Pigs’ Barracks / The Clergy Training School / Westcott House

History of Westcott House

A B Gray in Cambridge Revisited (1921) notes:

Here stood that range of quaint old cottages familiarly known to us as the ‘Barracks’, and by an earlier generation, as ‘Pig’ Barracks,’ owing to their being occupied principally by Johnians … That the expression was well known as early as the year 1679 appears from an entry made in that year by Abraham de la Pryne, of St John’s, in his diary.

The Clergy Training School (postmarked 1906)

The site for the Clergy Training School was purchased from Jesus College in 1898 for £2575 by Rt Rev Brooke Foss Bishop of Durham and John Peile Master of Christ’s College. There was a block of eight houses on the site built in 1814.

This is the plan attached to the original conveyance. In 1910 there was a dispute with Jesus College as to the rights of the Clergy Training School to extend its premises to the west of the area marked in pink on the original plan. The Training College went to so far as to seek counsel’s opinion; this advice was, in short, that the original covenant was rather unclear and that the proposals made by the Training College would be unlikely to obstruct the access of light and air to Jesus College property.

In 1925 the Training College, now designated Westcott House, entered into contract with Rattee and Kett for the erection of ‘cloisters library keeping rooms and chapel and forming terraces etc in the central court’ at a cost of £15,736.

A history of Westcott House can be found here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westcott_House,_Cambridge