IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Chesterton Lane, CAMBRIDGE, CB4 3AA

Part of Clare College, Cambridge University.

I lived in the white building that can be seen towards the rear of the picture in the academic year 1994-95.

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.

I was struck by the unusual arrangement of the windows on this 19th Century five-storey red brick townhouse at 11, Chesterton Lane. Though noted on Cambridge City Council's 2006 Historic Core Appraisal, it remains unlisted.

The same view as in Mark Ynys-Môn's first geograph for the square Image, taken on May Morning in 2001. Since then, an all-weather surface has been provided on the summit of the Castle Mound for the benefit of the many who come to enjoy the views over the city, but unfortunately I couldn't find any Morris dancers to oblige with a socially-distanced display on this bright but bitter February afternoon nearly twenty years later. The outline of the trees is still recognisably the same, but in winter their bare branches allow a better glimpse of Clare College's Image with its green copper roof, restored since Mark's photo was taken. The spire on the horizon belongs to Image in Victoria Road.

Chesterton Lane