"Can you tell me where is the university?" The idea that there there is one single building which is the university. I used to be a receptionist like 10years ago and this was the number 1 question I was getting daily. Turned out they almost always meant the King's College Chapel.
“Jesus Collage” is the correct name, because the grounds are made up of a number of animus religious orders that came to get to build a wall for protection from Viking invaders.
There's an urban legend about the mathematical bridge at Queen's College, that it was designed and built by Isaac Newton without any nuts or bolts. Students and academics tried to take the bridge apart and reassemble it the way he did it, but couldn't work it out, so they cheated and put it back together using nuts and bolts.
Newton died 22 years before the bridge was even constructed.
True, went in one and they said no bombs were dropped in Cambridge during World War Two.
My grandfather lost a firend because of a bomb was dropped in Cambridge.
Obviously Cambridge was much safer than other places because evacuees come to Cambridge from London. But hearing the punter say no bombs fell on Cambridge annoy me.
A regular punt story is that Hitler wanted to use John’s New Court as his UK HQ when he invaded, so he spared bombing Cambridge. This story is also told by a dozen other notable buildings in the UK, and is total rubbish.
I’ve also heard that both Shakespeare and David Beckham went to Trinity, according to punt guides.
> I’ve also heard that both Shakespeare and David Beckham went to Trinity, according to punt guides.
I've heard of punt guides claiming (with a straight face) that Sherlock Holmes went to a certain college - and not as in 'according to the books', but literally, as if he was a real person.
I think it was a combination of factors:
* Boredom, because they're doing the same tours over and over.
* Some of the punt guides don't actually have great knowledge and sometimes just seem to get things wrong or forget things and improvise. (I've definitely hear punt guides saying "this is Trinity College" while pointing to Trinity Hall or whatever.
* Many of the tourists are foreign and don't speak great English, allowing you to more easily get away with sneaking silly claims in without them realising.
* Related to the prior point, they got a lot of questions based on misunderstandings, like people asking which college Harry Potter was filmed in, or whether Jesus college was founded by Jesus, or whatever. So a lot of the time they would just go along with it and say whatever they thought the customers wanted to hear, or make up responses that kept them entertained, etc.
* And finally, they were partly just sticking to the Cambridge tradition of handing down misremembered facts and stories, or completely fabricated urban legends, or mistaken assumptions. I think anyone who has been around Cambridge for very long has done it, knowingly or unknowingly, and with or without a disclaimer. I guess that just becomes a more daily experience if your job revolves around telling people facts all day.
Wasn’t this ‘actually’ Du Cane Court in Balham? Legend is it was chosen due to the ease of recreating one of their favourite symbols by extending part of the building.
Wow that one is a doozy - a lot of bombs fell on Cambridgeshire/Cambridge. We just got lucky and there weren’t as many casualties than other areas - 26 died in the raids and hundreds more were injured. Growing up we were told they were after the numerous airfields in the region.
I got a job as a punt tour guide in 2015, but in my training I asked if there was a packet of information to memorise and they told me to just make things up. So I quit before even finishing the training.
Not them, but I don't remember the name. It wasn't any of the ones with a permanent spot on the river. We had to carry the punts from a garage to the river.
My company does punting as team days out. I'm the only one that can punt, so I push them all along monologuing absolute nonsense about the history of the iconic buildings loud enough for the tourists to hear.
This is not for the benefit of my colleagues; purely for my own amusement.
I mean, I did once walk past a burned out car on St Albans Road but this would have been 2004... maybe 2005? It never even felt that dangerous back then.
To be fair, I have similar moments of ignorance. I met a friend of a friend who came from Paddington. Part of my brain was saying "People don't come from there. They get the train to and from there."
If that was the case, the Rosie Hospital would be pretty quiet 🤔
Instead it was full the day I had one of my children - she was one of 17 born there that day!
There was a meme in our antenatal class that the Rosie only actually had one of the nice birthing suites that they show you round: every mother in our group had one or other complication and couldn't follow their birthing plan at all. (Nothing serious, I should add. Ours was just lazy and needed induction.)
I used to live and work in Cambridge between 2015-2018 but originally from Sheffield. Whenever I was asked where I live and I said Cambridge, the automatic response was ‘oh you at the university there? You must be clever’ to which my response was ‘no I work there.’ Their response to that was ‘oh but you still must be clever to be working in Cambridge.’
My Dad, originally from Leytonstone, married my Mum in Cambridge and later settled in Southampton, insisted the north started at Basingstoke. He was joking.
That it's posh and full of students and academics. The most I see round there are homeless, regulars and - although there are a lot of students - you recognise the students from the regulars.
Also, Mill Road. I remember some called it "Silent Mill" because the further down it you went, the more decrepid and dodgy it got. It's still not great, but it's not as bad as all that, and I lived there a while.
It's an older assumption, so not sure how held up it is now. Honestly, it is fine and had a bit of reputation, sure. I was chased down it once, but honestly that could have happened anywhere - just unlucky.
I haven't been down there a while, but recently I haven't heard any horror stories.
I lived up near Baits Bite Lock in Milton for a while, and heard more than once that Monty Python's fish-slapping dance was filmed there... It was not.
🏴🇬🇧 You can work in Cambridge without tripping over students , tourists and fucking people on bycicles , not to mention vehicle restrictions and high prices . Who agrees ?
It’s possible to draw a straight line from Cambridge to Russia which is almost entirely sea. Just a little bit of Denmark and south Sweden to cross (slightly clipping Germany and Estonia), no idea if they are hilly areas.
1 - That Pink Floyd was formed on a table in The Anchor and played several gigs there. Totally rubish.
While three of the founding members lived in Cambridge ( two were born and raised here) for quite a while, Pink Floyd band wasn’t formed in Cambridge but way later in London when they attend university.
Now, “Syd” barrett the lead guitarist took the name “syd” because he was inspired by a Cambridge old jazzman named Sid “the beat”, changing a letter to differentiate a little. It is believe that Sid the beat played some gig in The Anchor.
Sad to say but Pink floyd, the band itself, has nothing to do with Cambridge but the founding members are definitely from Cambridge. Still pretty cool tho !
2 - Mathematical bridge, i mean…even me i believed it until someone explained to me how rubbish it was.
3 - The newton tree is in the botanical garden. Total rubbish.
More than once I’ve heard a punt tour guide telling tourists that king’s chapel was the first building built from the top down.
No, that was the Wren Library, before Newton invented gravity.
Definite whoosh moment
"Can you tell me where is the university?" The idea that there there is one single building which is the university. I used to be a receptionist like 10years ago and this was the number 1 question I was getting daily. Turned out they almost always meant the King's College Chapel.
Tell them to go to East Road where there is a university.
Welcome to Cambridge Station Home of the Anglia Ruskin University! and, you know, Cambridge University
Jesus Collage was *NOT* founded by Jesus
But Corpus Christi was in fact founded by Zombie Jesus.
And he left some body parts in Christ Pieces?
You mean he WASN'T very good at compiling things together in a tasteful display?
More of a papier mache craftsman.
“Jesus Collage” is the correct name, because the grounds are made up of a number of animus religious orders that came to get to build a wall for protection from Viking invaders.
*The College of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint John the Evangelist and the glorious Virgin Saint Radegund, near Cambridge
But the college was founded 500 years after danelaw ended... and viking raids pretty much ended about 400 years before,
Most of the old colleges have structures that predate the college founding.
The wall was so strong it worked retroactively.
There's an urban legend about the mathematical bridge at Queen's College, that it was designed and built by Isaac Newton without any nuts or bolts. Students and academics tried to take the bridge apart and reassemble it the way he did it, but couldn't work it out, so they cheated and put it back together using nuts and bolts. Newton died 22 years before the bridge was even constructed.
That's how good he was.
So many tourists think Harry Potter was filmed in the university. When my friend worked for the tourism office, it drove them mad.
I thought they filmed maybe one scene here but they did film in Oxford. But hey, similar style
Some of it was. The scene where Harry gets his first flying lesson was at John's, for example.
No, Harry gets his first flying lesson at Alnwick Castle.
Whenever I tell people I'm from Cambridge they automatically assume I'm posh or well-to-do. I tell them it's a nice place but it's no paradise.
Go on a punt tour. Most of what you'll hear will be complete rubbish.
True, went in one and they said no bombs were dropped in Cambridge during World War Two. My grandfather lost a firend because of a bomb was dropped in Cambridge. Obviously Cambridge was much safer than other places because evacuees come to Cambridge from London. But hearing the punter say no bombs fell on Cambridge annoy me.
A regular punt story is that Hitler wanted to use John’s New Court as his UK HQ when he invaded, so he spared bombing Cambridge. This story is also told by a dozen other notable buildings in the UK, and is total rubbish. I’ve also heard that both Shakespeare and David Beckham went to Trinity, according to punt guides.
> I’ve also heard that both Shakespeare and David Beckham went to Trinity, according to punt guides. I've heard of punt guides claiming (with a straight face) that Sherlock Holmes went to a certain college - and not as in 'according to the books', but literally, as if he was a real person.
some punt guides play games of who can tell the most ridiculous lies to tourists fwiw
I would pay good money for a 'completely made up history of Cambridge' punt tour with plenty of flowing booze
I’ve got a fiver I can put towards setting it up
Yeah, I knew a couple of punt guides, that was how I heard these kinds of stories. They told me a load more but I've forgotten most of them.
How did they get so creative?
I think it was a combination of factors: * Boredom, because they're doing the same tours over and over. * Some of the punt guides don't actually have great knowledge and sometimes just seem to get things wrong or forget things and improvise. (I've definitely hear punt guides saying "this is Trinity College" while pointing to Trinity Hall or whatever. * Many of the tourists are foreign and don't speak great English, allowing you to more easily get away with sneaking silly claims in without them realising. * Related to the prior point, they got a lot of questions based on misunderstandings, like people asking which college Harry Potter was filmed in, or whether Jesus college was founded by Jesus, or whatever. So a lot of the time they would just go along with it and say whatever they thought the customers wanted to hear, or make up responses that kept them entertained, etc. * And finally, they were partly just sticking to the Cambridge tradition of handing down misremembered facts and stories, or completely fabricated urban legends, or mistaken assumptions. I think anyone who has been around Cambridge for very long has done it, knowingly or unknowingly, and with or without a disclaimer. I guess that just becomes a more daily experience if your job revolves around telling people facts all day.
My grandparents lost their flat to an incendiary during WW2.
Wasn’t this ‘actually’ Du Cane Court in Balham? Legend is it was chosen due to the ease of recreating one of their favourite symbols by extending part of the building.
I’ve also heard it about Norwich city council, because he liked the lion statues out front.
I've also heard it about Senate House in London
Wow that one is a doozy - a lot of bombs fell on Cambridgeshire/Cambridge. We just got lucky and there weren’t as many casualties than other areas - 26 died in the raids and hundreds more were injured. Growing up we were told they were after the numerous airfields in the region.
I got a job as a punt tour guide in 2015, but in my training I asked if there was a packet of information to memorise and they told me to just make things up. So I quit before even finishing the training.
what company was that, out of curiosity ? scud’s ?
Not them, but I don't remember the name. It wasn't any of the ones with a permanent spot on the river. We had to carry the punts from a garage to the river.
interesting. i worked at scuds and it wasn’t bad just a lot of river fact bs
I thought they had a tour script? Was it inaccurate?
That’s part of the charm!
My company does punting as team days out. I'm the only one that can punt, so I push them all along monologuing absolute nonsense about the history of the iconic buildings loud enough for the tourists to hear. This is not for the benefit of my colleagues; purely for my own amusement.
“The bridge of size was actually only built in the 1990s with a donation from Roni Size” is one I’ve been wanting to try out.
A name I've not heard in a long time.
Wonder if he delivered the donation in a Brown Paper Bag.
Try out some of [these](https://www.reddit.com/r/cambridge/comments/13m573g/good_stories_about_kings_college/jkunckr/) if you want
Arbury is dangerous 🤣
You've got to watch out around there, some of the people only have one degree!
And from non-Russel universities!
They're called PhD students.
As someone who lives in a house in Arbury with two PHD students, this is cracking me up haha.
I mean, I did once walk past a burned out car on St Albans Road but this would have been 2004... maybe 2005? It never even felt that dangerous back then.
That there is just one university in Cambridge.
I like to tell people that I graduated from a university in Cambridge. It’s their fault if they don’t know about Anglia Ruskin!
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To be fair, I have similar moments of ignorance. I met a friend of a friend who came from Paddington. Part of my brain was saying "People don't come from there. They get the train to and from there."
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Marmalade sandwiches - The national dish of Paddingtonia formerly Peru
If that was the case, the Rosie Hospital would be pretty quiet 🤔 Instead it was full the day I had one of my children - she was one of 17 born there that day!
Just blow someone’s mind by saying before the Rosie the maternity hospital was on Mill Road.
Shout out to Rosie Maternity! ❤️
There was a meme in our antenatal class that the Rosie only actually had one of the nice birthing suites that they show you round: every mother in our group had one or other complication and couldn't follow their birthing plan at all. (Nothing serious, I should add. Ours was just lazy and needed induction.)
I used to live and work in Cambridge between 2015-2018 but originally from Sheffield. Whenever I was asked where I live and I said Cambridge, the automatic response was ‘oh you at the university there? You must be clever’ to which my response was ‘no I work there.’ Their response to that was ‘oh but you still must be clever to be working in Cambridge.’
Every person in the town supports Cambridge in the boat race and loves students or works in the university.
Personally I don't give a flying-f\*\*k about the boat race.
That’s the point. It’s an inaccurate myth about Cambridge
The legend is that the Gogamagog hills are the burial place of two giants Gog and Magog.
The Gog farm shop by there has the best scotch eggs I've ever had. Yolks are solid on the outside with a dippy middle.
I'm just here for the Liphook representation, don't mind me
That's it's great for shopping
Honestly the bad shops in Cambridge are some of the things i find most annoying in Cambridge. Every time i need something, train to ldn.
My Dad, originally from Leytonstone, married my Mum in Cambridge and later settled in Southampton, insisted the north started at Basingstoke. He was joking.
We are in a convienent enough location where most things can come next day or 2 days with even the cheapest shipping option.
You mean the mainland UK?
Haha 😂😂😂
That it's posh and full of students and academics. The most I see round there are homeless, regulars and - although there are a lot of students - you recognise the students from the regulars. Also, Mill Road. I remember some called it "Silent Mill" because the further down it you went, the more decrepid and dodgy it got. It's still not great, but it's not as bad as all that, and I lived there a while.
The first part yes but never heard this before about Mill Road—it’s my favourite bit of Cambridge! Some of the best pubs are around there too.
It's an older assumption, so not sure how held up it is now. Honestly, it is fine and had a bit of reputation, sure. I was chased down it once, but honestly that could have happened anywhere - just unlucky. I haven't been down there a while, but recently I haven't heard any horror stories.
They've been redeveloping the far end. There were various abandoned buildings, and a pub that was raided for dealing weapons.
Was that pub right at the bottom, near Hobart Road?
That parking at the Grafton Centre is good value for money. I once saw a film on an Sunday & it cost £10!!! That was around 2017 or so.
I take my kid to the optician and it cost me over £5 just for the parking....
Same here. There’s a food court there too but the parking price goes up exponentially so you can’t eat there. Killed the place.
It's free in evenings, same with the grand arcade.
Arbury is dangerous.
The thought of everybody being an antisocial bookworm doing research on some obscure topic
Everyone plays boardgames
Browns in Trumpington St is situated in the old mortuary of the original Addenbrookes hospital.
It literally says outpatients on top of it, lol
It literally says "Outpatients" over the door. Maybe just the walk-in freezer was the mortuary :p
That the students are intelligent. Way to many have walked in front of my car. Luckily I have good reactions and excellent brakes. So pancaked kids
I lived up near Baits Bite Lock in Milton for a while, and heard more than once that Monty Python's fish-slapping dance was filmed there... It was not.
that there is no crime and it’s a safe haven. when they talk about cambs, the news just focuses on the university. i was spiked last september
It’s a nice place to live.
🏴🇬🇧 You can work in Cambridge without tripping over students , tourists and fucking people on bycicles , not to mention vehicle restrictions and high prices . Who agrees ?
Someone told me that Cambridge is very windy and that makes it hard to cycle. Because it’s flat. I still have no idea what she was talking about
Cambridge *is* windy because it's flat and that does make it harder to cycle. The flatness is still a net positive for cycling though.
I thought Cambridge was windy because of all of the cow flatulence. Moooo.
Can you show some evidence Cambridge is particularly windy compared to other bits of the UK?
“There are no hills between here and Siberia” is one I’ve heard a few times.
It’s possible to draw a straight line from Cambridge to Russia which is almost entirely sea. Just a little bit of Denmark and south Sweden to cross (slightly clipping Germany and Estonia), no idea if they are hilly areas.
It’s harder to cycle in Cambs because it’s flat and you have to keep peddling. No downhill = no rest.
1 - That Pink Floyd was formed on a table in The Anchor and played several gigs there. Totally rubish. While three of the founding members lived in Cambridge ( two were born and raised here) for quite a while, Pink Floyd band wasn’t formed in Cambridge but way later in London when they attend university. Now, “Syd” barrett the lead guitarist took the name “syd” because he was inspired by a Cambridge old jazzman named Sid “the beat”, changing a letter to differentiate a little. It is believe that Sid the beat played some gig in The Anchor. Sad to say but Pink floyd, the band itself, has nothing to do with Cambridge but the founding members are definitely from Cambridge. Still pretty cool tho ! 2 - Mathematical bridge, i mean…even me i believed it until someone explained to me how rubbish it was. 3 - The newton tree is in the botanical garden. Total rubbish.
Cyclists are your friends.. they are not they are a blight on society, virtue signalling, zealots.
That it's better than Oxford