Fitzwilliam College Cambridge Buildings Listed
The Central Hall Building, New Court, and the Chapel at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, have been listed at Grade II by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport on the advice of Historic England.
The Central Hall Building was designed by renowned post-war architect Sir Denys Lasdun as part of his 1960s masterplan for the College.
Complementing Lasdun’s original designs, architects MacCormac, Jamieson and Prichard (MJP) created New Court in the 1980s and the Chapel in the early 1990s as part of a revised masterplan for the College.
The striking designs include a flamboyant gravity-defying lantern (the Hall), a worship space resembling a floating ship (the Chapel) and a distinctive stepped design where each floor has a different appearance inside and out (New Court).
Central Hall Building
The Central Hall Building was completed as part of architect Denys Lasdun’s first phase of construction for Fitzwilliam College, from 1960 to 1963.
Built in blue-brown brick, it originally included a dining hall, various social rooms for fellows including the ‘Senior Combination Room’, the bar and ‘Junior Combination Room’ for undergraduates, a dedicated space for research students, and kitchens at ground floor. At first floor level were a music room, lecture rooms, and the college library.
Above the brickwork building is a flamboyant lantern that seems to defy gravity as it hovers above the hall. On each side, 6 arched panes of glass appear to bear the weight of the concrete roof and the pre-cast concrete frill around its edge. It marks the highest point in the college.
At the centre of the plan is the dining hall, a cube-like space, brightly lit by the lantern.
While some of the original functions around the hall have changed, the layout of rooms is largely as it was when first completed.
New Court
MJP’s first buildings at Fitzwilliam (and in Cambridge) were the 3-storey residential blocks that form New Court at the south-west corner of the College.
Constructed from 1984 to 1986, in blue-brown brick with white concrete dressings, New Court provided accommodation for 100 students and resident fellows.
The height and material of New Court complement the design of the original accommodation blocks designed by Denys Lasdun in 1966.
The design embraces variety: every floor has a plan unique from the next. Every student has their own corner window in which to study, where they can appear like saints in the niches of a gothic church.
The College Chapel
The Chapel is in the shape of a tall drum, constructed of blue-brown brick with white concrete bands.
The north and south walls explode outwards and arc to give the building its circular form. At the east end is a massive window from which light floods into the Chapel.
Inside, there is a dark undercroft chapel with a wooden ceiling that bows downwards like the swollen belly of a ship. A pair of curving stairways lead upwards to the principal worship space, where a vast wall of glass takes visitors from darkness to light. In the gardens beyond, a 19th century plane tree is framed by the window to form an altarpiece.
Principal designer Sir Richard MacCormac described the 2-storey chapel as ‘an ark suspended between the upper and lower world’.
In 1994, the building was described as one of the best 20th century interiors in Cambridge.
These 3 fantastic buildings form a reinterpretation of the traditional Cambridge college. They were designed for an optimistic, forward-looking, post-war England, when university access was rapidly expanding, and new democratic ideals were finding architectural expression. Each building is highly individual, with thoughtful detailing and an imaginative approach, a testament to the exceptional creativity of Lasdun and MJP in partnership with Fitzwilliam’s academic community.
