Interesting Stuff in Cambridge

Gormley statue, in Downing Site

Antony Gormley is one of Britain's best known contemporary sculptors. He made the Angel of the North. There is a Gormley sculpture in Cambridge which is rather smaller! In fact, it takes some finding.

The entrance of the Downing Site is in Downing Street. Walk in and turn slightly towards your left. In the paving, you will see two human-sized foot prints (see right). Apparently this installation is a human figure buried up side down with only the soles of the feet showing. There is no information near-by about it, and you can walk right over it without seeing it if you're not careful. It is dated 2002, and it is called Earthbound: Plant.

I took this information (and in fact found out about this sculpture) from the Cambridge Sculpture Trails - second trail.

Letter box outside Kings College

Taking photos of college gates, I noticed that there is usually a letter box close-by. It makes sense, all those students away from home naturally wanted to write letters. Now I assume that it's all email, if not Facebook.

The best letter box is outside Kings College, on Kings Parade. The letters were sent by the Royal Mail, so the ornate letter on the front of letter boxes tells you which monarch was on the throne when the letter box was made. This one is a Victorian letter box. It has an interesting hexagonal shape.

This is listed Grade II

Peas Hill is between the Guildhall and St Edward's church. The Arts Theatre is here, as well. In Richard Lyne's map of 1574, it is described as Pease Market.

Market Hill is called this on the 1574 map. The market is the heart of Cambridge - it has always been a market town. Round the market, you can see the Guildhall, Great St Mary's church and a 17th century house at 5 Market Hill. The market is open 7 days a week. It sells fruit and veg, and many other items, with some change from day to day. There is a farmers market on Sunday.

This sculpture is at the entrance to the Department of Engineering in Trumpington Street, a bit further along than the Fitzwilliam Museum.

A plaque on it says "Construction in Aluminium 1967 by Kenneth Martin (1905-1984)". It was built with the help of the Engineering Department's workshops.

Its title is not well-known. It tends to be called "that sculpture outside the Engineering Department".

There is a notice near-by which explains more.

The island in the pool is locally known as Giant's Grave, but who is the giant? Legend says that the giant Gog Magog lived nearby, perhaps on the Gog Magog hills, and he is buried here. Another suggestion is that some unusually tall skeletons were found from Iron Age burials on Lime Kiln Hill close-by.

This 'site is also locally known as 'The Spring' or 'Springhead' or 'Robin Hood dip'. That must be why the pub across the road is called the Robin Hood!

Cherry Hinton used to consist of two separate settlements called Church End and Mill End. The southern settlement, Mill End, developed around Giant's Grave, as it was a large natural spring pool and provided an excellent supply of fresh water.

Click on the photo of the notice for a larger version which you might be able to read. It gives some details about local flora and archaeology.

There is a notice near-by which explains more. Click on the photo for a larger version. Part is given below.

The path was built by Cambridgeshire County Council in partnership with Sustrans, to link Addenbrookes Hospital with Great Shelford.Stripes have been laid over one mile of the route with each individual stripe representing one mile of the National Cycle Network, as it was in September 2005.

The stripes also represent the "bases" of a vital human gene called BRCA2, which was decoded at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton. As you cycle or walk on this path, you are effectively travelling a portion of your own genome. To traverse the whole genome at this scale would take a path going 15 times round the earth. The human genome is made up of around 3,000,000,000 bases in all. There are four types of bases, called Adenine (green), Cytosine (blue), Guanine (yellow) and Thymine (red). BRCA2 is the gene that produces a protein which helps in the repair of hiuman DNA which is subject to wear and tear in daily life.

The double helix is an artistic representation of the double helix structure of DNA. The human genome is wound into a double helix structure, and a copy lies within each human cell. Here the double helix has been enlarged approximately 750,000,000 times.

Inukshuk, outside Scott Polar Museum

This charming statue is outside the Scott Polar Museum, round the side.

It is 'Inukshuk', which means 'Cairn in the shape of a man'. It was built by Inuits to guide caribou. It comes from Baffin Island, Canada.

I took this information (and in fact found out about this sculpture) from the Cambridge Sculpture Trails - first trail.

Click here for the Scott Polar Museum, all about the Arctic and Antarctic.

Murdered prostitute's grave, Mill Road cemetery

This grave is in Mill Road cemetery, a disused cemetery between Mill Road and Norfolk Street. The graves are mostly Victorian. This grave looks dull, a mother with two children, one died as an infant, the other as a teenager. But there is an interesting story behind it. The middle name was a girl, Emma Rolfe, who died when she was 16. She was a prostitute who was murdered by a client, Robert Browning, on Midsummer Common. 2,000 people attended her burial at Mill Road cemetery, and her murderer was hanged in the Burough Jail, which was on Parker's Piece.

The gravestone says of her only Emma Rolfe died Aug 24 1876, aged 16 years. She is buried in the part of the cemetery belonging to the parish of St Andrews the Less.

There is another grave nearby, of a coach driver. Click here to see it.