Patrick Comerford
Archbishop Sarah Mullally is only the second Archbishop of Canterbury since the 14th century to hold that office without a degree from Oxford or Cambridge. The other was Archbishop George Carey, although he later received an honorary DD from Cambridge in 2006.
Most of their post-war predecessors have had strong links with Cambridge:
• Justin Welby was educated at Trinity College, where his great-uncle, Rab Butler, was the master.
• Rowan Williams studied theology at Christ’s College, Cambridge, was a tutor, chaplain and director of studies at Westcott House, dean and chaplain of Clare College and later the Master of Magdalene College and the honorary Professor of Contemporary Christian Thought at the University of Cambridge.
• Robert Runcie studied at Westcott House, returned to Westcott House as chaplain and then as vice-principal; later he was a fellow and dean of Trinity Hall.
• Donald Coggan studied at Saint John’s College.
• Michael Ramsey was born in Cambridge, studied at Magdalene College, was the Vicar of Saint Bene’t’s Church, and for a short time was the Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge.
But despite all those Cambridge connections – and despite all the bishops associated with Westcott House I mentioned in a posting on Saturday evening – Cambridge is not a diocese. The university and the city lie within the Diocese of Ely, and while Oxford has a bishop and a cathedral there is no Bishop of Cambridge and no Cambridge Cathedral.
Which all goes to show how the name of the Mitre, a public house on Bridge Street and almost facing Saint John’s College, is something of anomaly.
While I was in Cambridge over a number of years following summer courses organised by the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies and staying at Sidney Sussex College, the Mitre on Bridge Street and the Eagle on Bene’t Street where two of the places where many of us adjourned on warm summer evenings to enjoy each other’s company and to discuss and debate the day’s proceedings.
During my walking tour of Cambridge last week with a friend from Ireland who was following a short course in theology and staying at Saint John’s College, the Mitre and the Eagle were two of the pubs I pointed out.
The Mitre, a Grade II listed building at 17 to 18 Bridge Street, has a long history and stands on the site of two former inns – the Blackmoor’s Head and the Cock and Magpie. It is said the Blackmoor’s Head took its name from Robert Blackmoor, a mediaeval chantry priest in nearby Saint Clement’s Church.
A plaque outside the Mitre recalls that the earliest record of a licensee at the site was of Robert Clarke in 1752, although the date on the arch says it was founded in 1754 – another anomaly in the story of the Mitre. Later, the Cock and Magpie was run by the widowed Ann Lawrence, a successful wine merchant. She was assisted by her eight daughters, and perhaps the nine women and a constant supply of beer added to the pub’s popularity.
The arrival of the railway in Cambridge took away much of the river trade that the inns by the Cam depended on. By 1856, the 15 pubs of the parish had been reduced to just four; by 1874, the Cock and Magpie was the only pub remaining in the immediate vicinity. William Headdy was the licensee then and he was also the proprietor of the nearby Mitre Brewery. By 1878, the pub was known as the Mitre Billiard Rooms and it was renamed the Mitre by the publican Elizabeth Mays in 1881.
So, it appears the Mitre takes its name from a brewery and not from any bishop or diocese.
The large windows at the front of the Mitre look out onto Saint John’s College and the busy bus and bicycle lanes of Bridge Street. Bridge Street runs between Magdalene Street at the junction with Thompson’s Lane to the north-west and Sidney Street at the junction with Jesus Lane to the south-east. At one time, Bridge Street continued om over the Great Bridge on the River Cam, hence the name, but that part of the street is now known as Magdalene Street after Magdalene College.
Further along Magdalene Street, the Pickerel Inn at 30 Magdalene Street is widely regarded as the oldest continuous licensed site in Cambridge, and dates from 1608.
Around the corner from the Mitre, my friend and I briefly looked at Portugal Place and Portugal Street, which some say were named because Sephardic Jews from the Iberian Peninsula who found a welcome in Cromwell’s England first settled in this part of Cambridge.
However, although the Cambridge Synagogue is in Thompson’s Lane, close to the Mitre and to Portugal Place and Portugal Street, it seems the name only dates from the Peninsular War and houses built for officers returning from the Portugal to or the discovery of some Portuguese coins when the houses were built in the 19th century.
Earlier in the day, we stopped on Bene’t Street, across from Saint Bene’t’s Church, to step into the Eagle, the second-oldest pub in Cambridge, which opened in 1667 as a coaching inn.
For decades, the Eagle was the local pub for scientists at the nearby Cavendish Laboratory. One lunchtime, on 28 February 1953, Francis Crick and James Watson came into the Eagle and announced they had ‘discovered the secret of life’, having finalised their model of the structure of DNA.
A blue plaque was unveiled at the Eagle in 2003. But from 2017, Rosalind Franklin’s name was often added in graffiti and removed. The plaque was replaced in 2023 with one that mentions Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins.
