Looking up at Cambridge buildings

Critters and columns

I was walking through Cambridge, and then I looked up.  Once I had discovered my first few surprises, I went actively looking for more.  Here's what I found:

Hello!

Corpus Christi, corner Bene't St / Kings Parade

Critters crawling along a college.  I love that first one with the goggly eyes!

Lloyd's Bank, corner Sidney St / Hobson St, Victorian

A dragon fighting (or mating?) with another dragon.

OLEM (seen from the parking lot on Lensfield Rd)

Victorian gargoyles snarl and stare from the tops of buttresses on Our Lady of the English Martyrs church.
And who is the weary cleric with a biretta on his head?

19 King's Parade

This plaque commemorates the poet who translated Omar Kayyam's Rubayat.  Here is a stanza from his famous translation:

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on; nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.

I wonder who carved this plaque, with its long-legged Rs, tendrils and bowl of round fruit?

18 King's Parade, hipped dormer, 16th C.

King's College, gatehouse (neo-Gothic, 1824)
and chapel (late Gothic, 15th-16th C.)

King's College:  The most famous skyline of Cambridge.
The architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner spoke of the 'bulbous cupola' of the gatehouse -- a description I rather like.

Old Schools, Free Lane, South Building, seen from courtyard / parking lot

More creatures on a Cambridge cornice.  What are they doing?  The left one curls his long tail around the bird-like feet of the right one -- to stop it from flying away?

Is this love on a ledge?

6 Little St Mary's Lane, 2001

I am a plaster boar!  With a crown!

The 'boar house' has pargeting on its walls in the shape of shells.

Cintra House, Hills Rd (Open University), cameos after 1865

A lovely gentleman with a vaguely mediaeval beret, beard and flowing locks nestles in a shell and entwined lilies.

Corner Sussex St / Sidney St

A ram's head below a fanciful moulding and a pseudo-Greek dogtooth ornament.  He looks amused.

Maitland Robinson Library, Downing College, 1993 

Look carefully at this metope (the space between the vertical stripes (the triglyphs).  The architectural Doric order is from ancient Greece but the carved emblems are not all ancient!

This astronomy dish symbolises one of the subjects taught at Cambridge University (physics?).  The architect is Quinlan Terry, guru of classical revivalism and much beloved by Prince Charles.

Cambridge railway station, 1845, medallion

The train station is based on the 15th-century Foundling Hospital in Florence, with its arches and its round medallions.  This medallion shows the coat of arms of Pembroke College.  Don't you like the little red birds?  They are martlets.

St Botolph's, church tower, 15th C.

Here sits one of the evangelists but I can't figure out which one.  Is it Matthew the man?  Mark the lion? John the eagle? Or Luke the bull?

Senate House, 1730

An urn.  Classical elegance.

Pediment, Fitzwilliam Museum, by Charles Eastlake, 1840

Some of the nine muses.  I can identify Euterpe (flutes) but who is next to her?

HMV, Fitzroy St, formerly Laurie & McConnal's store, 1903

A bandstand and an art nouveau window.

Built 1930, Hobson St,
formerly Central Cinema, Odeon Cinema and Gala Bingo Hall

A bit of Art Deco in the centre of the city.

Law Faculty, 1995, by Norman Foster, Sidgwick Site

Lord Foster's trademark tubular steel girders jut into the sky.  Not a gargoyle in sight, just light, shade and geometry.

Pasty shop, Market Hill

Sorry to include this fake 'old salt': his inane grin, imported trade (a sailor in Cambridge?) and faux jollity irritates me but he is someone you see when you look up.

Let's end with a repeat of my favourite round-eyed building beast:

What can you see when you look up?