Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Cost and Hours:
Grounds—
£
1, often free off-season, daily 10:00-16:30, last entry
45 minutes before closing; library—free, Mon-Fri 12:00-14:00, Nov-mid-June also Sat
10:30-12:30, closed Sun year-round; only small groups allowed in at a time, tel. 01223/
338-400,
www.trin.cam.ac.uk
.
To see the Wren Library without paying for the grounds, access it from the riverside
entrance: Head toward the Garret Hostel Bridge, and, if the gate's open, pass through the
parking lot to your right immediately before the bridge. If the gate is not open, it's a long
walk across the bridge and around the field to the path that leads back to the college.
Trinity Gate:
You'll notice gates like these adorning facades of colleges around town.
Above the door is a statue of
King Henry VIII,
who founded Trinity because he feared
that Cambridge's existing colleges were too cozy with the Church. Notice Henry's right
hand holding a chair leg instead of the traditional crown jewels scepter. This is courtesy
of Cambridge's Night Climbers, who first replaced the scepter a century ago, and contin-
ue to periodically switch it out for other items. According to campus legend, decades ago
some of the world's most talented mountaineers enrolled at Cambridge...in one of the flat-
test parts of England. (Cambridge was actually a seaport until Dutch engineers drained the
surrounding swamps.) Lacking opportunities to practice their skill, they began scaling the
frilly facades of Cambridge's college buildings under cover of darkness (if caught, they'd
have been expelled). In the 1960s, climbers actually managed to haul an entire automobile
onto the roof of the Senate House. The university had to bring in the army to cut it into
pieces and remove it. Only 50 years later, at a class reunion, did the guilty parties finally
fess up.
