Castle End hostel

Introduction

The photograph on this page of Castle End hostel by Tiger as part of the Geograph project.

The Geograph project started in 2005 with the aim of publishing, organising and preserving representative images for every square kilometre of Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man.

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Castle End hostel

Image: © Tiger Taken: 11 Feb 2021

Viewed through the bare winter trees from the summit of the castle mound, the undergraduate hostel designed by David Roberts and completed in 1958 forms the largest of several buildings of various ages providing student accommodation for Clare College, on land between Castle Street and Chesterton Lane which has been in the College's possession since 1392. Castle End, though almost the newest addition to the site, perpetuates the name of a farm acquired in 1466. Simon Bradley's 2014 revision of Pevsner's guide tells us that "Roberts introduced to Cambridge the sawtooth elevation, a device for giving privacy to individual rooms." He cites the work of the Swedish architect Anders Tengbom as an influence, though most British visitors will be reminded rather of Basil Spence's new cathedral at Coventry, completed a few years later. "But in spite of the jagged front and the monopitch roofs of every sawtooth, the building manages to look serene." Philip Booth and Nicholas Taylor, in their Guide to Cambridge New Architecture published in 1972, hail it as "a remarkable break, at this period, from the tradition of enclosed courts which had for too long dogged 20th-century architects building in Cambridge. It has ... an admirable simplicity of layout in the zizag pattern of rooms which leave room ... for washing facilities and gyp-rooms while giving the rooms themselves the optimum view. One weakness visible here occurs in later buildings of David Roberts ... insufficient clarity between loadbearing and non-loadbearing brickwork." A major renovation was undertaken in 2008, the half-centenary of the building's completion. In Cambridge a gyp-room is a small kitchen equipped with a sink and basic cooking facilities, and usually shared between several student rooms in a college building.

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Image Location

coordinates on a map icon
Latitude
52.212312
Longitude
0.115424