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 it is also one of the 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.

1 History
2 Buildings
3 Famous alumni of Pembroke College
4 Pembroke today
5 International Programmes
6 Institutions named after the college
7 See also
8 External links

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 Valence Mary, 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.

Looking towards the college library from the Main Court

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 among the oldest in continual use in Europe.

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
Roger Williams	1603	1683	Theologian, founder of Rhode Island

Pembroke College at night

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.

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.

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.