Points of Interest in Cambridge, UK
Duxford's Imperial War Museum
During World War I, the Duxford aerodrome was built. It was one of the first bases
set up by the Royal Air Force. In 1917, the Royal Flying Corps grew, and Duxford
was one of many new airfields that were built to train RFC pilots. Unlike many similar
airfields in the RAF when it was smaller, it stayed open after the war. It started
out as a school for training. In 1924, it became a fighter station, where it did
well for 37 years. The No. 19 Squadron at RAF Duxford was so well-known by 1938
that it was the first squadron to get the new Supermarine Spitfire. The first Spitfire
came to RAF Duxford in August of that year. In June 1940, Germany took over Belgium,
Holland, and France. The next thing Germany wanted to do was take over Britain.
The base at RAF Duxford was made fully functional. After that, there was a lot of
fighting in the air. This was known as the Battle of Britain. After that, the station
helped protect British airspace. On "Battle of Britain Day," September 15, 1940,
its squadrons flew twice to stop Luftwaffe attacks on London. Then, test and trial
units took off from the station. Before the RAF gave its new plane to the US Army
Air Forces, this gave them important information about how it would do in combat.
In April 1943, the 78th Fighter Group moved to RAF Duxford, which the Americans
quickly called "Station 357." Their main job was to protect the large groups of
US Eighth Air Force bombers during their dangerous and expensive daylight raids
on Germany. On D-Day, June 6, 1944, when the Allies started their long-awaited invasion
of occupied Europe, every available 78th Fighter Group Thunderbolt attacked targets
behind the Normandy beachheads. After World War II, Duxford became an RAF station
again. This was the start of its last phase of operation. It had jet fighters like
the Gloster Meteor, Hawker Hunter, and Gloster Javelin, so its pilots were ready
to shoot down Soviet bombers. But Duxford's time as an RAF base was coming to an
end because it was no longer needed for defence, which is what made it a fighter
station in the first place. It was too far south and too far inland to justify the
costly changes needed for supersonic fighters. The last flight from RAF Duxford
took off in July 1961, and for the next 15 years, no one knew what would happen
to the airfield. IWM needed a place to store, fix up, and eventually show off exhibits
that were too big for its London headquarters. It was okay to use the airfield for
this purpose. Together with the Imperial War Museum and the Duxford Aviation Society,
Cambridgeshire County Council gave new life to the nearly abandoned aerodrome. IWM
Duxford is now known as the centre for the history of flight in Europe. This museum
stands out because it has a historic site, world-class exhibit collections, and
regular world-famous Air Shows.
The botanical gardens at Cambridge University
Over 8,000 plant species from all over the world are kept in the Cambridge University
Botanic Garden (CUBG). This helps with both research and teaching. Researchers and
teachers can use the Garden's plants, horticultural knowledge, and facilities. But
ever since it opened, the Garden has also been a beautiful place where everyone
can enjoy and learn. It has many beautiful landscapes where people can learn about
the drama of plant diversity. In 1762, the first Botanic Garden at Cambridge University
opened in what is now called the New Museums Site in the middle of the city. It
was used to teach medical students about plants by growing them there. When he took
the Botany Chair at the University in 1825, John Henslow was 29 years old. At the
time, botany was at its worst. The city's Botanic Garden was falling apart because
it had been 30 years since the last lecture. Henslow's persistence and political
skill persuaded the University that the Botanic Garden needed to be moved to a much
larger site so that serious experimental botany could take its place during the
early 1800s rise of natural science studies at Cambridge. With the extra acres,
the exciting new tree species that were being found in western North America at
the time could be grown and studied. Botanic gardens would no longer be seen as
just places to grow drugs and teach medical students about them. Henslow, on the
other hand, thought that the Garden should be used to study the plants themselves.
Trinity Hall gave the University a 16-hectare piece of land one mile south of the
city centre in 1831, but it couldn't be built on right away because of legal issues.
But planting didn't start until 1846, and the University only paid to develop the
western half of the land because it was more expensive. Andrew Murray, the first
Garden Curator, worked with Henslow to design the garden. Murray's plan calls for
a path that goes around the Garden and is full of turns. The Main Walk, which is
made up of tall, stately coniferous trees, cuts the path in half from east to west.
Outside the perimeter path, a belt of trees from the same family was planted. There
was a U-shaped lake to the north of the Main Walk, and a complex set of herbaceous
systematics beds to the south. The Grade II* heritage landscape we see today is
the result of this plan. The design is in the "Gardenesque" style of the time, which
combines both individual plants and carefully crafted landscapes.
Castle Hill in Cambridge
Castle Hill is an important part of Cambridge's history, even though there are no
ruins there. Here stood Duroliponte, a hill fort from the Iron Age that later became
a Roman town. If you climb to the top of the Castle Mound, you can see the rooftops
of the town and the countryside around it. If the sky is clear, you can see Ely
Cathedral from the north. During Hereward the Wake's rebellion in 1068, William
I built Cambridge Castle to keep the area safe. During the Anarchy, Matilda's troops
tried to take it by besieging it, but they failed. During the First Barons' War,
French forces later took control of the castle. In the late 1300s, a large part
of the building was rebuilt, but it was not taken care of and quickly fell into
disrepair. During the Bronze and Iron Ages, people lived on Castle Hill, where a
later mediaeval fort was built. After the Romans conquered Britain in 43 AD, the
army built Ermine Street as a key route from London to the north. In western Cambridgeshire,
it went through. After the Boudica rebellion in AD 60, the military wanted to keep
the area safe, so they made a fort on Castle Hill. Akeman Street led from Ermine
Street to the fort. In the 70s AD, it was rebuilt, but the military left it and
it became Duroliponte, which did well because it was near a road and the River Cam.
By the fourth century AD, the Roman military was having trouble dealing with Danish
and German raiders who came by boat and used the river to get to the town. Limestone
walls were put up to protect the area. When the Roman army left Cambridgeshire at
the start of the fifth century AD, it was taken over by the Angles. Before Mercia
took over at the end of the eighth century AD, the county was made up of many different
tribes. Cambridge was ruled by the Mercians until 875, when the Viking commander
Guthrum moved in and fortified it as a part of the Danelaw. In 905, King Edward
the Elder of Wessex attacked Cambridgeshire and took it over. By 921, Cambridge
was a fortified town (town). These defences, which may have been built in the same
way as the Romans', consisted of an earth and wood rampart backed by a ditch that
surrounded an elliptical area with the River Cam on the west side. By the middle
of the 10th century, Cambridge had become one of the biggest cities in eastern England.
The Central Mosque Cambridge
Cambridge Central Mosque is the first mosque built specifically for worship in the
city and the first eco-friendly mosque in Europe. Its goal is to help the Muslim
community in the UK and around the world by promoting best practises in faith, community
development, social cohesion, and interfaith dialogue. On April 24, 2019, the Cambridge
Central Mosque opened its doors to the public. Julia Barfield, an architect, says
that a mosque doesn't always look the same. It depends on where you are. In Egypt,
Andalusia, Turkey, Indonesia, and the Arabian Peninsula, where Muslims need a place
to pray, the architecture matches the local style. In China, it could be a group
of pavilions with roofs like pagodas. In Sub-Saharan Africa, it could be made of
mud bricks or rammed earth. It could have a single dome, a few domes, or a flat
roof supported by many columns. It could be made of concrete, wood, or stone. In
the late 1800s, the first mosques were built in the UK. One was made out of a terrace
in Liverpool, and another was built from scratch in Woking, Surrey. But no one knows
what a typical British mosque looks like. The most common method, often driven by
the need to serve as many people as possible with limited budgets, is to build a
plain box that is then decorated with motifs from the main country of origin of
the congregations (Ottoman for Turks and Cypriots, Moghul for people from the subcontinent)
or from which the majority of the funding came.
All Saints Church is a place of worship for Christians.
All Saints' is a well-known city landmark with a pale stone spire. It is in the
middle of Cambridge, right next to the gates of Jesus College. It was built in the
1860s according to plans by G.F. Bodley, a well-known architect of the 1800s, and
is considered a masterpiece of Victorian art and architecture. Inside, almost every
surface is painted, stencilled, or gilded, and there are a lot of flowers all over
the walls. There are stained-glass windows that let light in that were made by famous
Arts and Crafts artists like William Morris and Ford Madox Brown. The Churches Conservation
Trust takes care of the building, which people can visit every day. All Saints'
is a well-known city landmark with a pale stone spire. It is in the middle of Cambridge,
right next to the gates of Jesus College. It was built in the 1860s according to
plans by G.F. Bodley, who was a well-known architect of the 1800s. It is considered
a masterpiece of Victorian art and architecture. Behind the wooden door is a colourful
display of patterns and colours. Famous Arts and Crafts artists like William Morris,
Edward Burne-Jones, and Ford Madox Brown made the stained-glass windows.
The Corpus Clock
Since its opening in 2008, both Cambridge residents and visitors have thought of
the Corpus Clock as one of the city's most interesting public landmarks. It's a
one-of-a-kind timepiece that is both hypnotically beautiful and deeply disturbing.
Dr. John C. Taylor OBE FREng made it, designed it, and gave it to Corpus Christi
College (m1959). The Clock was built with help from a local engineering company
called Huxley Bertram. The face of the clock is made of pure gold, and the ripples
around it are a reference to the Big Bang, the central explosion that created the
universe and could be thought of as the beginning of time. The clock is on top of
a strange monster called the Chronophage, which means "time-eater" in Greek. The
Chronophage eats each minute as it passes by snapping its jaws. It comes from a
grasshopper, which is what the clockmaker John Harrison called his invention of
a strictly functional escapement in the 1700s. At first, it seems hard to tell the
time on the Corpus Clock because it doesn't have hands or digital numbers.Rug
Cleaners. If you
look closely, you'll see that there are three rings of LEDs. The middle one shows
the time in hours, minutes, and seconds. When the time comes, there are no bells,
just chains swinging and the sound of a hammer hitting a wooden coffin. As shown
by the Latin inscription below the clock, which says "the world and its desires
pass away," time goes by and we all die. "Joh. Sartor Monan Inv. MMVIII" is written
on the pendulum in Latin, which means "Joh. Sartor Monan Inv. MMVIII." Joh. is the
name Johannes, Sartor is the mediaeval Latin word for tailor, Monanensis is the
Isle of Man, Inv. is the verb invenit, which can mean found, made, or brought to
fruition, and MMVIII is the year 2008. In 2008, John Taylor from the Isle of Man
did this. The Clock is where a Natwest Bank used to be. The Natwest Bank was built
in 1866 by architect Horace Francis to house the London County Bank.
Market Square
Cambridge is known for its many markets. Since the Middle Ages, merchants have set
up shop in the city's historic market square. The stalls are open Monday through
Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and sell street food, books, vinyl, CDs, and DVDs,
among other things. Some examples are clothing, jewellery, and bags. Fruits, veggies,
and fresh fish are all good sources of nutrients. You can buy garden plants and
used bikes. There's a lot more to cell phones and their parts than meets the eye.
On Sundays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., there is a busy local food, arts, and crafts
market in the market square. The market's vendors sell organic food grown by local
farmers as well as works by some of the area's most talented artists, craftsmen,
potters, sculptors, and photographers.
Mathematical Bridge
William Etheridge (1709–1766) made plans for the bridge in 1748, and James Essex
the Younger built it in 1749. (1722–84). It was fixed in 1866, and the same design
was used to rebuild it in 1905. On the right side of the picture, you can see the
riverside building. It was built around 1460 and is Cambridge's oldest building
on the river. Now, it is part of the President's Lodge. The design dates back to
the middle of the 18th century. It was made by James King, who died in 1744. A 50-foot
river is crossed by the bridge, which is made up of several shorter pieces of wood.
For example, the horizontal piece that looks like it crosses the whole river is
actually made of six shorter pieces of wood that are joined together. The design
is a wooden version of a voussoir arch bridge, with each part being pushed down
by the weight of the whole structure: For a voussoir bridge to work, the compressive
forces at the arch's springing point must be balanced by strong abutments. Bending
wood weakens it (think about how easy it is to break a match by bending it). In
this bridge design, the timbers in the side trusses don't have to bend much or at
all: The triangulation in the side trusses makes them strong without making them
too heavy, and it keeps the joints between the arch's segments from bending. Side
winds don't do as much damage to the building because the sides aren't filled in.
Cross-bracing is only found under the walkway. People said that if a side truss
needed a new piece of wood, that piece could be taken off and replaced without affecting
the other parts of the bridge or requiring the whole thing to be taken apart. In
the real world, this has never been tried.
The Wren Library
The Wren Library is one of the best-known and most historically important college
libraries in Cambridge. If you like books or old buildings, or both, you should
go. Sir Christopher Wren, a famous British architect and stonemason, designed the
library. It is one of the buildings at Cambridge colleges that he designed or built.
The chapel at Emmanuel College and the Wren bridge at St. John's are two more of
his works in Cambridge (although he did not build this). The most valuable and well-known
books in all of Cambridge are in this library. Here you can find the first copy
of Sir Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica and the first two folios of Shakespeare's
works. It also has A.A. Milne's original drawings of Winnie the Pooh.