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St Michael (Michaelhouse Centre)
History of St Michael Cambridge
Pevsner writes: A smallish, extremely attractive church almost entirely of the early C14.
More information can be founded on Wikipedia.
The Michaelhouse Centre takes its name from the original Michaelhouse which was the second college to be founded in Cambridge in 1323. However, after 1546, in response to the demand by Henry VIII, it merged with a number of smaller hostels to form Trinity College.
The following picture shows the annual ritual of beating the boundaries of the parish, here in 1845 along the banks of the Cam.
Beating the boundaries of St Michael’s Parish
In 1849 Josiah Chater records in his diary a fire at the church and his assistance in passing buckets of water. The fire started at quarter to eleven and was extinguished before 1 o’clock. The water came from a pump in Trinity College kitchen and when this began to fail a double line of helpers created through New Court down to the river and back again. The fire had started in the flue of the church’s heating stove.
1849 St Michael’s Fire
1907
St Michael’s (c.1907)
St Michael’s (2022 photo by DG)
27/9/1962 St Michael’s Church in Trinity Street is “an intolerable disgrace”, says the Vicar of St Mary the Great, its sister church. Now there are plans to turn it into a modern parish hall with kitchen for meetings while the east end will become a small chapel for prayer. The massive restoration scheme will cost £10,000 and to promote it the church will be flood-lit. The youth club will give a show on the lines of a ‘Review’ and operate a ‘talent scheme’ where young people will be given money to be taken away and multiplied. (Cam.News)
1963
The Cambridge Ghost Book, Halliday and Murdie, 2000, describes the events recorded in the Archives of the Society for Psychical Research. Two men, Alan Attesley and Derek Cowling, were cleaning the church at 11 am on a Saturday in the summer. They saw a ball of light moving through the building at a little more than walking speed.
1966
Re-opened as a public hall.
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