SOILS OF CAMBRIDGE 393 



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[From the Cambridge Antiquarian ^Society's Communications, VOL. XL] O 



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ON THE SUPERFICIAL DEPOSITS UNDER CAMBRIDGE, 

 AND THEIR INFLUENCE UPON THE DISTRIBUTION 

 OF THE COLLEGES, 



The foundations of demolished dwelling-houses are hardly 

 ever found within the walls of our colleges, a fact which shows 

 that neither the colleges nor the monastic institutions, to 

 which so many of them succeeded, were built on sites cleared 

 of houses for the purpose, as the Castle for instance is said to 

 have been. There are of course often traces of earlier build- 

 ings which had been adapted for scholastic work, and of older 

 parts of colleges which had been rearranged, extended, or 

 repaired. 



On the other hand, wherever excavations are carried on 

 over the area now occupied by college buildings, a large quan- 

 tity of household rubbish is generally found. We cannot 

 conceive it possible that bones, pottery, old shoes, and such 

 things were thrown out into the college courts and allowed to 

 accumulate as on a midden. 



The probable explanation of this is that the monastic 

 fraternities and the colleges were given sites outside the area 

 already occupied by the town and on ground which was 

 swampy or liable to be flooded, and had therefore to be arti- 

 ficially raised and levelled. All the higher parts had been 

 already built over, because they were the only sites on which 

 ordinary dwelling-houses could be erected without the prohibi- 

 tive expense of filling up inequalities and raising the level 

 above the reach of floods. This would not be so much felt in 

 the case of large and important buildings, in which the initial 

 expense incurred in preparing the ground was not such a 

 serious proportion of the whole cost. 



A recent example of the manner in which the ground 

 along the river has been raised may be seen in the Trinity 

 Paddocks, where earth from foundations, and refuse of every 

 kind and age were carted from various parts of the town and 

 laid upon the area. There was once an idea of erecting new 



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