Introduction

The University of Cambridge is one of the oldest universities in the world and one of the largest in the United Kingdom. Its reputation for outstanding academic achievement is known world-wide and reflects the intellectual achievement of its students, as well as the world-class original research carried out by the staff of the University and the Colleges.

Many of the University's customs and unusual terminology can be traced to roots in the early years of the University's long history, and this booklet looks to the past to find the origins of much that is distinctive in the University of today.

Early Records

When we first come across Cambridge in written records, it was already a considerable town. The bridge across the River Cam or Granta, from which the town took its name, had existed since at least 875. The town was an important trading centre before the Domesday survey was compiled in 1086, by which time a castle stood on the rising ground to the north of the bridge, and there were already substantial commercial and residential properties as well as several churches in the main settlement which lay south of the bridge.

Within the town, or very close to it, there were a number of other religious institutions. There had been canons in the Church of St Giles below the castle before 1112, when they moved to a new site across the River Cam at Barnwell, and the Convent of St Radegund had existed since 1135 on the site which eventually became Jesus College. There were also two hospitals, one reserved for lepers at Stourbridge, and a second, founded for paupers and dedicated to St John, which after 1200 occupied the site where St John's College now stands. Seventeen miles north of the town was the great Benedictine house of Ely which, after 1109, was the seat of a Bishopric.

There was thus much to bring clerks (clergymen) to the town, but traders were also attracted to it. After about 1100 they could reach Cambridge easily by the river systems which drained the whole of the East Midlands, and through Lynn and Ely they had access to the sea. Much wealth accumulated in the town, and the eleven surviving medieval parish churches and at least one handsome stone house remain as evidence of this. There were food markets before 1066, and during the twelfth century the nuns of St Radegund were allowed to set up a fair on their own land at Garlic Lane; the canons of Barnwell had a fair in June (later Midsummer Fair), and the leper hospital was granted the right to hold a fair which developed into the well-known and long-lasting Stourbridge Fair.

By 1200, Cambridge was a thriving commercial community which was also a county town and had at least one school of some distinction. Then, in 1209, scholars taking refuge from hostile townsmen in Oxford migrated to Cambridge and settled there. At first they lived in lodgings in the town, but in time houses were hired as hostels with a Master in charge of the students. By 1226 the scholars were numerous enough to have set up an organisation, represented by an official called a Chancellor, and seem to have arranged regular courses of study, taught by their own members. From the start there was friction between the town and the students. Students, usually aged about fourteen or fifteen, often caused disturbances; citizens of the town, on the other hand, were known to overcharge for rooms and food. King Henry III took the scholars under his protection as early as 1231 and arranged for them to be sheltered from exploitation by their landlords. At the same time he tried to ensure that they had a monopoly of teaching, by an order that only those enrolled under the tuition of a recognised master were to be allowed to remain in the town.

The Medieval University

It soon became necessary, to avoid abuse of the royal privileges conferred on scholars, to identify and authenticate the persons to whom degrees had been granted. Enrolment with a licensed master was the first step towards this; it was called matriculation because of the condition that the scholar's name must be on the master's matricula or roll, but later the University itself assumed this duty. It was also desirable to mark the stage in a scholar's progress by a ceremony of admission (graduation) to the different grades, or degrees, of membership. These were conferred by the whole body of masters, with the Chancellor exercising the power on their behalf, as his deputy, the Vice-Chancellor, came to do later. The grades of scholar became differentiated by a series of variations on the gown, hood and cap. Reminders of these terms and practices survive today.

The Regent Masters, who were the teaching body, soon found that in addition to a ceremonial head they needed other representatives to speak and act for them. The first of these were the two Proctors (literally representatives) whom they elected annually to negotiate on their behalf with the town and other lay authorities, to keep the accounts, to safeguard their treasures and books, to moderate in examinations, and to supervise all other ceremonies. These duties were soon to be shared by other elected officers: Bedells, at first attached to the faculties, presided over ceremonies; and a Chaplain took charge of treasures and books. By the sixteenth century a Registrary recorded matriculations, admissions to degrees, and decisions of the regent masters, while an Orator wrote ceremonial letters and addresses. Most of these offices remain today, although in some cases for ceremonial purposes only.

A community of such complexity needed rules. To this end, as problems arose, Statutes were adopted by the whole body of the University. These were not at first arranged or codified, but were noted haphazardly in books kept by the Proctors. The earliest known version of these decisions is a copy made in the mid-thirteenth century, which is now in the Biblioteca Angelica in Rome.

The University after 1945

This period has seen an accelerated rate of development in almost every direction. The reputation of Cambridge scientists had already been established in the late nineteenth century by Clerk Maxwell and the Darwins among others and was maintained afterwards by J. J. Thomson, Lord Rayleigh and Lord Rutherford. Work done by their pupils and associates during the Second World War greatly increased this reputation and large numbers of students anxious to use the laboratories flocked to the University and to the growing number of government-sponsored institutions established in the town (which was chartered as a city in 1951). University departments and research institutes were established as new areas of study developed, and with them new teaching courses.

The 1950s and 1960s saw an unprecedented expansion of the University's teaching accommodation. Some older departmental and faculty buildings were replaced - for instance, those for Chemistry and Engineering - and the growing arts faculties received permanent accommodation for the first time, notably in the complex of buildings on the Sidgwick Avenue Site. Development of a huge new regional general hospital south of the city, eventually replacing the ancient Addenbrooke's Hospital in the city centre, provided the nucleus for a wide range of medically related departments and institutes, including a new School of Clinical Medicine. The need for more space than could be made available on the cramped central sites led to dispersal of other departments, notably the Cavendish Laboratory to a spacious site west of Cambridge in the 1970s. The west Cambridge expansion continues today, and the area now houses many facilities including the Computer Laboratory and the Centre for Nanoscience.

Social and cultural activities were not neglected, and in this period a permanent social centre for graduate students and staff - the University Centre - was established with funds provided by the Wolfson Foundation, a purpose-built music school and concert hall was built, again partly from benefactions, the University Library was again extended, the modern art collection of Kettle's Yard was acquired and enlarged, and England's oldest University playhouse, the ADC, opened by the Amateur Dramatic Club in 1855, was leased by the University and refurbished as a centre for undergraduate drama. Such developments as these showed an increasing awareness of the wider responsibilities of the University, both to its own members and to the community at large.

More directly related to its core activities was the development named 'the Cambridge Phenomenon', the rapid and successful growth of science-based industry in and around the city, much of it deriving from research conducted in University laboratories. Crucial in this process was the establishment of the Cambridge Science Park by Trinity College, an innovation which has now grown vastly in size and which has been followed by other similar developments. The University's own Industrial Liaison Office began in the 1970s with the support of the Wolfson Foundation, and has now developed into the Research Services Division.

Meanwhile the undergraduate numbers were increased after the war by the admission to full membership from 1947 of women students, by the foundation of a third women's College, New Hall (1954), as well as the foundation of Churchill (1960) and Robinson (1977). More revolutionary steps were taken in the 1960s. Four new Colleges were established to provide fellowships for some of the growing number of teaching and research staff, as well as more places for research students (Darwin, Wolfson, Clare Hall and Lucy Cavendish). Some older foundations originally loosely connected with the University - Hughes Hall, St Edmund's and Homerton - were recognised as Colleges. The older men's Colleges now began to admit women students and appoint women Fellows. Now 'co-residence' is usual, but three Colleges admit women students only - Newnham, New Hall, and Lucy Cavendish.