PEMBROKE COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE

'Pembroke College' is a college of the University of Cambridge, home to over six-hundred students and fellows, and is the third oldest of the colleges. Physically, it is one of the larger colleges in the university, and contains buildings from almost every century since its founding, as well as extensive and immaculately maintained gardens. The college is a financially well-to-do institution, and has a level of academic performance among the highest of all the Cambridge colleges. Not only is Pembroke College home of the first chapel designed by Sir Christopher Wren, but is also one of the few Cambridge colleges to have produced a British prime minister—no less than William Pitt the Younger. The college library, one of the finest in the university, with a Victorian neo-gothic clock tower, is endowed with an original copy of the first encyclopaedia to contain printed diagrams. The college's current master, Sir Richard Dearlove, was previously the head of the United Kingdom's Secret Intelligence Service.

Contents

History

Buildings

Famous alumni of Pembroke College

Pembroke today

International Programmes

Institutions named after the college

See also

External links

History

On Christmas Eve 1347, Edward III granted Marie de St Pol, widow of the Earl of Pembroke, the licence for the foundation of a new educational establishment in the young university at Cambridge. The Hall of Marie Valence, as it was originally known, was thus founded to house a body of students and fellows.
The statutes were notable in that they both gave preference to students born in France who had already studied elsewhere in England, and that they required students to report fellow students if they indulged in excessive drinking or visited disreputable houses.
The college was later renamed Pembroke Hall, and finally became Pembroke College in 1856.

Buildings

The first buildings were comprised of a single court (now called Old Court) containing all the component parts of a college - chapel, hall, kitchen and buttery, master's lodgings, students' rooms - and the statutes provided for a manciple, a cook, a barber and a laundress. Both the founding of the college and the building of the city's first college chapel (1355) required the grant of a papal bull.
The original court was the university's smallest at only 95 feet by 55 feet, but was enlarged to its current size in the nineteenth century by demolishing the south range.
The college's gatehouse, however, is original and is the oldest in Cambridge. The Hall was rebuilt in the nineteenth century by Alfred Waterhouse after he had declared the existing one unsafe.
The original chapel now forms the Old Library and has a striking seventeenth century plaster ceiling, designed by Henry Doogood, showing birds flying overhead. Around the Civil War, one of Pembroke's fellows and Chaplain to the future Charles I, Matthew Wren, was imprisoned by Oliver Cromwell. On his release after eighteen years he fulfilled a promise by hiring his nephew Christopher Wren to build a great chapel in his former college. The resulting chapel was consecrated on St Matthew's Day, 1665, and the eastern end was extended by George Gilbert Scott in 1880.
Pembroke's enclosed grounds also house some particularly well-kept gardens, sporting a huge array of carefully-selected vegetation. Highlights include "The Orchard" (a patch of semi-wild ground in the centre of the college), an impressive row of Plane Trees and an immaculately-kept bowling green which is reputed to be the oldest in continual use in Europe. Curiously, Pembroke has recently had a wildlife presence, with badgers and ducks seen on college grounds.

Famous alumni of Pembroke College

''See also ''
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|-bgcolor="#f7f7f7"
!Name
!Birth
!Death
!Career
|-
|David Armitage Bannerman
|1886
|1979
|Ornithologist
|-
|Clive Betts
|1950
|
|British politician
|-
|Tim Brooke-Taylor
|1940
|
|Comedian
|-
|Roger Bushell
|1910
|1944
|Leader of "The Great Escape"
|-
|"RAB" Butler
|1902
|1982
|British politician
|-
|Peter Cook
|1937
|1995
|Comedian
|-
|Ray Dolby
|1933
|
|Inventor
|-
|Abba Eban
|1915
|2002
|Statesman
|-
|Edward James Eliot
|1758
|1797
|British politician
|-
|William Eliot
|1767
|1845
|British politician
|-
|William Fowler
|1911
|1995
|Nobel prize winner
|-
|Thomas Gray
|1716
|1771
|Poet
|-
|Stephen Greenblatt
|1943
|
|Literary critic, pioneer of New Historicism
|-
|Naomie Harris
|1976
|
|Actress
|-
|Oliver Heald
|1954
|
|British politician
|-
|Ted Hughes
|1930
|1998
|Poet
|-
|Eric Idle
|1943
|
|Entertainer
|-
|Clive James
|1939
|
|Novelist
|-
|Humphrey Jennings
|1907
|1950
|Film-maker
|-
|Bryan Keith-Lucas
|1912
|1996
|Political scientist
|-
|Peter May
|1929
|1994
|Cricketer
|-
|D. H. Mellor
|1938
|
|Philosopher
|-
|David Munrow
|1942
|1976
|Musician, composer, music historian
|-
|Richard Murdoch
|1907
|1990
|Actor, comedian
|-
|Bill Oddie
|1941
|
|Comedian, bird-watcher
|-
|Madsen Pirie
|
|
|Economist
|-
|James Paten
|
|
|Treasury spendthrift
|-
|William Pitt
|1759
|1806
|British politician
|-
|Rodney Porter
|1917
|1985
|Biochemist
|-
|George Maxwell Richards
|1931
|
|President of Trinidad and Tobago
|-
|Nicholas Ridley
|
|1555
|Martyr
|-
|Michael Rowan-Robinson
|
|
|Astronomer
|-
|Martin Rowson
|1959
|
|Cartoonist
|-
|Tom Sharpe
|1928
|
|Novelist
|-
|Chris Smith
|1951
|
|British politician
|-
|Edmund Spenser
|1552
|1599
|Poet
|-
|George Gabriel Stokes
|1819
|1903
|Mathematician, physicist
|-
|John Sulston
|1942
|
|Chemist
|-
|Peter Taylor, Baron Taylor of Gosforth
|1930
|1997
|Lord Chief Justice
|-
|Peter Taylor
|
|
|Journalist
|-
|Karan Thapar
|1955
|
|TV interviewer
|-
|William Turner
|1508
|1568
|Physician
|-
|P. K. van der Byl
|1923
|1999
|Rhodesian politician
|-
|Wavell Wakefield, 1st Baron Wakefield of Kendal
|1898
|1983
|Rugby player
|}

Pembroke today

Pembroke College has both graduate and undergraduate students. The undergraduate student body is represented by the Junior Parlour Committee (JPC). The graduate community is represented by the Graduate Parlour Committee (GPC). Pembroke is unusual in having its recreational rooms named as "parlours" rather than the more standard "common room" . There are many clubs and societies organised by the students of the college, such as the college's dramatic society the Pembroke Players, which has been made famous by alumni such as Peter Cook, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Clive James and Bill Oddie and is now in its 50th year.

International Programmes

Pembroke is the only Cambridge college to have a programme allowing American students to study abroad just for the spring (Lent and Easter) terms. About 20-30 students are accepted into the programme, directed by International Programmes at Pembroke, each year.

Institutions named after the college

Pembroke College, the women's college at Brown University in the United States was named after Pembroke College (Cambridge), before it was assimilated into the university in 1971.

See also

★

★ Pembroke College, Oxford

External links

★ A virtual tour of the college

★ The ''Pembroke Players'' dramatic club

★ The 2007 May Ball site

★ Pembroke Christian Union

★ The Junior Parlour website

★ The Graduate Parlour website