Cambridge

• 1. Introduction

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  Cambridge sits on the River Cam, 55 miles north of London, and holds a quiet kind of gravity that most cities can only dream about. A 3,500-year-old farmstead once stood where Fitzwilliam College now rises. A Roman fort called Duroliponte occupied the ground that became the city centre. And in 1209, students fleeing Oxford arrived and planted an institution that would become one of the most celebrated universities in the world. That tension between deep antiquity and relentless intellectual ambition runs through everything Cambridge does. How did a modest river crossing in the fenlands of eastern England become both a seat of medieval kings and a cradle of modern technology? How did a city that gave the world King's College Chapel also give it Pink Floyd and the rules of football? And why, after more than three millennia of continuous settlement, does Cambridge still feel like a place in the middle of becoming something?

• 2. Before the University

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  Castle Hill has been occupied for a very long time. The Romans built their fort Duroliponte there around AD 70, and about 50 years later converted it to civilian use. After the Roman withdrawal around 410, the site is identified in the History of the Britons attributed to Nennius as Cair Grauth, one of the 28 cities of Britain. By the late 5th century, Anglo-Saxons had begun settling the same ground and named their community Grantebrycge, meaning Granta bridge. Bede, writing in the 7th century, described the town as a "little ruined city" containing the burial site of Æthelthryth. The Vikings arrived in 875 according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and by 878 had imposed the Danelaw. Their trading habits caused the town's centre to shift from Castle Hill across the river to the area now called the Quayside. When Saxon power returned, the community built St Bene't's Church, wharves, merchant houses, and a mint that stamped coins with the name "Grant." Two years after the Norman Conquest, William the Conqueror erected a castle on Castle Hill, whose motte survives to this day. Henry I then granted Cambridge its first town charter between 1120 and 1131, giving the town a monopoly on waterborne traffic and formal recognition of its borough court.

• 3. The Black Death and the Colleges

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  In 1349, the Black Death reached Cambridge. Records from the period are scarce, but 16 of the 40 scholars at King's Hall died. The town north of the river was so badly hit it was nearly wiped out. A second national epidemic struck in 1361, and the population loss was severe enough that a letter from the Bishop of Ely proposed merging two Cambridge parishes because not enough people remained to fill one church. More than a third of England's clergy died in those years. The university's response was to build. Four new colleges were established to train replacement clergymen: Gonville Hall, Trinity Hall, Corpus Christi, and Clare. The pattern linking catastrophe to institutional growth is one of Cambridge's recurring themes. Earlier, in January 1275, Eleanor of Provence had expelled the city's significant Jewish community, ordering them to relocate to Norwich from All Saints Passage, then known as the Jewry. Then in 1382, the town's participation in the Peasants' Revolt cost it dearly: a revised charter stripped the community of liberties it had long enjoyed, transferring supervision of baking, brewing, and weights and measures from the town to the university. That transfer of power says a great deal about where authority in Cambridge ultimately resided. King's College Chapel, begun in 1446 by Henry VI and completed under Henry VIII, became the building that made the university's claim on the city skyline permanent.

• 4. Civil War, Railways, and Silicon Fen

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  In 1643, Parliament gave Oliver Cromwell control of Cambridge. Cromwell had been educated at Sidney Sussex College, and the town became the headquarters of the Eastern Counties Association, the regional army that formed the backbone of the Parliamentarian effort before the New Model Army was created. Royalist forces came within 2 miles of the city in 1644, but the fortified castle and destroyed bridges held them off; the garrison was stood down the following year without having fought. Two centuries later, a different kind of transformation arrived: the railway reached Cambridge in 1845, though not without a fight. The university had resisted its arrival and succeeded in pushing the station outside the town centre to limit undergraduate travel. The rail link nevertheless stimulated brick, cement, and malt production and opened new residential districts like Romsey Town. During World War II, Cambridge became the regional military headquarters for seven counties. German bombing raids were mainly aimed at the railway. Twenty-nine people were killed and no historic buildings were damaged. In 1944, a secret meeting of military leaders at Trinity College laid the groundwork for the allied invasion of Europe. Cambridge was also an evacuation centre for more than 7,000 people from London. By the late 20th century the city had pivoted again, this time toward technology. The area around Cambridge became known as Silicon Fen, echoing Silicon Valley, dense with software firms, bioscience companies, and technology incubators. Cambridge Science Park, the largest commercial research and development centre in Europe, is owned by Trinity College. Over 40 per cent of Cambridge's workforce holds a higher education qualification, more than twice the national average.

• 5. Football, Fairs, and Pink Floyd

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  Parker's Piece, a large open green near the city centre, is where the modern game of football was born. University members drew up the Cambridge Rules in 1848, and those rules had what the source describes as a "defining influence" on the Football Association rules written in 1863. Both sets of rules were first played on Parker's Piece. Cambridge United, formed in 1912 as Abbey United, entered the Football League in 1970 and reached the Second Division in 1978. In 1992 they came close to becoming the first English team to win three successive Football League promotions, which would have carried them into the newly formed Premier League; they lost in the play-offs. After nine years outside the Football League, they returned in 2014 by winning the Conference National play-offs. Away from the pitch, the city's calendar of festivals stretches across centuries. Midsummer Fair dates to a charter granted by King John in 1211. The Cambridge Beer Festival has been held on Jesus Green each May since 1974. Three Cambridge Free Festivals in 1969, 1970, and 1971 featured David Bowie, King Crimson, and Roy Harper, among others, and the festival organiser believes they were the first free multiple-day rock music festivals held in the UK. Pink Floyd carry the city's most enduring musical signature: Syd Barrett was born and raised in Cambridge, and he and Roger Waters attended Cambridgeshire High School for Boys together. David Gilmour, who later replaced Barrett in the band, also grew up in the city and attended the Perse School. Matthew Bellamy of Muse, Tom Robinson, Olivia Newton-John, and Charli XCX were all born in Cambridge.

• 6. Wealth, Inequality, and Climate

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  The Centre for Cities identified Cambridge as the UK's most unequal city in both 2017 and 2018. In 2018, the top 6 per cent of earners accounted for 19 per cent of the city's total income, while the bottom 20 per cent accounted for only 2 per cent. The Gini coefficient that year was 0.460. These numbers sit alongside a city where 41.2 per cent of residents hold a higher-level qualification, compared with a national average of 19.7 per cent, and where those in the highest professional categories make up 32.6 per cent of workers against a national figure of 23.5 per cent. The weather adds its own character. Cambridge sits in the driest region of Britain, averaging around 570 millimetres of rain a year, roughly half the national figure. The driest recent year was 2011, with only 380.4 millimetres recorded at the Botanic Garden. On the 19th of July 2022, the Cambridge University Botanic Garden recorded 39.9 degrees Celsius, a new absolute maximum. Before that date, Cambridge already held the UK's all-time temperature record after recording 38.7 degrees on the 25th of July 2019. The proposed Isaac Newton line, a light railway named for the former MP for Cambridge University, would eventually link the mainline railway stations with Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambourne, and Haverhill, reusing the route of the cancelled autonomous metro and pointing the city toward a future it is still deciding how to build.