Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at Oxford or Cambridge. Trinity has some of the most distinctive architecture in Cambridge with its Great Court said to be the largest enclosed courtyard in Europe. Academically, Trinity performs exceptionally as measured by the Tompkins Table (the annual unofficial league table of Cambridge colleges), coming top from 2011 to 2017, and regaining the position in 2024.
Members of Trinity have been awarded 34 Nobel Prizes out of the 126 received by members of the University of Cambridge (more than any other Oxford or Cambridge college). Members of the college have received four Fields Medals, one Turing Award and one Abel Prize. Trinity alumni include Francis Bacon, six British prime ministers (the highest number of any Cambridge college), physicists Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, Ernest Rutherford and Niels Bohr, mathematicians Srinivasa Ramanujan and Charles Babbage, poets Lord Byron and Lord Tennyson, English jurist Edward Coke, writers Vladimir Nabokov and A. A. Milne, historians Lord Macaulay and G. M. Trevelyan, and philosophers Ludwig Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell (whom the college expelled before reaccepting).
Two members of the British royal family have studied at Trinity and been awarded degrees: Prince William of Gloucester and Edinburgh, who gained an MA degree in 1790, and King Charles III, who was awarded a lower second-class BA degree in 1970.
Trinity's many college societies include the Trinity Mathematical Society, the oldest mathematical university society in the United Kingdom, and the First and Third Trinity Boat Club, its rowing club, which gives its name to the May Ball. Along with Christ's, Jesus, King's and St John's colleges, it has provided several well-known members of the Cambridge Apostles, an intellectual secret society. In 1848, Trinity hosted a meeting at which Cambridge undergraduates representing fee-paying private schools codified a set of early rules of football known as the Cambridge rules. Trinity's sister college is Christ Church, Oxford. Trinity has been linked with Westminster School since the school's re-foundation in 1560, and its Master is an ex officio governor of the school.
History
Foundation
The college was founded by Henry VIII in 1546 with the name College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity within the Town and University of Cambridge of King Henry the Eighth's Foundation, from the merger of two existing colleges: Michaelhouse (founded by Hervey de Stanton in 1324), and King's Hall (established by Edward II in 1317 and refounded by Edward III in 1337). At the time, Henry had been seizing (Catholic) church lands from abbeys and monasteries. The universities of Oxford and Cambridge, being both religious institutions and quite rich, expected to be next in line. The king duly passed an act of Parliament, the Dissolution of Colleges Act 1545 (37 Hen. 8. c. 4), that allowed him to suppress (and confiscate the property of) any college he wished. The universities used their contacts to plead with his sixth wife, Catherine Parr. The Queen persuaded her husband not to close them down, but to create a new college. The king did not want to use royal funds, so he instead combined two colleges (King's Hall and Michaelhouse) and seven hostels to form Trinity.
Nevile's expansion
The monastic lands granted by Henry VIII were not on their own sufficient to ensure Trinity's eventual rise. In terms of architecture and royal association, it was not until the Mastership of Thomas Nevile (1593–1615) that Trinity assumed both its spaciousness and its association with the governing class that distinguished it since the Civil War. In its infancy Trinity had owed a great deal to its neighbouring college of St John's: in the words of Roger Ascham, Trinity was a colonia deducta.
Most of Trinity's major buildings date from the 16th and 17th centuries. Thomas Nevile, who became Master of Trinity in 1593, rebuilt and redesigned much of the college. This work included the enlargement and completion of Great Court and the construction of Nevile's Court between Great Court and the river Cam. Nevile's Court was completed in the late 17th century with the Wren Library, designed by Christopher Wren. Nevile's building campaign drove the college into debt from which it surfaced only in the 1640s, and the Mastership of Richard Bentley adversely affected applications and finances. Bentley himself was notorious for the construction of a hugely expensive staircase in the Master's Lodge and for his repeated refusals to step down despite pleas from the Fellows. Besides, despite not being a sister college of Trinity College Dublin, as is the case with St John's College, Cambridge, it is believed that the Irish institution takes its name from this college, which was the alma mater of its first provost, Adam Loftus and, likewise, from Trinity College, Oxford.
Modern day
In the 20th century, Trinity College, St John's College and King's College were for decades the main recruiting grounds for the Cambridge Apostles, an elite, intellectual secret society. In 2011, the John Templeton Foundation awarded Trinity College's Master, the astrophysicist Martin Rees, its controversial million-pound Templeton Prize, for "affirming life's spiritual dimension". Trinity is the richest Oxbridge college with a landholding alone worth £800 million. For comparison, the second richest college in Cambridge (St John's) has estimated assets of around £780 million, and the richest college in Oxford (Magdalen) has about £940 million. In 2005, Trinity's annual rental income from its properties was reported to be in excess of £20 million. The college owns:
In 2018, Trinity revealed that it had investments totalling £9.1 million in companies involved in oil and gas production, exploration and refinement. These included holdings of £1.2 million in Royal Dutch Shell, £1.7 million in Exxon Mobil and £1 million in Chevron. In 2019, Trinity confirmed its plan to withdraw from the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS), the main pre-1992 UK University pension provider. In response, more than 500 Cambridge academics signed an open letter undertaking to "refuse to supervise Trinity students or to engage in other discretionary work in support of Trinity's teaching and research activities". On 17 February 2020, protestors from the campaign group Extinction Rebellion dug up the front lawn of Trinity College to protest against the College's investments in fossil fuels and its negotiations to sell off a farm in Suffolk that was to be turned into a lorry park.
Lord Byron purportedly kept a pet bear while living in the college. Trinity is also often cited as the inventor of an English version of crème brûlée, known as "Trinity burnt cream".
Trinity in Camberwell
Trinity College has a long-standing relationship with the Parish of St George's, Camberwell, in South London. Students from the College have helped to run holiday schemes for children from the parish since 1966. The relationship was formalised in 1979 with the establishment of Trinity in Camberwell as a registered charity.
Buildings and grounds
Great Gate
The Great Gate is the main entrance to the college, leading to the Great Court. A statue of the college founder, Henry VIII, stands in a niche above the doorway. In 1983, Trinity College undergraduate Lance Anisfeld, then Vice-President of CURLS (Cambridge Union Raving Loony Society), replaced the chair leg with a bicycle pump. Once discovered the following day, the college removed the pump and replaced it with another chair leg. The original chair leg was auctioned off by TV presenter Chris Serle at a Cambridge Union Society charity raffle in 1985. In 2023, the college replaced the chair leg with a sceptre to mark the 75th birthday of Charles III, an alumnus of the college. In 1704, the university's first astronomical observatory was built on top of the gatehouse. Beneath the founder's statue are the coats of arms of Edward III, the founder of King's Hall, and those of his five sons who survived to maturity, as well as William of Hatfield, whose shield is blank as he died as an infant, before being granted arms.
Great Court
Great Court (built 1599–1608) was the brainchild of Thomas Nevile, who demolished several existing buildings on this site, including almost the entirety of the former college of Michaelhouse. The sole remaining building of Michaelhouse was replaced by the then current Kitchens (designed by James Essex) in 1770–1775. The Master's Lodge is the official residence of the Sovereign when in Cambridge. King's Hostel (built 1377–1416) is located to the north of Great Court, behind the clock tower. This is, along with the King's Gate, the sole remaining building from King's Hall. Bishop's Hostel (built 1671) is a detached building to the southwest of Great Court, and named after John Hacket, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry. Additional buildings were built in 1878 by Arthur Blomfield.
Nevile's Court
Nevile's Court (built 1614) is located between Great Court and the river. It was created by a bequest by the college's master, Thomas Nevile, originally two-thirds of its current length and without the Wren Library. The court was extended and the appearance of the upper floor remodelled slightly in 1758 by James Essex. Cloisters run around the court, providing sheltered walkways from the rear of Great Hall to the college library and reading room as well as the Wren Library and New Court.
The Wren Library (built 1676–1695, Christopher Wren) is located at the west end of Nevile's Court, the Wren is one of Cambridge's most famous and well-endowed libraries. Among its notable possessions are two of Shakespeare's First Folios, a 14th-century manuscript of The Vision of Piers Plowman, letters written by Sir Isaac Newton, and the Eadwine Psalter. Below the building are the Wren Library Cloisters, from which the Great Hall and the river and Backs are viewable.
Since the completion of the Wren Library in 1695, a number of prominent portraits have been displayed within its walls, including those of Arthur James Balfour, John Hacket, Isaac Barrow, William Lamb, and Thomas Nevile. As of November 2024, the portrait of Balfour was temporarily relocated to an undisclosed location in Cambridge after being vandalised by an activist associated with the group Palestine Action. Trinity College stated that revealing the painting's current location or restoration studio would present a security risk.
New Court
New Court (or King's Court; built 1825, William Wilkins) is located to the south of Nevile's Court, and built in Tudor-Gothic style; this court is notable for the large tree in the centre. A myth is sometimes circulated that this was the tree from which the apple dropped onto Isaac Newton; in fact, Newton was at home in Woolsthorpe when he deduced his theory of gravity – and the tree is a horse chestnut tree. For many years it was the custom for students to place a bicycle high in the branches of the tree of New Court. Usually invisible except in winter, when the leaves had fallen, such bicycles tended to remain for several years before being removed by the authorities. The students then inserted another bicycle.
Other courts
Whewell's Court (1860–1868, Anthony Salvin) is located across the street from Great Court, and was entirely paid for by William Whewell, the Master of the college from 1841 until his death in 1866. The north range was later remodelled by W.D. Caroe. Angel Court (built 1957–1959, H. C. Husband) is located between Great Court and Trinity Street, and is used along with the Wolfson Building for accommodating first year students.
The Wolfson Building (built 1968–1972, Architects' Co-Partnership) is located to the south of Whewell's Court, on top of a podium above shops, this building resembles a brick-clad ziggurat, and is used exclusively for first-year accommodation. Having been renovated during the academic year 2005–06, many rooms are now en-suite. Blue Boar Court (built 1989, MJP Architects) is located to the south of the Wolfson Building, on top of podium a floor up from ground level, and including the upper floors of several surrounding Georgian buildings on Trinity Street, Green Street and Sidney Street. Burrell's Field (built 1995, MJP Architects) is located on a site to the west of the main College buildings, opposite the Cambridge University Library.
Chapel
Trinity College Chapel dates from the mid 16th century and is Grade I listed. There are a number of memorials to former Fellows of Trinity within the Chapel, including statues, brasses, and two memorials to graduates and Fellows who died during the World Wars. Among the most notable of these is a statue of Isaac Newton by Roubiliac, described by Sir Francis Chantrey as "the noblest, I think, of all our English statues." The Chapel is a performance space for the College Choir which comprises around thirty Choral Scholars and two Organ Scholars, all of whom are ordinarily students at the university.
Grounds
The Fellows' Garden is located on the west side of Queen's Road, opposite the drive that leads to the Backs. The Fellows' Bowling Green is located north of Great Court, between King's Hostel and the river. It is the site for many of the tutors' garden parties in the summer months, while the Master's Garden is located behind the Master's Lodge. The Old Fields are located on the western side of Grange Road, next to Burrell's Field. It currently houses the college's gym, changing rooms, squash courts, badminton courts, rugby, hockey and football pitches along with tennis and netball courts.
Trinity Bridge
Trinity Bridge is a stone built triple-arched road bridge across the River Cam. It was built of Portland stone in 1765 to the designs of James Essex to replace an earlier bridge built in 1651 and is a Grade I listed building.