Wren Chapel Emmanuel College before and after restoration

Emmanuel College, Cambridge

History of Emmanuel College Cambridge

General information about Emmanuel College can be found on Wikipedia.

The Wren Chapel at Emmanuel College was restored by Rattee and Kett circa 1980.

1861

William Castleham, 42, Fellow, b Cumberland

+ 2 fellows & approx 50 students

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1860s

Part of Emmanuel College was a brewhouse completed in 1667 in the eastern corner of the college grounds. The north part of this became known as Emmanuel House and had been rented to outside tenants as it was considered unsuitable for the college. The building was demolished in 1893 and a new Emmanuel House built in 1894.

A Mrs Harris occupied Emmanuel house from 1867 until about 1875. On frequent occasions she heard loud unexplained noises in the the passage outside the drawing-room. A friend, Mrs Dunn, heard loud footsteps; these were recorded in a letter to the Society for Psychical Research’s investigator, Mrs Eleanor Sidgwick of Newnham College, in 1885. Mrs Harris’s daughter in law Emily also made a report to Mrs Sidgwick of an apparition. Others reported ghostly figures. After this there were other reports. They were not published in the Journal of Psychical Research as they were largely secondhand; however the reports were not the result of preconceived ideas but seemed to have been unexpected experiences. (Cambridge College Ghosts, Geoff Yeats)

24 February 1930
The successful crews in the Lent bumping races celebrated in traditional manner. Hundreds of excited undergraduates in ‘bump supper’ costume filled the streets till midnight and over it all flickered the light and smoke of bonfires. Boats were burned amid shouting and bacchanalian merriment at St Catharine’s, Selwyn and Emmanuel who for the first time in history had finished head of the river. An ‘eight’ was sacrificed in the paddock of the college upon a huge pyre. The manoeuvre of getting the boat into the college proved by no means an easy one and traffic was held up as the unwieldy craft, borne on the shoulders of the crews, was shunted into Downing Street before being passed through the narrow gate. At St Catharine’s the boat was escorted to the burning by a procession headed by a band of unemployed ex-Servicemen who had been playing on the towing path.
Credit: Mike Petty Archive, Cambridge DOWNING STREET & PEMBROKE STREET Scrapbook, reference 30 02 24a.