pilgrim:  Grass-Cutter and Gram-Grinder; A Bengali Woman

Thomas McKenney and James Hall’s, History of the Indian Tribes of North America (Philadelphia, 1848-50) was based on portraits commissioned by McKenney of Native Americans who came to Washington to negotiate treaties. McKenney was Superintendent of Indian Trade and hoped to preserve ‘whatever of the aboriginal man can be rescued from the destruction which awaits his race’. With the advantage of hindsight, it is hard not to see that doomed dignity in the solemn composure of these portraits.

                                  McKenney and Hall, History of the Indian Tribes:  An Osage Woman; A Chippewey Chief

But the customs and costumes of countries much closer to home might prompt just as much curiosity. Both A Sporting Tour through France (1805) by Colonel Thornton and Sketches in Flanders and Holland (1816) by Robert Hills find space, in books largely devoted to views of landscape and architecture, to include studies of figures in local costume in the Low Countries or engaged in their trades on the streets of Paris.

                  Thornton, A Sporting Tour: (clockwise) Itinerant Musicians, Shoe Black, Washerwomen, Hot Chestnut Seller

                                                                                   Hills, Sketches in Flanders

There are also a wealth of illustrated books presenting a wry, serio-comic take on the life of the well-to-do, which often includes a spell at university (more usually Oxford than Cambridge), where comic misdemeanours can be illustrated, as in this plate drawn and engraved by Robert Cruikshank, showing an undergraduate hoisting a ‘fair nun of St Clement’s’ up to his room in a basket, only to succeed in dropping her on to a passing proctor. (He is sent down).

                                      William Westmacott, English Spy:  ‘Oxford Bull-Dogs detecting brazen smuggling’

                                                                               W. Sams, The Tournament

Such illustrations perhaps appeal both to the curiosity of those who haven’t been to college and to the nostalgia of those who have. A new nostalgia is also stirring for a re-imagined version of a ‘Gothick’ medieval past where valiant knights rescue swooning damsels from unwelcome oppressors, as in the illustrations to a truly dreadful book-length poem, The Tournament, or, Days of Chivalry (1823).

Another spur to curiosity for illustrated books probably lay in how so many of the early readers of such illustrated books – both men and women – will themselves have been taught to draw and paint as part of a polite education. Many of the flower books in the College’s collection present both a coloured and uncoloured version of each flower, with the latter available to be coloured by the owner.

                                Miss J. Smith, Studies of Flowers from Nature: ‘Dahlia’ coloured and uncoloured versions

Such books are directed at purchasers who may well have had a trained eye for painting in water colours every sort of subject from flora and fauna, but especially flowers and birds.

                                            Thomas Martyn, Aranei; or A Natural History of Spiders (1793), frontispiece

                                 Edouard Travies, Les Oiseaux: scenes varies, etudes a l’aquarelle (1857): Bird of paradise

Curiosity goes along with innovation in the superb illustrations of clansmen in their tartans in McIan’s The Clans of the Scottish Highlands, 2 vols. (1845-57).

                                 R.R. McIan, Clans of the Scottish Highlands:  ‘Sutherland’, and Frontispiece to Volume 2

For although the pictures of clansmen are hand-coloured lithographs, the two magnificent heraldic title pages are successful early examples of colour printing. ‘Printed in colors’ (sic) it says modestly in very small type at the foot of the page, but this is part of a transition to a whole new future in the production of illustrated books.

Barry Windeatt, Keeper of Rare Books

28 February 2024

February has almost gone. Most of it was disrupted by the rain again, with just the odd exception in the form of a sunny break in the clouds. I think 2023 and the start of 2024 is one of the dampest gardening seasons that I can remember in 30+ years of gardening. For some, it has been a welcome spell compared with the previous seasons’ long hot spell. I suppose that, as a gardener, you must be careful what you wish for. On the plus side, the temperatures have been on the mild side. There have been good signs of early spring growth. We have even had to make an early start to our grass cutting schedule as the grass has put on significant growth.

February is always a busy month in the Emmanuel gardens. It is the phase where we are preparing for the coming seasons ahead. We have been busy maintaining all the college benches during the wet spells. Every year there seem to be more benches to maintain as, unfortunately, the number of memorials has not slowed down.

It is also time to start repairing some of the many pathways throughout college as they get worn and damaged through the winter periods. The Garden Team have been busy making a start on these repairs.

This task has been made a little easier this year due to the garden department’s latest addition. The department welcomes Martin Place to join our fantastic team. Martin joins us as our Landscape Gardener and has brought with him his 25+ years of invaluable experience. Prior to joining Emmanuel, Martin had been proprietor of Saunders Landscapes, which had an excellent reputation in the industry. We will tap into Martin’s skills to help upscale the rest of the garden staff.

Martin will be very busy in the next few months as we have lots of exciting projects on the horizon. I am delighted to announce that, after many months of hard work and an untimely delay, we have eventually had confirmation of the funding required for the Emmanuel College Community Garden. We will be shortly making a start on the building of this, with hopefully some of it being ready to use this year.

We are also busy trying to re-landscape the swimming pool area after several months of construction left the grounds in a bit of a mess.

Over the next few months, the Gardening Department will be collaborating much more with the college sports ground. I am keen to work with our excellent Groundsman, Mark Robinson, in a closer partnership, which I think will benefit both the sports ground and Emmanuel gardens. I am keen for college sport to return to its pre-Covid days and will be working with Mark to ensure we are heading in the right direction.

The Emmanuel gardens themselves are starting to wake up. The earliest signs of spring bulbs are poking through. It always gives us gardeners a sign of hope for warmer days to come.

In March (on Monday 11th), we are delighted to welcome Charles Dowding back to his old college to give us a Masterclass and an evening talk regarding his now famous ‘No Dig’ philosophy. It’s not every day a celebrity horticulturist comes to Emmanuel, so the department are very excited. There are just a few spaces left if you want to join us. Booking is through Emma Experience and Daniel McKay.

Best wishes.

Brendon Sims, Head Gardener

28 February 2024

The London Overground map is undergoing a revamp. Its wandering orange lines will be replaced by new colours and names denoting the six segments that make up the system. The route between Stratford and Clapham Junction/Richmond has been designated the ‘Mildmay Line’, sparking considerable interest among Emma Members.

The route’s name commemorates the Mildmay Mission Hospital, founded in 1877. Since 1988, it has been a specialist centre for patients with HIV. The hospital was one of many charitable organisations set up by Canon William Pennefather and his wife Catherine, who lived in an area of Newington Green known locally as the Mildmay estate. This quarter had been developed for housing in the mid-nineteenth century, and the ubiquity of ‘Mildmay’ in the resulting nomenclature – Street, Road, Avenue, Grove, Park – is a sure indication that the land had formerly belonged to a family of that name.

         Henry Mildmay’s signature in the college admission book; Thomas Mildmay, admitted on the same day, was his cousin

Henry Mildmay, born c.1594, was a grandson of Emmanuel’s Founder, Sir Walter Mildmay. Admitted to Emmanuel in 1610, he continued to take an interest in college affairs after graduating. In 1627, for example, he opposed the royal mandate suspending the unpopular De mora statute that forced Emmanuel Fellows to leave after ten years and become beneficed clergymen. Henry offered to present the college with ‘five or six’ benefices to which its Fellows could be appointed, on condition that the suspension was revoked. The King agreed, but cannily insisted that the college got the benefices first. Henry failed to deliver.

Knighted in 1617, Sir Henry was MP for Maldon from 1621 and held several important official posts, including Master of the King’s Jewel House. His rapacity regarding the perks of office was notorious. Originally a royalist, he switched allegiance during the Civil War and attended Charles I’s trial, although he stopped short of signing the King’s death warrant. He was nevertheless sentenced to life imprisonment at the Restoration; his estates were forfeit, and he was exiled to Tangiers, where he died in 1668. Given his cupidity, Sir Henry had naturally sought a wealthy bride. The lucky lady was Anne, daughter and co-heiress, with her sister Margaret, of William Halliday, a vastly wealthy London alderman. Henry enlisted the help of the King, no less, to coerce the girl’s suspicious father into permitting the betrothal, which took place in 1619.

William Halliday had a house and copyhold estate in the village of Newington Green, and it was this property that became known as the Mildmay estate. Exactly when the Mildmays acquired full possession of the land is unclear. Sources state variously that it was after Halliday’s death (1624), or his widow’s death (1646), or Anne Halliday’s death (1657). The estate had presumably been divided between the sisters, as Margaret Halliday bequeathed her Newington copyholds to her nephew, Henry Mildmay junior, in 1673.

                   Henry Mildmay junior’s admonition for ‘striking of Clerk’ (either John Clarke or Samuel Clarke, sizars)

Henry junior followed his father to Emmanuel, being admitted in 1651. The apple may not have fallen far from the tree, as he was ‘admonished’ in December 1652 for hitting another student (the only founder’s kin to receive this formal censure) and was later accused by his elder brother William of having cheated him out of his inheritance. The Mildmay estate in Newington remained in the hands of Henry junior’s descendants until its sale in the late 1850s.

Surviving documentation suggests that, against all the odds, the marriage between Sir Henry Mildmay and his ‘so good a wife’ Anne Halliday was a happy one. Parents to six children, they founded their own ‘Mildmay line’, and gave their name to a little corner of north London. Something to ponder when rattling between Dalston Kingsland and Canonbury…

Amanda Goode, College Archivist

31 January 2024

January has come around fast and the Christmas holidays seem a distant memory. On returning to work, we had to pick up where we left off and the first job back always means recycling the Christmas trees. The season’s unfavourable weather also continued with what has seemed like one named storm after another, after another and another.  The Garden Department longs for some spring-like days and some apricity from the winter sun.

Unfortunately, just before Christmas, the department had to say goodbye and good luck to one of our staff members, Andrew Luetchford. We wish Andrew the best and thank him for all his hard work, but also look forward to recruiting and welcoming someone new. Watch this space.

The myth that gardeners are not busy in the gardens at this time of year could not be further from the truth. There are multiple tasks that need completing in the winter months – a long list of pruning schedules that roll out almost until the spring. It is a time for pruning and tying in the climbers, such as wisteria and climbing roses, and with the help of the Maintenance Department, we added brand new climbing supports to our new buildings. The supports look great and will give good support to the climbing plants on those buildings to help soften the landscape.

When the sun does shine in the winter, it enhances the beautiful fragrances from some of our winter shrubs. Some of the highlights come from the winter border in the Fellows’ Garden. The colours and fragrances at this time of year can be wonderful, including the Chimonanthus praecox (Wintersweet), Hamamelis (Witch hazel) and the winter flowering Viburnums (Viburnum x bodnantense). The smell from the Sarcococcas (Sweet box or Christmas box) can be heavenly as you brush past them.

It is also a time to start to work our way through preparing the herbaceous borders. The foliage is left as long as possible to provide some winter protection for the insects, but there must be a systematic plan as we go forward to manage the borders. A comprehensive approach through mass and void analysis helps determine which plants we need to be split and divided through the season, and if indeed any replacements are required.

Once the borders are managed then mulching can begin to take place and adding a rich organic matter to the borders will help replace spent nutrients, lock in moisture and help with weed suppressing as the soil temperatures rise. This is a good practice annually and most of the mulch will come from our home-grown compost.

Something to look forward to this year is the college spending some time with celebrity gardener Charles Dowding. Charles is an Emma alumnus and is infamous for his ‘no dig’ theories. Charles will be visiting the college on 11th March and giving a talk in the Queen’s Theatre – this is something that has got the Garden Department very excited. Look out for more information about this shortly.

Best wishes.

Brendon Sims, Head Gardener

31 January 2024

        R. Ackermann, History of the University of Cambridge (1815), ‘Pembroke Hall etc., from a window at Peterhouse’

Visitors viewing the richly illustrated books in Emmanuel’s Graham Watson Collection often wonder why such a flowering of hand-coloured books and prints occurs in Britain at this time, roughly the first three decades of the nineteenth century. Breakthroughs in the technical processes of aquatint and lithography are the key contributing factor.  But another major influence was the entrepreneurial genius of Rudolph Ackermann (1764-1834), a passionately Anglophile German immigrant publisher. His publication of a series of lavishly illustrated histories of Oxford, of Cambridge, and of historic public schools, were shrewdly pitched to appeal to an elite market among their alumni, but they were also so beautiful that they continue to shape perceptions of those places.

                    R. Ackermann, History of the University of Oxford (1814), ‘View of Oxford, taken from New College Tower’

                                                                             ‘Oxford, High Street, Looking West’

After an early career as a coach-builder and designer in Germany, Ackermann arrived in London in 1787, initially to pursue the same business. But by 1797 Ackermann had opened ‘The Repository of Arts’, a shop in the Strand famous in its day for pictures, prints, illustrated books, as well as paper, paints and artists’ materials aimed at the burgeoning market of amateur artists. These elegant premises became a fashionable haunt for those who wanted to be seen to have sophisticated tastes, not only in art but in fashion and décor. Tea and lectures were available. From 1809 Ackerman published a monthly magazine, The Repository of Arts, Literature, Commerce, Manufactures, Fashion and Politics, full of articles and illustrations of fashion, furniture and social news. During its twenty-year run, The Repository published over 1400 hand-coloured plates. The fashion plates, sometimes with dress-making patterns, were immensely influential on women readers.

From publishing prints there was a logic in Ackermann’s move into publishing illustrated books, such as his sumptuous three-volume Microcosm of London (1808-1810), containing 104 hand-coloured aquatints, with outside and inside scenes of London landmarks and institutions. The plates are often revealing of current social practices, such as visitors to an exhibition of watercolours, or a ‘speech day’ event at the Blue Coat School, where two scholars – known as ‘Grecians’ and destined for Oxford or Cambridge – were required to recite orations ‘in praise of this institution, one in Latin and the other in English’.

                  Microcosm of London (1808-1810), ‘Exhibition of the Society of Painters in Water Colour, Old Bond Street’

                                                               Microcosm, ‘The Great Hall, The Blue Coat School’

Like the Microcosm of London, Ackermann’s history of the public schools has a profusion of plates highlighting picturesque views of ancient buildings, so it is valuable that just one plate for each school actually provides a record of the educational process in these institutions, and a surprising one to modern eyes in terms of ‘class size’.  

                                            History of the Colleges of Winchester etc. (1816), ‘Eton College, School Hall’

                                                                        ‘The Merchant Taylors’ School Room’

In each of the schools, the plates show instruction of large groups of pupils by a number of teachers taking place within one very large, hall-like room. The competing noise must have been both a distraction and perhaps a training in concentration.  

                                                                                   ‘Harrow School Room’

                                                              History of Rugby School (1816), ‘Great School Room’

With a sixth sense for trends, Ackermann also catered to the fashionable taste for appreciation of picturesque scenery, and for books that allowed the armchair traveller to view landscapes with picturesque qualities and their inhabitants (including the clans of the Highlands). He published armchair tours of the picturesque beauties of the Rhine, and the Seine, and the coast of Ireland.

                                                                A Picturesque Tour of the Seine (1821), ‘Andeli’

                              Illustrations of the Landscape and Coastal Scenery of Ireland (1835), ‘Gap of Dunloe, Killarney’

Further afield, Ackerman published a picturesque tour of the Ganges, and a history of Madeira with delightfully quirky illustrations.

                                                   A Picturesque Tour along the Rivers Ganges and Jumna (1824)

                                        A History of Madeira (1821), Getting about on Madeira by Hammock-Mobile

In none of these books were the texts written, or the illustrations drawn, engraved or coloured by Ackerman himself, but he employed the best artists and engravers of the day. This included publishing the cutting political and satirical caricatures of Thomas Rowlandson, as well as the more fastidious genius of Augustus Pugin, whose book of idiosyncratic designs for furniture in the ‘Gothick’ taste was published by Ackermann. Always the innovator, Ackermann’s shop on the Strand was illuminated by gas lighting, on which Ackermann published a book, and his own promotion of gas lighting furthered its wider acceptance at the time.

                                                             Augustus Pugin, Gothic Furniture, ‘Gothic Bed’

                                  F. Accum, A Practical Treatise on Gas-Lighting (1816), illustrating gas-lighting machinery

He expanded into Latin America, where he supported the liberation movements, and published 100 books in Spanish (but this proved unprofitable and he burned his fingers). Perhaps akin to an obsession with cars in modern times, Ackermann’s engagement with carriage design never left him: in one year he designed both the carriage in which the Pope rode to Napoleon’s self-coronation as Emperor, and the elaborate hearse and the emblems on the coffin for the state funeral of Admiral Lord Nelson.  With his inventiveness, his eye for design, and his sheer flair for business, Ackermann may be seen as a pioneer of modern publishing and illustration – and the fruits of that can be seen in the illustrated books in Emmanuel’s Graham Watson Collection that Ackermann and others published.

Barry Windeatt, Keeper of Rare Books

Images: Clare Chippindale

31 January 2024

                                             A snowy scene on the Cam in 1955, featuring the Emmanuel 3rd Boat

The recent blog featuring a photo of the Paddock after the Whitsun snowfall of 1891, prompted John Harding to recall the even more unseasonal snowstorm that swept over Cambridge in the first week of June, 1976. This event was fixed in his memory as he was due to perform in outdoor theatricals at Clare College. It was a case of ‘the show must go on’, despite the perishing cold and consequent meagre (but not, as the cast had hoped, completely non-existent) audiences.

For Cambridge students, snow and ice caused only the usual problems before the mid-nineteenth century: travel difficulties and the risk of catching chills. Once sport became a feature of student life, however, a new dimension of anxiety was born. The Emmanuel College Magazine, which began in 1889, contains annual reports from the Emma sporting clubs, many of them lamenting the effects of icy weather. In Lent Term 1898, for instance, rain and sleet blighted an athletics club fixture involving Hertford College, Oxford, and a similar competition against Brasenose in 1906 had to be cancelled altogether ‘owing to snow’.

Rowing was perhaps the sport most vulnerable to severe winter weather. The Emmanuel boat club report for Lent Term 1895 informed readers that after the Cam had frozen in early February, no rowing was possible for a ‘full fortnight’ and the bumps were subsequently cancelled. The weather in Lent Term 1910 was equally frigid, as noted in the diary of Winthrop Bell, a graduate student from Nova Scotia, who rowed in the college’s 2nd boat. He paints a vivid picture of the miseries, and in his case, dangerous consequences, of winter boating. In late January the oars were ‘frozen’ and there was ‘Ice on river – solid below Ditton’. The weather continued ‘wretched’, and in February Winthrop developed pleurisy. After having several pints of fluid drained from his lungs, a ‘rather nasty job’, he quit Cambridge on medical advice, and transferred to a German university.

                                                                   Skating on the Paddock pond, January 1926

The silver lining of sub-zero temperatures, of course, is that ice-skating becomes possible. A photo showing skaters on the Paddock pond in January 1926 would give a modern health & safety officer a conniption, as Emmanuel’s resident pair of swans (who no doubt took a dim view of the proceedings) can be seen swimming on open water near the pond outfall, an indication that the ice was not very thick. Another patch of slushy water is visible against the northern bank, with sweepers standing perilously close. The ‘severe frost’ that produced these conditions prevented any rowing practice and curtailed the Emmanuel golf club’s activities, as noted in the Magazine. A cold snap in 1942 resulted in stretches of water at the Milton sewage works freezing solid. This attracted many keen skaters, including Charles Gimingham, a first year-Nat Sci student at Emmanuel, who recorded in his diary for 17 January: ‘…grand piece of ice…hundreds of people - but room for them all. Major crisis when one’s skates heel slipped and I bust a bolt fitting it - But half hour experimentation on the bank fixed it and the rest was grand.’

                                                                          Ice on the pond, 1981-2,  © Sarah Gill

A spell of bad weather towards the end of Michaelmas Term 1980 forced the boat club crews to row during ‘blizzards’ while competing in the Clare Novices. The winter of 1981-82 was much worse, and it is very surprising that the sporting clubs’ reports in the Magazine make no mention of the prolonged snowy and icy conditions. An atmospheric photograph taken that winter by Sarah Gill (née Doole), shows several people skating, or at any rate shuffling, on the frozen Paddock pond at dusk.

Amanda Goode, College Archivist