So the main thing is to keep your hands inside the boat at all times.
It's not too busy out there but just in case we hit anything along the way I don't want anyone to lose any fingers.
Question: Is this the back of the University?
Sorry?
Is this the back of the University?
Yeah, so all of this is all the college backs, yeah its all part of the university.
All different colleges.
If you guys have any questions along the way,
obviously feel free to ask them.
If I don't know that answer I'll lie to you,
but hopefully you won't know any different.
Has anyone been punting before?
Good so you'll have no idea.
I'll lie regardless, don't worry.
You've got ways of doing things.
Oh yeah.
Years of experience.
Yeah.
I make it up each time I go.
Different every time.
Yeah on the left there, thats some of Queens' College accommodation.
So...
Like I said, this is all the college backs,
part of the university.
The University was founded in 1209. So it's 809 years old.
It was actually founded by Oxford students.
Which is obviously quite funny because Cambridge and Oxford have a massive rivalry
...that I'm sure we all know about?
Well hopefully you know about maybe?
If not, big rivalry, boat race along the Thames every year...
Rugby match at Twickenham, and so on. Big rivalry.
That stems back to how Cambridge was founded.
Because pre-1209, pre Cambridge, Oxford was the only university about, making it the oldest of course as well.
It was mainly occupied by priests and lawyers, and this meant students of the university
were protected by something known as 'Church Law'.
This meant if a student committed a crime,
they got away with it. They wouldn't be punished.
All they had to do was pray for forgiveness,
a little slap on the wrist and thats absolutely it.
No hanging or time in prison, like a townsperson
would suffer.
Now thats important to the story because in
1209 some Oxford students actually took advantage
of this law, took advantage of a young town
girl. They raped and killed her.
Of course this horrendous crime, they got away with
it. They weren't punished.
Now the townspeople weren't very happy about this. The two social classes didn't get on anyway...
...the students kind of seen as the upper class gentry,
and the townspeople of course kind of the lower class, peasants if you will. This was the last straw.
So the townspeople took matters into their
own hands...
Picked up fifteen random Oxford students and hanged them in the streets to get their revenge of course.
Now what it did, is it made the Oxford students
that were left very scared that they were
going to fall to the same fate. So a lot of
them left Oxford and came here to Cambridge
to found their own university.
Question: How many students in the college?
In the whole University? About eighteen to twenty thousand students,
which makes up about 20% of the whole Cambridge population.
Erm, there's 31 colleges in total that make up all the University.
The largest ones along
the river are about 700 to 1,000 students,
and the smaller ones about two to three hundred
students. So it equals out to about 18 to 20,000.
Like I was saying, these Oxford students came
to Cambridge and founded their own university
to get away from the townspeople of Oxford.
They chose Cambridge of all places because
William the Conqueror, after he conquered
England in 1066, he set up a lot of monasteries here...
so half the work was done for a university to be founded here.
Thats where the rivalry began, because some
stayed in Oxford, some came to Cambridge,
they argued about what's better to do, and
they still are today.
Now on my right hand side here, this is what
you'll see on most post cards from Cambridge,
this is King's College. Which was founded
in 1441 by King Henry the VI when he was
just 18 years old. Now he founded the college
essentially as a place for students of Eton
to do their post-graduate studies. He also
founded Eton the year before.
Eton is near Windsor, its very prestigious these days. Prince William, Prince Harry studied there for example.
You have to pay quite a lot of
money to study there.
But originally it was founded for poor orphan boys to get a really good education...
and learn how to become gentlemen.
They would then come here to King's, to get
a 'gentleman's degree', and secure this gentry status.
This degree was basically 'turn up,
drink loads of beer and wine, get really drunk,
smoke some cigars', and thats absolutely it. No exams whatsoever.
So not too different from degrees today, just err, you've got to make time for exams.
Question: That's all true?
Thats all true! Trust me! You're going to
be asking me every time now aren't you?
So it was more about networking, meeting people
in high up places, socialising with them.
It's not what you know, its who you know.
Thats what it comes from.
...and they felt like gentlemen shouldn't be
tested. So thats why there was no exams.
That was unique to King's College. King's
College today is very famous for its maths
and engineering, and research. Colleges...
just because you study a certain subject,
doesn't mean you have to be at a certain college.
It's called a collegiate system. So you choose
a college based on accommodation, because
thats what they are.
Question: So this is for maths and engineering?
Yeah, its erm, its for research purposes,
not necessarily to study, erm at though.
Question: What part is for medicine?
Medicine is kind of St John's, erm, most popular
probably, and there are a few other colleges
that are famous for medicine.
But yeah, what you'll do is, the colleges
are basically accommodation, so you'll choose
that based on what you want out of your accommodation. Maybe you want to live with six, twelve people,
share a bathroom, and obviously the main thing;
the price.
So you choose your college based on that.
You then go to another college to do your lessons.
So you live with people that do all
kinds of degrees.
Just missed it slightly, but we will see it on the way back. You might see it around the corner of the wall.
This is all Clare College.
On the left is Clare Fellows Gardens.
Every college has their own gardens, but Clare's are the most beautiful in probably the whole University.
The college itself though was
founded in 1326 making it the second oldest
of the University, just after Peterhouse which
was founded in 1284. But it's the oldest college
on the river, so the oldest one you'll see
on the tour.
So like I said... Originally founded in 1326
but quickly went bankrupt. The chap who founded it
...Richard Badew didn't realise how much
money you needed to keep a college going,
so it went bankrupt.
But luckily for the students it was re-founded by a French princess, Elizabeth... Elizabeth de Clare is what I was about to say.
Now she had lots of money because of her marriages.
She had three husbands who had three things in common; they were all very rich...
all very old, and all died within a year of the marriage. So you could say she timed it nicely.
Question: Did she get rid of them?
Err, you could say that. I'm not gonna, I'm
not gonna, you know grass her up.
She was just good a timing. Way ahead of her time.
She knew what she was doing.
So yeah, she obviously got a lot of money
from these marriages, and used it to found
the college and name it after herself. She
could do that because colleges used to be
named after royalty, or people from the Bible.
Of course like I said, she's French princess.
So we're now coming into Trinity College which you'll see on the right hand side just after this bridge.
Now the college was founded in
1546 by King Henry VIII.
He founded the college basically as a big statement of his power and wealth.
So this is Trinity just here on the right. My right anyway. Just here.
So two reasons he founded the college. Like i say - big statement of his power and wealth to two different people.
One, to St John's College founder, which is
ahead of us. That will be John Fisher, a priest.
They didn't get along, so he founded this
college just to kind of disrespect him...
show how much bigger and better he was, erm, but
more importantly to Catholics.
He founded this as a big statement to them. Because he had recently become a Protestant King...
through the reformation which was basically
dissolving lots of monasteries, which is where
he got his wealth. Dissolving the monasteries, the land that they were built on was very profitable.
So he basically, a big publicity
stunt, like I said.
Now he died about six weeks after founding
the college. He donated all the land he got
from dissolving those monasteries to Trinity.
So thats why Trinity is the wealthiest college
in the world. It's worth just over two billion
pounds, which is quite a lot for one college.
Question: What sort of money do the students
pay?
So students will still, at undergraduate level, they'll pay nine thousand pounds a year which is the
same for any university, and thats because
the government cap it. Erm, where the reputation
of Cambridge being really expensive, is one,
when they go and do post-graduate study, so
if you do masters and doctorates, Cambridge will up their prices where others will drop theirs.
But also international students, so depending
on the course, some international students
will pay at least forty, fifty thousand pounds
a year to study here, yeah.
Question: But thats per year, not per session?
Thats per year, yeah, thats right. And then
you'll pay accommodation on top of that as well.
Like I said, they get the wealth through the
land. Today, they still own a small part of
Wall Street, they used to own a lot more,
but a small part they've still got.
A lot of land here in Cambridge is own by the college.
You can walk from Cambridge to Oxford just
on their land. Felixstowe Docks, which is
near Ipswich, erm, about 40% of the land that
Tesco is built on in East Anglia, erm, but
the best one is they lease the land for the
O2 Arena in London, you know the big white dome? The land that's built on, they lease that out.
So Trinity own the O2 basically.
Erm, O2 kind of indirectly pay Trinity College,
which is obviously pretty unique, and they
get a lot of money from it.
Now they've invested that money back into
their research. Trinity is also one of the
best academically, because out of the 91 Nobel
Prize winners to come out of... the University,
32 have come from Trinity College. So more
than any other college of the University.
Compare that to Oxford, the whole University
of Oxford has only produced about fifty Nobel
Prize winners. So that's why you can say Cambridge
is better than Oxford.
Question: How deep is the river?
Its about one to two meters deep. So some
of it will come to my waist, some of it will
be about on my neck. The deepest part is four
meters, but thats only for a small part.
Question: *inaudible*
Yeah we do in the winter, when we have a long,
when there's been a big rainfall or big snowfall.
Yeah, it messes up the current, the river
will go really high and it's really strong.
So we're now coming into St John's College.
Question: On this side?
Yep, its on both sides in fact. St John's
is on both sides.
St John's was founded in 1511 by Lady Margaret Beaufort.
That's Henry VIII's grandmother. She founded the college,
but she actually died a couple of years earlier in 1509, and so she wrote in her will for
a close friend and priest John Fisher to carry
on the rest of her work on her behalf.
But no-one actually ever saw the will where he could
do this, so thats, it was very suspicious,
so thats why Henry VIII didn't really like
John Fisher. Because he got a lot of credit,
and a lot of money from it as well.
Now the bridge ahead of me, well what we're about to pass under, this is the Bridge of Sighs.
Now there's a Bridge of Sighs in Venice,
which joins the court room to the execution room.
This Bridge of Sighs joins the student accommodation to exam room. The Student execution room, if you will.
Queen Victoria came to visit this bridge after
it was built in 1891, and said how it reminded
her of the one in Venice having never been
herself, she'd just heard about it.
So that's why a lot people say how they look nothing a like.
I've never been to Venice so I won't comment, but someone might have done.
Question: *Inaudible* ...1524?
No, thats for the chapel thats there. It used
to be an art chapel, now its a library.
So yeah, all of this is still St John's College.
Question: Is this still part of the campus?
Yeah, this is still part of the campus. So
this kind of chalk coloured square building
on my left, this is Cripps Halls. This was
the first building to be designed on a computer.
Prince Charles actually opened this building. He didn't realise his microphone was still on...
and everyone could still here him, when
he said it's the ugliest building he's ever seen...
and it looks more like a multi-story
car park.
Funnily enough, the people who designed it,
Powell and Moya actually designed some London
multi-story car parks later on in their career.
It's a listed building, which basically means
it can't change in any way. It's protected.
So that building yeah, it's grade two listed.
So they just put up big trees in front of
it instead. Cover it up. That's the best they could do.
Question: He normally calls everything carbuncles(?).
Yeah, exactly.
That's first year accommodation for St John's
students.
Question: How expensive are the accommodations?
It depends which one. So the nicest one, which
I'll point out, is about £250 per week.
Some of them are about £150. It ranges between
them.
So all of this now, this is all Magdalene
College. The nicest part of the college is
actually after the bridge. This is all part
of it still. Magdalene was founded in 1542
by Thomas Audley. He was Henry VIII's Chancellor,
so he did a lot of his dirty work during the reformation.
He actually beheaded John Fisher
who helped found St John's who I mentioned earlier.
Now he couldn't name the college after himself
this Thomas Audley because he wasn't royalty
or from the Bible of course. He wanted to
keep the credit though, so people would remember who he was...
he was just very arrogant basically.
So to kind of help people remember who he was...
he kept the same spelling as Mary Magdalene,
thats what he named it after, she was one
of Christ's followers. He kept the same spelling
as Magdalene, but so people would remember
who he was, he changed the pronunciation to sound like his last name Audley.
So that's why we pronounce it M-au-delene College despite the spelling.
Like I said, big ego, people would remember
who he was.
Question: Are we going back now?
Yeah, so you turn around and go back.
Question: Are you going to say the same things now?
Yeah, probably! Just tell you different dates.
Make up a fresh lie.
Question: What's that one then?
So thats part of Magdalene College. Thats
the nicer part of it. It's one of their halls.
Question: 31 Colleges you said?
31 on total. There's eight on the river here.
So we've seen seven so far, no sorry, six so far.
Question: *Inaudible*
Yeah, something like that.
Question: So Oxford has 26 and Cambridge has...
Thirty One.
Now this bridge we're now passing under, not this one specifically, this one was built around forty years ago...
but the original one that was here was the first bridge over the river.
So the river is called the
River Cam... this is a bridge... 'Cam' - 'Bridge'...
'Cambridge'. It's where the name comes from.
The first bridge that was there was wooden,
in about 6 or 700AD.
Now Magdalene College was also famous for
something they're not exactly proud of.
It was the last college out of the University
to admit women, which was in 1988.
So only 30 years ago women were allowed in. Like I said, the last one of the University.
Now the men, when they heard that all these women were going to turn up, of course they were ecstatic by the news.
So to celebrate, they dressed in all black, marched through the city of Cambridge with a coffin...
chanting "education is dead".
But the women got their own back as they always do.
The average grades went up by about 15% the year later...
and all three Nobel Prize winners to come out of Magdalene College have been women as well.
So they've done very well since.
C.S. Lewis, who wrote the 'Chronicles of Narnia' studied here...
and was very good friends with the professor J.R. Tolkien, who wrote 'The Lord of the Rings' and 'The Hobbit'.
He was a professor at Magdalene College.
Question: Are they more interested in arts,
the colleges (in Oxford?), than science here?
Stereotypically yes. So Oxford is more famous
for its arts and literature.
Cambridge is known for it's science. But these days, like
I say thats very stereotypical.
These days its a bit more equal. Both universities are
pretty good at both things.
Cambridge has got a big science park which is kind of just over there.
So yeah, Cambridge may be a bit more sciencey you could say.
But if you still came and did arts and literature here at Cambridge,
you're still going to be doing pretty well
anyway.
Question: So I presume you're a student yourself?
Not at Cambridge, no. Up in Leeds. No, I'm
just from around here.
So, one of the reasons that Cambridge is one of the best in the world...
...is the way it does it's teaching.
So it still has its lectures
and seminars like most universities...
but it also has this thing called 'supervision',
which is basically a one-on-one lesson with
a professor of your choosing. So for example,
about 20 or 30 years ago if you were studying
physics, you could have chose professor Stephen
Hawking as one of your supervisors, your one-to-one lesson.
Which obviously if you're interested in that
kind of thing it's pretty unique...
...its pretty cool, you're going to learn a lot, not just
because its him, but because its one-to-one.
You're going to... its easier to learn when
it's just you and another person.
Question: Did he have his disability at that
time?
Yeah yeah yeah.
This black door on my left
hand side is called the 'trap door'...
...because some second years once played a prank on all of the new students. They redirected all the
fire exit signs toward that door and at about
four in the morning, set off a fire alarm.
So the students followed all the signs and
came running into the water.
And then some other students in the sixties,
they didn't like their professor too much,
so just before graduation they stole his car
and actually hanged it off this bridge...
...the Bridge of Sighs.
If you google 'hanging Bridge of Sighs car' you'll see an old Austin Seven below that bridge.
It's quite the picture.
Question: Clever(?) students as well aren't
they?
Yeah they are. They don't have much studying
to do clearly. They've got a lot of free time.
Yeah, Stephen Hawking actually... he kind
of... what's the way to phrase it?
He started to become disabled as he was at Cambridge.
So he wasn't disabled when he actually came
to Cambridge at first, but he was... diagnosed - thats the word I'm looking for...
whilst he was here.
Question: Was he still attached to the University?
His college?
Yep, so he was part of Gonville and Caius
College.
The first college he studied at I'll tell you about when we go past it.
He did his research at Gonville and Caius which is kind of just behind Trinity and Kings.
Now just behind me on my right hand side...
some of you might have to turn your heads.
This is St John's New Court here. Now that's second year student accommodation for St John's students.
So that's some of the nicest. Thats where 'Harry Potter' was supposed to be filmed...
but was going to cost about thirty six thousand
pounds a day. So instead they went to Oxford,
where of course its half the price... because
its half as nice there.
Now that building was designed to be perfectly symmetrical.
The chap who designed it; Henry Hutchinson was so obsessed with this symmetry...
...that apparently he used to sit on the grass waiting for a student to open a window.
If they opened it on the left hand side...
he would run in and make sure a student opened it on the right hand side as well.
So it was perfectly symmetrical all day long. Very OCD.
It's got a very teared nature to it as well, so its nicknamed 'The Wedding Cake'.
Weddings do take place there in the summer.
They'll cost you a lot of money and the waiting list is about four or five years or so.
The students also have their end of academic
year parties, called the May Balls...
that take place in mid-June. Don't know why they call
them May Balls then.
It's basically a big party. Tickets would cost you about £350/ £400...
...and they have these massive firework displays...
and Trinity and St John's compete every year for the best firework display.
Of course they've got these wonderful backdrops
as well. So its quite the picture.
A famous student of St John's College who
became a fellow at Trinity would be a chap
called Dr John Dee. Now he's famous because
he became the first ever documented spy.
So he used to go around the rest of the world
spying on behalf of Queen Elizabeth.
Now he'd write letters to her, of course telling her
what he'd found out, but like any good spy
he'd remain completely anonymous. So he used
to sign off his letters '007'...
...and she signed off her letters 'M'.
Of course that's where Ian Flemming got the initial works for James Bond from.
The two zeros, he put dots in the
middle of them to look like eyes for spying,
...seven was believed to be his lucky number because you need luck when spying...
and 'M' was for Majesty and Monarch.
That is a true story by the way. That one's
not a lie. That one's true.
Question: I was just about to question that
one!
That's the one that everyone questions. That
one is true.
Question: Do you have to train to...
Sorry?
Question: Do you have to train to do this?
Yeah so there's a bit of training obviously telling you what you're supposed to say and all this kind of stuff...
Question: No no no... The punting?
Yeah and a bit of the punting as well, you
need to be able to move the boat.
So obviously we just had the Bank Holiday, and it was just busy as anything...
just rammed so you could hardly see the water there was so many boats.
Question: The weather was nice and it was
Bank Holiday
Exactly yeah, exactly. It all relies on the
weather and the weekends.
Yeah you don't so much move around the boats, you smash into them, get them out of the way.
Knock people in. I knocked in three people this weekend. That's quite fun.
The building on my left is Trinity's library;
The Wren Library.
Designed by Sir Christopher Wren who also designed St Pauls in London.
The ground floor doesn't have any books on it, and thats because the river used to flood every year.
So to protect the books, they're on the upper levels where the windows are also impregnated with moths.
You know the little bugs. Because they protect the books
from UV rays from the sun.
Stop them going really old and tatty.
Now Trinity College, the library has Isaac
Newton's 'Principal of Mathematics' in there...
because he studied there, and all of his original
sketching as well by the way.
There's also the first editions of 'Winnie the Pooh' in
that library because the author A.A. Milne
also studied at Trinity College too.
Then another famous student who's books aren't
in the library. I don't think he even read
one or wrote one himself; Prince Charles studied
here at Trinity as well.
Now, he actually went to study at Oxford first, but because his grades were so poor he got rejected...
...he got something like two D's and an E. He
only got let into Cambridge not because of
his grades, but because he got his mum to
write him a letter this time.
Of course they couldn't reject the Queen.
Now he came here
to study Anthropology, Archeology and History.
Before he came to the University he wrote
to the master, the head of the college...
with a special request. That was to be treated
as any other student. No royal exceptions,
just an ordinary guy getting a degree. So
on his first day he arrived by helicopter,
landing on the lawn on my right with about
eight bodyguards - just like every other Cambridge student.
Now he studied Anthropology, Archeology and
History. He graduated with a 2-2, the third
best grade you can get at university. Because
the professors of his course felt so one of
the bodyguards who followed him everywhere
top lectures and exams, they said he could
do the same degree and of course the body
guard beat Prince Charles getting a 2-1.
Question: Prince Charles, I thought he spent
most of his time at St Andrews, no?
No, no. His son did. William went to St Andrews,
Prince Charles came here.
On my left this is Trinity Hall College. Separate to Trinity this is Trinity Hall, founded in
1350 by a Bishop William Bateman from Norfolk.
He founded the college because of the Black Death - the plague that was spreading across Europe at this time.
It killed a lot of priests and lawyers that mainly occupied the University around then.
That's because if you were very sick and about to die, you'd see a lawyer...
to sort out your money and your will, see your priest to hopefully send you into Heaven...
but because the plague was so contagious and deadly of course these guys were dying out quite rapidly.
So he founded the college to bring these people back to the community.
Very famous for law, but its also famous because thats where Stephen Hawking did his first
degree, just there, Trinity Hall.
Question: Just that one yeah?
On the left, just behind us there, that red
brick building.
So he did his first degree in Oxford in fact.
He was pretty sure his teachers didn't like
him and he didn't like them, so he asked for
the best grade possible, and if they gave
it to him he said he's leave them alone and
go to Cambridge but if they gave him anything
less he threatened to stay in Oxford and make
their life hell. So that's how he ended up
doing his post graduate at Trinity Hall, and
like I said he did his research at Gonville
and Caius College which is just behind these.
Question: Was his first wife also studying
in these halls?
Yeah she was. I don't know what she was studying
though, I can't remember off the top of my head.
I could lie but... I wasn't quick enough.
So again, this is Clare College on the left.
We didn't see it quite earlier.
Clare College is where David Attenborough studied for example. The very famous nature TV presenter.
Of course, famous for narrating 'Blue Planet' and 'Planet
Earth'.
He studied here, he'd have his lunch in the gardens on my right I mentioned earlier,
nearly every day weather permitting. It's where's he's quoted to say his love of nature actually began...
...the inspiration for programs came from.
James Watson, one half of Watson and Crick,
who together discovered the structure of DNA,
James Watson studied here at Clare College.
And this bridge we're now passing under, this
is Clare Bridge, the oldest bridge on the
river, built in 1640. Its the oldest because
Oliver Cromwell knocked down all the other
ones during the English Civil War when he
was keeping his base of operations in Kings
College Chapel. He kept that one because it
was the first stone. All the other ones were
wooden still, so it would obviously hold up
best in war.
By only having one way in and one way out obviously its a lot easier to defend...
creating a moat around Cambridge basically.
Now back to King's on my left hand side. On
the left of the grass is King's College Chapel.
It's the second largest chapel after the Sistine Chapel, thats in Rome in Italy.
Now some students called the 'Night Climbers', they once put a traffic cone on top of that left hand spire of the chapel.
Of course, the college weren't
very happy so they got the builders in straight away...
putting scaffolding all the way to the
top of that spire.
It took them three days to do because they
had to take their time and not ruin the building.
While on the fourth morning when they were
eventually going to take the cone off...
it wasn't there. Thats because the students the night before moved it from the left spire
to the right spire so the work had to start
all over again.
About a week until that cone left the chapel.
Some other students in 2009, just before a
Christmas carol service that The Queen was attending...
put Santa hats on all four corners
as well.
So there's actually anti-climbing spikes at the base of the spires now.
The window at the front is Renaissance glass,
so it tells the story of the Bible.
During World War Two they actually took out that
glass fearing it would be bombed during the Blitz.
But because there's about 60,000 different
pieces and no-one thought to number them,
no-one knew how it actually went back together
after the war. It took five years to put the
last piece back in. The biggest jigsaw puzzle
ever.
Then the white building next to it is the
Gibbs building, named after James Gibbs who
wrote the book of architecture. That book
was obviously used to design that building,
but also the White House - the first White
House in Washington, in America.
So you might see the similarity. They're both white...
ish.
This bridge ahead of me, this is King's Bridge,
or as it's known in Mandarin: Kāngqiáo.
Basically this famous Chinese poet Xu Zhi
Mo has got his poem 'Farewell to Cambridge'
engraved on a stone on top of the bridge.
It's very important to their culture.
It's in like their national curriculum. The loosest,
kind of best way to explain it is like...
its kind of like our Shakespeare. Same kind of
importance.
So on my left is Bodley's Court. It's King's
College student accommodation.
So this is probably some of the nicest 
accommodation in the whole University.
It was designed to be that way anyway.
So the rooms have an en-suite, kitchen, king sized bed, a fireplace,
their own study room, a little library as well.
Very big rooms.
So these three windows on the left just after the wall, those two windows, thats the size of one room for one student.
Question: So there's no dormitories?
Yeah so that's just one, like, yeah, so they
don't like live with other people in like,
one confined space. They kind of have this mini house in their own room kind of thing.
So these rooms are given to the best and brightest
students. After your second year exams, if
you're in one of the top 48 places you'll
be given one of the 48 rooms here.
So like I said, best and brightest.
Nowadays its on ballot - mostly given to students
who are on scholarships. If not, these are
the rooms that cost about £250 a week.
So that was best and brightest. So the punishment
for your lack of intelligence is being put
in this one, which obviously is a very different
looking building.
Its the Erasmus Building, part of Queens' College accommodation.
The chap who designed it, Sir Basil Spence...
he came into a lot of criticism for the building's
appearance. He defended his building by saying
it's supposed to reflect the view on the opposite
side. Which obviously when you have a look,
sounds like a load of rubbish. Thats because
what you don't know, is Sir Basil Spence actually
studied at Oxford, so a lot of people think
he designed it to look that ugly on purpose,
and get one over on Cambridge. He was also
a bit of an alcoholic, and it was built in
the 60's so thats another reason why it was
so ugly. Very abstract. Brutal.
So like I say, that was Queens' College. All
of this now is all Queens' College.
Probably the last college we'll talk about. This was
founded in 1448 by the wife of Henry VI.
Henry VI founded King's, his wife Margaret of Anjou
founded Queens'.
So that's why its called Queens'. But two
more queens founded it later on, hence why
the apostrophe is after the 's'. Elizabeth
Woodville and Queen Anne Neville, and that
kind of goes back to the whole publicity stunt.
Investing into education is quite known.
So on my right is more accommodation - looks
more like a London hospital though.
Built in the 70's. On the left is the President's
Lodge. Every college has their own Master,
who is the head of the college. But because
you can't be master of royalty, King's has
a Provost and Queens' has a president. They
have this mini mansion in the college on at
least a six-figure salary. A very cushty job.
Then what interlinks those two buildings is
this bridge here. You'll never guess the name, its the Mathematical Bridge.
Really, its called The Wooden Bridge, for obvious reasons. You'll see it as we come through.
Now it was designed by Isaac Newton's student,
William Etheridge, who uses a mathematical
term called radial tangent trussing which
is basically a lot of straight lines to make
a curve. So all the pressure of the bridge
sits on the stone blocks either side.
If I was really strong, I could pick up that bridge,
put it back down without the need to unscrew
or un- tighten anything. It would be as safe
as before. That's why it's nicknamed 'Mathematical'.
Thats the third one of it's type. That one
was built in 1904.
Famous students of Queens' include Stephen
Fry and Sacha Baron Cohen, of course Sacha
Baron Cohen famous for Ali G and Borat. They
were part of this amateur acting group called
the Footlights, which has then produced stars
such as Hugh Laurie, John Cleese, Rowan Atkinson
who played Mr Bean, and Eddy Redmayne who
played Stephen Hawking in the film about Stephen
Hawking; The 'Theory of Everything'. Eddie
actually studied at Trinity College, but was
part of the same acting group founded at Queens'.
Now a lot of students like to go punting themselves.
They do this thing called 'Bridge Jumping',
which basically when you get to a bridge,
you climb up one side, run to the other end
and jump off, and try and land back into the
same boat you left from. Of course they've
usually had a few drinks so they miss most
of the time, but I guess that's the idea too.
This pub on my left hand side is the Anchor
Pub. It used to be a live jazz club.
Thats where Pink Floyd played their very first gig.
Question: Did they actually go to university
here?
Erm, no I don't think... I think one of them
wen to the other university; ARU... Anglia Ruskin,
I can never remember his name. So
that's why they did their first gig there.
Very nice, thank you very much!
You're welcome. Thank you very much guys. Hope you have a good day... Thank you.
