Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at Oxford or Cambridge. Trinity has some of the most distinctive architecture in Cambridge with its Great Court said to be the largest enclosed courtyard in Europe. Academically, Trinity performs exceptionally as measured by the Tompkins Table, coming top from 2011 to 2017, and regaining the position in 2024.
Members of Trinity have been awarded 34 Nobel Prizes out of the 126 received by members of the University of Cambridge. Members of the college have received four Fields Medals, one Turing Award and one Abel Prize. Trinity alumni include Francis Bacon, six British prime ministers, physicists Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, Ernest Rutherford and Niels Bohr, mathematicians Srinivasa Ramanujan and Charles Babbage, poets Lord Byron and Lord Tennyson, English jurist Edward Coke, writers Vladimir Nabokov and A. A. Milne, historians Lord Macaulay and G. M. Trevelyan, and philosophers Ludwig Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell.
Two members of the British royal family have studied at Trinity and been awarded degrees: Prince William of Gloucester and Edinburgh, who gained an MA degree in 1790, and King Charles III, who was awarded a lower second-class BA degree in 1970.
Trinity's many college societies include the Trinity Mathematical Society, the oldest mathematical university society in the United Kingdom, and the First and Third Trinity Boat Club, its rowing club, which gives its name to the May Ball. Along with Christ's, Jesus, King's and St John's colleges, it has provided several well-known members of the Cambridge Apostles, an intellectual secret society. In 1848, Trinity hosted a meeting at which Cambridge undergraduates representing fee-paying private schools codified a set of early rules of football known as the Cambridge rules. Trinity's sister college is Christ Church, Oxford. Trinity has been linked with Westminster School since the school's re-foundation in 1560, and its Master is an ex officio governor of the school.
History
Foundation
The college was founded by Henry VIII in 1546 with the name College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity within the Town and University of Cambridge of King Henry the Eighth's Foundation, from the merger of two existing colleges: Michaelhouse, and King's Hall. At the time, Henry had been seizing church lands from abbeys and monasteries. The universities of Oxford and Cambridge, being both religious institutions and quite rich, expected to be next in line. The king duly passed an act of Parliament, the Dissolution of Colleges Act 1545, that allowed him to suppress any college he wished. The universities used their contacts to plead with his sixth wife, Catherine Parr. The Queen persuaded her husband not to close them down, but to create a new college. The king did not want to use royal funds, so he instead combined two colleges and seven hostels to form Trinity.Nevile's expansion
The monastic lands granted by Henry VIII were not on their own sufficient to ensure Trinity's eventual rise. In terms of architecture and royal association, it was not until the Mastership of Thomas Nevile that Trinity assumed both its spaciousness and its association with the governing class that distinguished it since the Civil War. In its infancy Trinity had owed a great deal to its neighbouring college of St John's: in the words of Roger Ascham, Trinity was a colonia deducta.Most of Trinity's major buildings date from the 16th and 17th centuries. Thomas Nevile, who became Master of Trinity in 1593, rebuilt and redesigned much of the college. This work included the enlargement and completion of Great Court and the construction of Nevile's Court between Great Court and the river Cam. Nevile's Court was completed in the late 17th century with the Wren Library, designed by Christopher Wren. Nevile's building campaign drove the college into debt from which it surfaced only in the 1640s, and the Mastership of Richard Bentley adversely affected applications and finances. Bentley himself was notorious for the construction of a hugely expensive staircase in the Master's Lodge and for his repeated refusals to step down despite pleas from the Fellows. Besides, despite not being a sister college of Trinity College Dublin, as is the case with St John's College, Cambridge, it is believed that the Irish institution takes its name from this college, which was the alma mater of its first provost, Adam Loftus and, likewise, from Trinity College, Oxford.
Modern day
In the 20th century, Trinity College, St John's College and King's College were for decades the main recruiting grounds for the Cambridge Apostles, an elite, intellectual secret society. In 2011, the John Templeton Foundation awarded Trinity College's Master, the astrophysicist Martin Rees, its controversial million-pound Templeton Prize, for "affirming life's spiritual dimension". Trinity is the richest Oxbridge college with a landholding alone worth £800 million. For comparison, the second richest college in Cambridge has estimated assets of around £780 million, and the richest college in Oxford has about £940 million.In 2005, Trinity's annual rental income from its properties was reported to be in excess of £20 million. The college owns:
- 3400 acres housing facilities at the Port of Felixstowe, Britain's busiest container port.
- the Cambridge Science Park.
- the O2 Arena in London.
Legends
purportedly kept a pet bear while living in the college. Trinity is also often cited as the inventor of an English version of crème brûlée, known as "Trinity burnt cream".Trinity in Camberwell
Trinity College has a long-standing relationship with the Parish of St George's, Camberwell, in South London. Students from the College have helped to run holiday schemes for children from the parish since 1966. The relationship was formalised in 1979 with the establishment of Trinity in Camberwell as a registered charity.Buildings and grounds
Great Gate
The Great Gate is the main entrance to the college, leading to the Great Court. A statue of the college founder, Henry VIII, stands in a niche above the doorway. In 1983, Trinity College undergraduate Lance Anisfeld, then Vice-President of CURLS, replaced the chair leg with a bicycle pump. Once discovered the following day, the college removed the pump and replaced it with another chair leg. The original chair leg was auctioned off by TV presenter Chris Serle at a Cambridge Union Society charity raffle in 1985. In 2023, the college replaced the chair leg with a sceptre to mark the 75th birthday of Charles III, an alumnus of the college. In 1704, the university's first astronomical observatory was built on top of the gatehouse. Beneath the founder's statue are the coats of arms of Edward III, the founder of King's Hall, and those of his five sons who survived to maturity, as well as William of Hatfield, whose shield is blank as he died as an infant, before being granted arms.Great Court
was the brainchild of Thomas Nevile, who demolished several existing buildings on this site, including almost the entirety of the former college of Michaelhouse. The sole remaining building of Michaelhouse was replaced by the then current Kitchens in 1770–1775. The Master's Lodge is the official residence of the Sovereign when in Cambridge. King's Hostel is located to the north of Great Court, behind the clock tower. This is, along with the King's Gate, the sole remaining building from King's Hall. Bishop's Hostel is a detached building to the southwest of Great Court, and named after John Hacket, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry. Additional buildings were built in 1878 by Arthur Blomfield.Nevile's Court
Nevile's Court is located between Great Court and the river. It was created by a bequest by the college's master, Thomas Nevile, originally two-thirds of its current length and without the Wren Library. The court was extended and the appearance of the upper floor remodelled slightly in 1758 by James Essex. Cloisters run around the court, providing sheltered walkways from the rear of Great Hall to the college library and reading room as well as the Wren Library and New Court.The Wren Library is located at the west end of Nevile's Court, the Wren is one of Cambridge's most famous and well-endowed libraries. Among its notable possessions are two of Shakespeare's First Folios, a 14th-century manuscript of The Vision of Piers Plowman, letters written by Sir Isaac Newton, and the Eadwine Psalter. Below the building are the pleasant Wren Library Cloisters, where students may enjoy a fine view of the Great Hall in front of them, and the river and Backs directly behind.
Since the completion of the Wren Library in 1695, a number of prominent portraits have been displayed within its walls, including those of Arthur James Balfour, John Hacket, Isaac Barrow, William Lamb, and Thomas Nevile. As of November 2024, the portrait of Balfour was temporarily relocated to an undisclosed location in Cambridge after being vandalised by an activist associated with the group Palestine Action. Trinity College stated that revealing the painting's current location or restoration studio would present a security risk.