Where is Queens' College?

Queens' College is at Queens' College, Cambridge.

Queens' College, Cambridge — founded 1448

Queens' reaches across the river at Silver Street, and the apostrophe is not a typo: two queens in turn backed the college, Margaret of Anjou, who founded it in 1448, and Elizabeth Woodville, who refounded it in 1465. The plural-possessive spelling was officially adopted in 1823. Its full name is "The Queen's College of St Margaret and St Bernard".

What to look for

Old Court. Built between 1448 and 1451, it was the first Cambridge college designed from scratch, with rooms, hall, kitchen, library and chapel in one scheme. It is made of cheap clunch with a red-brick skin, and since Queens' lacked the money to modernise it in the 18th century, it is one of the best-preserved medieval ranges in the city.
The President's Lodge. Dating from about 1460, it is the oldest building on the river in Cambridge, and forms part of Cloister Court.
The Old Library. Dating from 1448, it holds nearly 20,000 books and manuscripts, most still in their original bindings, and the earliest English celestial globes.
The Mathematical Bridge. Officially the Wooden Bridge, James Essex the Younger put it up in 1749, working from a design by the carpenter William Etheridge, 22 years after Newton died. The tale that Newton built it without nuts and bolts is false. See Mathematical Bridge and Silver Street Bridge, from which it is often photographed.
The Walnut Tree Building. Completed in 1618, its upper floors burned in 1777 and were rebuilt by 1782.

Desiderius Erasmus studied at the college during visits to England between 1506 and 1515.

Chapels and the War Memorial Library

The original chapel in Old Court is now the War Memorial Library, named for members of the college who died in service in the Second World War. The present chapel stands in Walnut Tree Court. George Frederick Bodley designed it in 1886, and it was consecrated in 1891, with stained glass by C.E. Kempe. It has a single aisle-less nave with pews on either side.

The boar's head badge

The silver boar's head often seen at Queens' is a badge rather than the official arms. A white boar was the emblem of Richard III, who endowed the college generously in 1477 and 1484, and the earliest evidence that the college used a boar's head as a symbol dates from 1544. The gold cross in the badge stands for St Margaret and the gold crozier for St Bernard, the college's two patron saints.