SAME dinner - St. Catherines College

Last night, Don and I had the opportunity to attend a dinner at St. Catherine’s College in Cambridge University. It was a function sponsored by the Society of American Military Engineers. (SAME) of which Don is a member. There are quite a few British Engineer members that work for the American Military and they helped to set it up.

It was awesome to walk into the courtyard of the college and enter the hall through a very old doorway, that you hit your head on to go through (and I’m 5’3’’!) and still has a gate-like latch on it (no lock). There was a crack in the wood that you could look right through to the inside! I felt like I was going back in time!

The room for our dinner was one of those old, dark oak, hand-carved, wood paneled rooms with oil portraits of past collegiate/important people hanging around to watch you eat! Since the school is approaching 900 years old, these portraits are very old! The windows were stain glass and they had books on the shelves that could have been as old as the school!

(See blurry picture below)

We had a fascinating speaker on the history of Cambridge; the city and the college. I’ll try to remember the highlights.

The college is one of 31 colleges in the University of Cambridge. It currently has 600 students, so it is one of the medium size colleges in the University. Although in each college you can obtain any degree, the colleges have specialties or stronger emphasis on certain degrees. I think St. Catherine’s focuses more on the medical fields.

The town flourished when the Danes used it for a shipping center. This is remarkable in itself as Cambridge is 60 miles inland! So they used the river to bring goods to the city. The college is on the river. The story is that Cambridge and the College had about 6 bridges over the river and at that time the barges were powered by horses towing them from a path along side the river. Well, due to the bridges, they couldn't tow from the path so the Danes put stone and rocks in the middle of the river so the horses to go into the river and walk. They were up to their necks in the water, pulling the boat!

This also explains the punting dilemmas that people encounter when they try to punt.....losing your pushing stick to the river. The rocks are only in the middle of the river. On the sides of the river is mud. So when you punt, you want to stick to the middle of the river so your punting stick doesn't get stuck in the mud!

Before the meal we all met at a pub that is the oldest in Cambridge and since it is in the middle of all the colleges, has a long history of famous students and people lunching, drinking and sharing ideas there. Shakespeare himself was one of the famous occupants, performing one of his first plays in the courtyard. The Eagle, as it is now called, is most recently known for Crick and Watson who entered the pub and announced “we have found the secret of life!” in 1953. These are the guys who discovered DNA. Their laboratory was around the corner from the pub.

Now we went to this pub before we heard the speaker and so now I have to seriously doubt my powers of observation….. The speaker told us several things about the pub that I’ll have to go back sometime to observe as I saw none of what she described! (In my defense it was rather dark and crowded and we weren’t there that long, and I was busy meeting new people and doing what I like to do…talk)

The speaker said the pub started in the 1500’s as a Coaching Inn by Corpus Christie College. In the courtyard, there are numbers on the walls that are the original numbers of the stalls where the horses rested between trips. (There are two 26’s as the lead horse worked extra hard and so they had two horses for that position)

I didn’t see the numbers.

Another was the sign that tells the story of the guys who discovered DNA.

I didn’t see this.

The last, very obvious thing, (if you happen to look up) is the names, burned with cigarette lighters, by hundreds of US and British soldiers that frequented the place in WWII.

Now how could I have missed that?

Anyway, this ceiling is now protected by the government and can never be taken down or covered up. Relatives of all the names, except for 3 have come in to see the names on the ceiling. Supposedly, the names of the crew of the Memphis Belle are there with a drawing of a naked lady underneath.

Okay, so I have to go back to see these things…during the day…when it’s not crowded….and have more time…..and aren’t meeting new people….and not talking!

The college history was interesting, but I especially liked the stories about the pranks students have pulled over the years. The story the speaker liked best, was when they put a car on the roof of one of the colleges, but I liked the one where they floated a Volkswagen down the river on two punting boats (Flat bottom boats), tied it to the bottom of the Bridge of Sighs and removed the boats. It was suspended from the bridge for a week, until they figured out how to get it down. (The river is on the backside of the colleges)

All in all, a fascinating evening. Good company, good food and a good speaker! What more could you ask for?