About Cambridge

Where to Visit in Cambridge

The Corpus Clock

Since its inauguration in 2008, the Corpus Clock has been admired by residents and tourists alike as one of Cambridge’s most distinctive public monuments.

It is a unique device for measuring time that is both hypnotically beautiful and deeply disturbing. Dr John C Taylor OBE FREng (m1959) invented, designed, and donated it to Corpus Christi College. He collaborated with local engineering firm Huxley Bertram to build the Clock.

The clock’s face is plated in pure gold, and the radiating ripples allude to the Big Bang, the central impact that created the universe and could be considered the beginning of time. The clock is atop an extraordinary monster: the ‘Chronophage,’ which means ‘time-eater,’ because that is exactly what the Chronophage does, devouring each minute as it passes with a snap of its jaws.

It evolves from a grasshopper, a term coined by eighteenth-century horologist John Harrison to describe his invention of a strictly functional escapement.

Because the Corpus Clock lacks hands and digital numbers, it appears difficult to tell the time at first.

However, if you look closely, you will notice three rings of LEDs, with the innermost ring displaying the hours, minutes, and seconds. When the hour strikes, there is no chiming of bells, but rather the shaking of chains and the impact of a hammer on a wooden coffin.

Time passes and we all die, as illustrated by the Latin inscription beneath the clock, mundus transit et concupiscentia eius, which translates as “the world and its desires pass away.”

The pendulum also bears the following Latin inscription: Joh. Sartor Monan Inv. MMVIII, which translates as “Joh. Sartor Monan Inv. MMVIII.” Joh. is the name Johannes, Sartor is the mediaeval Latin word for tailor, Monanensis is the Isle of Man, Inv. is invenit, a verb with multiple meanings such as discovered/made/brought to fruition, and MMVIII is the year 2008. In 2008, John Taylor of the Isle of Man achieved this feat.

The Clock stands on what was once the entrance to a Natwest Bank, a building designed by architect Horace Francis in 1866 that housed the London County Bank.

Market Square

The city of Cambridge is known for its many markets, and since the middle ages, merchants have set up shop in the historic market square in the heart of the city.

Street food, books, vinyl, CDs, and DVDs are just some of the items that can be found for sale at the stalls that are open Monday through Sunday from 10 am to 4 pm. Items such as clothing, jewellery, and bags Foods high in nutrients, such as fruits, vegetables, and fresh fish Used bicycles for sale Garden plants In addition to mobile phones and their accessories, there is much more!

On Sundays from 10 am to 4 pm, the market square is home to a thriving local food, arts and crafts market. Vendors at the market sell organic produce grown by local farmers as well as works created by some of the most skilled artists, craftsmen, potters, sculptors, and photographers in the area.

The Mathematical Bridge

William Etheridge (1709–1766) designed the bridge in 1748, and James Essex the Younger built it in 1749. (1722–84). After that, it was fixed in 1866 and rebuilt in 1905 with the same design.
The red-brick building on the right side of the picture is the riverside building, which was built around 1460 and is the oldest building on the river in Cambridge. It is now used as part of the President’s Lodge.

The design is a small engineering triumph from the middle of the 18th century. It was made by James King, who died in 1744.
The bridge crosses a 50-foot river with several shorter pieces of wood. For example, the horizontal piece that seems to span the whole river is actually made of six shorter pieces of wood that are joined end-to-end.

The design is a wooden version of a voussoir arch bridge, in which each part is held in a compressed state by the force of gravity on the whole structure: For a voussoir bridge to work, the compressive forces at the arch’s springing point need to be balanced by strong abutments.
Bending wood makes it weak (think about how easy it is to break a match by bending it). In this bridge design, the timbers in the side trusses don’t have to bend much or at all:

Most of the force in the timbers next to the arch comes from simple compression, which is a very strong state for wood (think about how hard it is to break a match by pressing its ends together without bending them);
The triangulation in the side trusses gives them strength without making them too heavy, and it keeps the joints between the arch’s segments from bending.
Side winds don’t do as much damage to the structure because the sides aren’t filled in. The only cross-bracing is under the walkway.
With this design, it was said that if a side truss needed a new piece of wood, that piece could be taken out and replaced without affecting its neighbours or having to take the whole bridge apart. No one has ever tried this out in the real world.

Wren Library

The Wren Library is one of Cambridge’s most famous and historic college libraries. If you like books, old buildings, or both, you should go there.

The famous British architect and stonemason Sir Christopher Wren designed the library. It is one of several buildings at the Cambridge colleges that he designed or built.
The chapel at Emmanuel College and the Wren (Kitchen) bridge at St. John’s are two more of his works in Cambridge (although he did not build this).
This library has the most valuable and well-known books of all the Cambridge libraries. It has the first edition of Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica and the first two folios of Shakespeare’s works. It also has A.A. Milne’s original drawings for Winnie the Pooh.

Castle Hill in Cambridge

Even though there are no ruins on Castle Hill, this grassy hill is a very important part of Cambridge’s history. This was where the Iron Age hill fort of Duroliponte, which later became a Roman town, stood.

If you climb to the top of the Castle Mound, you can see a wide view of the town’s rooftops and the countryside around it. If the sky is clear, you can see Ely Cathedral in the north.

William I built Cambridge Castle in 1068 to keep the area safe during Hereward the Wake’s rebellion. During the Anarchy, Matilda’s forces tried to take it by siege, but they failed. Later, during the First Barons’ War, French forces took control of the castle. In the late 1300s, a large part of the building was rebuilt, but it was not kept up and soon fell into disrepair.

The Bronze and Iron Ages saw people living on Castle Hill, where a later mediaeval fort was built. After the Romans took over Britain in 43 AD, the army built Ermine Street as a key way to get from London to the north. It went right through western Cambridgeshire. This route went around Cambridge, but after the Boudica rebellion in AD 60, the military wanted to keep the area safe so they built a fort on Castle Hill. Akeman Street connected the fort to Ermine Street. It was rebuilt in the 70s AD, but then the military left it and it was turned into a town called Duroliponte, which did well because it was near a road and the River Cam. By the fourth century AD, it was hard for the Roman military to deal with Danish and German raiders who came by boat and used the river to get to the town. Walls made of limestone were built to protect the area.

When the Roman army left Cambridgeshire at the beginning of the fifth century AD, the Angles moved in. Before Mercia took it over at the end of the eighth century AD, the county was made up of different tribes. Cambridge was ruled by the Mercians until the year 875, when the Viking commander Guthrum moved in and made it part of the Danelaw and fortified it. But in the year 905, King Edward the Elder of Wessex attacked Cambridgeshire and took control of it. By the year 921, Cambridge had become a fortified burh (town). These defences, which may have used the same line as the Roman defences before them, were made up of an earth and wood rampart backed by a ditch that surrounded an elliptical area with the River Cam on the west side. By the middle of the 10th century, Cambridge had become one of the biggest towns in Eastern England.

Central mosque Cambridge

Cambridge Central Mosque is the first purpose-built mosque in Cambridge, England, and the first eco-friendly mosque in Europe. Its mission is to serve the Muslim community in the United Kingdom and beyond by promoting best practises in faith, community development, social cohesion, and interfaith dialogue. On April 24, 2019, the Cambridge Central Mosque opened to the public.

According to architect Julia Barfield, a mosque has no fixed appearance. It varies by location: in Egypt, Andalusia, Turkey, Indonesia, and the Arabian peninsula, wherever Muslims need a place to pray, the architecture reflects the local aesthetic. In China, it could be a collection of pavilions with pagoda-like roofs; in sub-Saharan Africa, it could be constructed from mud bricks or rammed earth. It may have a single dome, multiple domes, or a flat roof supported by multiple columns. It could be composed of stone, wood, or concrete.

In Britain, mosques date back to the late 19th century, when one was carved out of an existing terrace in Liverpool and another was constructed from scratch in Woking, Surrey. Yet it remains unclear what the typical style of a British mosque might be: the most common approach, often driven by the need to serve as many people as possible within limited budgets, is to build a plain box that is then decorated with motifs referring to the main country of origin of the congregations – Ottoman for Turks and Cypriots, Moghul for people from the subcontinent – or from which the majority of the funding came.

All Saints Church

In the heart of Cambridge, opposite the gates of Jesus College, stands All Saints’, a prominent city landmark distinguished by its pale stone spire. It was constructed in the 1860s according to the designs of the renowned 19th-century architect G.F. Bodley is a masterpiece of Victorian art and architecture. The interior is lavishly decorated, with nearly every surface painted, stencilled, or gilded; flowers cover the walls in a profusion. There are stained-glass windows designed by prominent Arts and Crafts artists, such as William Morris and Ford Madox Brown, that emit light. The Churches Conservation Trust maintains the structure, which is open daily to visitors.

In the heart of Cambridge, opposite the gates of Jesus College, stands All Saints’, a prominent city landmark distinguished by its pale stone spire. It was constructed in the 1860s according to the designs of the renowned nineteenth-century architect G.F. Bodley is a masterpiece of Victorian art and architecture. The wooden door conceals a dramatic explosion of colour and pattern. Leading Arts and Crafts artists, including William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, and Ford Madox Brown, designed the stained-glass windows.

Duxford’s Imperial War Museum

During the First World War, the aerodrome at Duxford was built. It was one of the first Royal Air Force bases. The Royal Flying Corps grew in 1917, and Duxford was one of many new airfields built to train RFC pilots. It was kept open after the war, which was different from many similar airfields in a smaller RAF. At first, it was used as a training school, and then, starting in 1924, it became a fighter station, which it did very well for 37 years.

By 1938, the No. 19 Squadron at RAF Duxford had become so well-known that it was the first squadron to get the new Supermarine Spitfire. The first Spitfire arrived at RAF Duxford in August of that year.

In June 1940, Belgium, Holland, and France were all taken over by German forces. The next goal for Germany was to take over Britain. The RAF Duxford base was put in a very ready state. After that, there was a lot of fighting in the air, which became known as the Battle of Britain. The station then helped defend Britain’s airspace. On “Battle of Britain Day,” September 15, 1940, its squadrons took to the air twice to stop Luftwaffe attacks on London. Then, test and trial units took off from the station. This gave the RAF important information about how its new plane would do in battle before it was given to the US Army Air Forces.

In April 1943, the 78th Fighter Group moved into RAF Duxford, which the Americans soon called “Station 357.” Their main job was to protect the large fleets of US Eighth Air Force bombers on their dangerous and expensive daylight raids against Germany. On D-Day, June 6, 1944, when the long-awaited invasion of occupied Europe by the Allies began, every available 78th Fighter Group Thunderbolt attacked targets behind the Normandy beachheads.

After the end of World War II, Duxford became an RAF station again. This was the start of its last operational phase. Now that it had jet fighters like the Gloster Meteor, Hawker Hunter, and Gloster Javelin, its pilots were ready to shoot down Soviet bombers if the Cold War got “hot.”

But Duxford’s time as an RAF base was coming to an end because the defence needs that made it a fighter station in the first place no longer existed. It was too far south and too far inland, and the expensive changes needed for supersonic fighters couldn’t be justified. In July 1961, the last flight took off from RAF Duxford, and for the next 15 years, it was not clear what would happen to the airfield.

IWM was looking for a place to store, restore, and eventually show off exhibits that were too big for its headquarters in London. The airfield was given permission to be used for this purpose. Together with the Imperial War Museum and the Duxford Aviation Society, Cambridgeshire County Council gave the nearly abandoned aerodrome a new lease on life.

IWM Duxford is now known as the centre of aviation history in Europe. The historic site, the world-class collections of exhibits, and the regular world-famous Air Shows make this museum one of a kind.

Cambridge University Botanic Gardens

The Cambridge University Botanic Garden (CUBG) has over 8,000 plant species from all over the world in its collection. This helps with teaching and research. Researchers and teachers can use the Garden’s resources, such as plants, horticultural knowledge, and facilities.

Since it was started, though, the Garden has also been a beautiful place that everyone can enjoy and learn from. It has a series of beautiful landscapes where people can learn about the drama of plant diversity.

In 1762, Cambridge University’s first Botanic Garden opened in what is now called the New Museums Site, which is in the middle of the city. It grew plants that were used to teach medical school students.

John Henslow was 29 years old when he took the Chair of Botany at the University in 1825. At that time, botany was at a very low point. Since it had been 30 years since the last lecture, the Botanic Garden in the middle of the city was in bad shape.

Henslow’s drive and political skill persuaded the University that the Botanic Garden needed to move to a much larger site so that serious experimental botany could take its place in the rise of natural science studies at Cambridge in the early 1800s.

The extra acres would make it possible to grow and study the exciting new tree species that were being discovered in western North America at the time. Botanic gardens would no longer be seen as little more than drug plant nurseries used to teach medical students. Instead, Henslow thought that this Garden should be used to study the plants themselves.

Trinity Hall gave the University a 16-hectare plot of land one mile south of the city centre in 1831, but legal problems kept it from being built on right away. But planting didn’t start until 1846, and the University only paid for the western half of the land to be developed because it was more expensive. The first Garden Curator, Andrew Murray, worked with Henslow to make plans for the garden.

Murray’s plan calls for a winding path that goes all the way around the Garden. The Main Walk, which is made up of majestic and stately coniferous trees, cuts the path in half along an east-west axis. Outside of the perimeter path, a belt of trees from the same family was planted. There was a U-shaped lake to the north of the Main Walk and a complex set of herbaceous systematics beds to the south. The Grade II* heritage landscape we see today is the result of this plan. The design is in the “Gardenesque” style of the time, which combines both individual plants and carefully put-together landscapes.