Old Library (Cambridge)

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Old Library (Pembroke College)

A beautiful piece of architecture, and a wonderful function room.

No longer a library, the Old Library is used for Pembroke College's weekly graduate dinners ('BA dinners') and other less important events.

"The Countess* obtained ecclesiastical permission to erect a Chapel for the use of the scholars; and in the Treasury are preserved the original papal bulls (on parchment, with the bulls or seals attached) granted by Innocent VI. and Urban V. Both are dated at Avignon, and give permission, the one for the Chapel and the other for the Campanile of the Chapel.

The room at the north-west corner of the first court, called the Old Library, is the original chapel, the Italian windows having been inserted about 1690, when it was converted into a library.

The beautifully carved oak door and the elaborate plaster ceiling and well-carved bookcases are of the same period. A part of the Campanile of this early Chapel may still be seen in the corner of an adjacent living-room, and its position is indicated by a slight bulging of the wall of the court."

*"Mary de St Pol, daughter of Guy de Chatillon and widow of Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, "maid, wife and widow all in a day" (her husband, being unhappily slain at a tilting at her nuptials, lies under a superb canopy in Westminster Abbey), sequestered herself on that sad accident from all worldly delights, bequeathed her soul to God, and her estate to pious uses, amongst which, this, a principal, that she founded in Cambridge the Hall or House of Mary de Valence-it was soon after called Pembroke Hall-in 1347."