1 66 The Growth of Cambridge 



tower of the Church of St Benedict bears witness to the early date of the 

 occupation of the gravels of Market Hill and Peas HiU, between the Cam 

 and the King's Ditch depression; (2) to the north of the river, Castle Hill 

 had also been early built upon; Domesday Book records that there were 

 fifty-four tenements in Castle Ward. There also appear to have been two 

 smaller settlements; (3) to the west on the rising ground of the river 

 terrace at Newnham, the Mill at Newnham is mentioned in the Domesday 

 Survey; and (4) to the east on the northern edge of the gravels at Barnwell. 

 The main ford of the river at the foot of Castle HiU, where gravel and 

 chalk afford firm banks, was early bridged; the Great Bridge of the 

 documents was situated here. The Small Bridges, near the Mill Pool, 

 connecting the settlement within the meander with that of Newnham, are 

 also of early date. The medieval town was formed by the expansion of the 

 two centres at Castle Hill and at Market Hill; but it was not untd modern 

 times that the settlements at Newnliam and Barnwell were completely 

 absorbed. 



The medieval town so formed may have been bounded eastwards by 

 the King's Ditch (see Fig. 39), cut, most probably, primarily for the 

 defence of the crossing, not for the safety of the settlements. By the 

 thirteenth century, the town had growm beyond these limits: the parish 

 of St Mary the Less to the south and that of St Andrew the Great to the 

 east both lay almost entirely outside the town as defined by the King's 

 Ditch, and both had a considerable population. The further extension of 

 medieval Cambridge was, however, confined on the one hand by the 

 alluvial marshes of the river, and, on the other, by the inviolability of the 

 tovwi fields. Already by the end of the thirteenth century, the edge of the 

 gravels was being raised and drained to provide extra buUding sites without 

 sacrificing valuable agricultural and meadow land: the chapel and in- 

 firmary of the Hospital of St John (later the site of St Jolan's College) and the 

 nunnery of St Radegund (later the site of Jesus CoUege) encroached on the 

 alluvial land of the western and northern slopes of thehitermediate gravels. 



The University, already powerful at this period, did not, however, 

 possess elaborate buildings. The great period of University and CoUegiate 

 building belongs to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. By this date, 

 most of the desirable gravel sites within the King's Ditch boimdary had 

 been occupied, and thus the CoUegiate buddings faU into tw^o groups: 

 those upon good gravel sites on the outskirts of the medieval town, and 

 those upon "made" ground along the western edge of the river terrace 

 where the gravel descends below the aUuvium.^ 



' T. McKenny Hughes, "The Superficial Deposits of Cambridge and their effect 

 on the distribution of the Colleges", Proc. Camb. Antiq. Soc. xi, 293 (1907). 



