The University of Cambridge is, believe it or not, a university. And yet, far from suggesting any homogenous organisation, the collegiate system establishes rival states within the institution, rather like the Dutch Republic during its Golden Age, with Trinity acting the part of Holland.  Excellent as this system is in creating colleges of diverse characters in a general and an architectural sense, it has unfortunately contributed to college isolationism and arrogant pride.

We should of course be proud of our colleges. Any college, let alone a whole university, that boasts the Wren library or King’s College Chapel, has every reason to be guilty of a deadly sin. But when this is transformed into an active distaste for and blindness towards other colleges, the sentiment becomes spiteful and to a large degree unfathomable. It has always been a shock to hear that sensitive students and fellows have never been to other colleges out of the pleasure of looking at their architecture, gardens or artwork. A cheap college bar or a supervision seem to be the only times that some people ever get to glimpse some of the treasures that many of our colleges have. Pembroke boasts Christopher Wren’s first ever building; King’s has a Rubens; Christ and Clare have some of Cambridge’s prettiest gardens. Yet who has seen them all?  It is a sad fact that few people have taken the trouble to spend even a few moments admiring these things. When Virginia Woolf, in A Room of One’s Own, wrote so beautifully about Newnham’s gardens in spring, she did not add the suffix, “but it ain’t as good as King’s.”

Some colleges have high walls and forbidding crenulated entrances; others have been built upon the secluded model of the monastery. But the Dissolution has happened, fortification is over and though the walls should not be scaled, our entrance should always be welcomed whatever college we are from. After all, the university fosters a community of ideas – why not of colleges too?

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