Hugh Casson's Cambridge

 

 

 

 

 

You can compare The Spider Grandmother of the American Navajo and Hopi, with this book’s author Hugh Casson, who became a fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge in 1928. He became a prestigious Director of Architecture for the Festival of Britain at 38, in 1951. A prolific architect, he made a bestseller out of his book Hugh Casson’s Oxford. As with it, in Hugh Casson’s Cambridge he has saved bits of anecdotes, sayings, episodes, snide (or side) comments for its reader.

 

 

At this beginning stage, we can draw our conclusion from the book: Obviously it features colleges lined in alphabetic order and find 4 to 6 popular architectural p, such as street frontage, pilasters, bleached woodwork, stone sheathing, and brewhouses, as well as the preserved 4 to 6 watercolor sketches per college.

 

 

As you’d smell around the perfume of the Beatles’ joyful song Magical Mystery Tour, here is Our Spider Grandmother who weaves protection for those in need, or, for Mother Goose children, Grandmother Duck who sweetly tell the small and big tales to her duckling children. And whatever happens, this tour would likely be a whistle-stop tour alternating with some strolls and century-old tales. Which do you prefer? According to age? Whatever, we board at the attractions and repeatedly get off/board the magical mystery bus.

 

 

Anyway, so we get on this bus, we hopelessly plunge into the high depths of architecture, we come to the closely interrelated histories of these amiable, ponderous colleges. Holding my face against the bus window, I could see these beautiful sights pass by one by one, only very closely to each other. The reader would find solace in the watercolor sketches depicting the pictures of a lot, if not all, of sceneries. Sadly, the ambiguous direction map of north, south, east, and west is lost except in talking about the bridge(s) of each college. Never forget the mathematical bridge made of wooden beams, lauded as being the most beautiful bridge structure on the River Cam. Don’t worry, this book digs up all the comprehensive architectural beauties belonging to the colleges. These info bits are presented as belonging to each college’s section, and here I unfold some of them.

 

 

 According to the cautious author, some colleges “benefit from a lovely position” and others turn out to have, very generously and surprisingly, “architectural tiny masterpiece”, and pink is renamed as “rosy brickwork” referring to some pink brick buildings. And what about luxurious reputations? Do the students throw all caution to the winds, hiding behind traditional nomenclature? No! There is palfrey in some of the colleges, and ante-room for welcoming guests. The fellows have life.

 

 

What’s not to forget is the author pointing out something elaborate like “interiors impressive providing mixture of mosaics’ inlaid paving, wall paintings”. He is thoughtful to consider both sides of the town public. What’s left is a lot of college burned down, only some rubble: grand gardener’s bothy left, and that remaining “traces remain on the turf outside”. Some have extensive refacing, and

among this going on, the students have not been rebuked, but snuggly embedded.

 

 

Those chapels that are in some colleges have pews and other things like “timber columns supporting the organ cases”, people nonetheless enlivening these groups of articles with holy music and services. (The congenial King's College Choir children have shown something like this, although not mentioned in Casson’s book)

 

With the windows, the doors, or the gateways leaning in some direction or other, the impression of it is pointing one way or the other. “For the side facing the street”, “cool, crisp light” are like songs waiting for the passers-by to pass by. The escorting celetial beings whose namesake are the names of each individual college will surely bless the by-passers. You want to catch your breath whenever you pass the frontages.

 

 

What’s left for poureaders to consider is how the famous architects like Christopher Wren (who also acted as advisor of some colleges) and several other lesser-known craftsmen and builders have been able to influence both their sites and the buildings. An example: Several of them built the bridges over the river and closely they have shown dramatic sceneries. Lastly, to add one anecdote adding to the architectural perfection: Jesus College provides the best fruit patch in Cambridge, as gardens were planted there.