Stories of a City: Cambridge would be incomplete without them – the students are back

Cambridge novelist Susan Grossey’s guided tour of the city - sharing stories past, present and personal - continues with that October milestone: the return of the students

Ask any mildly travelled person what they know about Cambridge, and I bet they mention King’s chapel, punting – and ‘town and gown’. My bookish research reveals that the first acknowledged town and gown riot took place in the 1820s (debate rages about which year exactly), but of course the native inhabitants of our town and the incoming scholars have been disagreeing about almost everything for over eight hundred years. This must have been a blow to the founders of the university, who arrived in 1209 on the run from hostile

townspeople in Oxford. I wonder if they ever considered that they might be the problem… In the early days, the arguments between the Mayor of the town and the Vice-Chancellor of the university were legendary, over everything from who should pay for the streets to be cleaned to who walked first in the processions. Thankfully things have calmed down since then, and many of us who live here have a foot in both camps – university graduates who have chosen to stay on and become townspeople. But come October, we are all reminded of our former selves as The Students Return.

If I am completely honest, my very favourite month in Cambridge is September. The language and summer school students and the tourists have mostly gone home and the university students have yet to arrive. For one month we townies have the place to ourselves, which is a delicious luxury. And as it ends, I hear plenty of complaints about the arrivals of the students. Granted, it is infuriating for that weekend when proud parents in overladen cars clog up the streets while dropping off their progeny and more belongings than I own today, let alone when I was eighteen. And the first month of term is a bit hairy as youngsters who have not been on a bicycle since primary school wobble nervously all over the place. But for me, the arrival of a new batch of baby undergraduates is always a cause for celebration and hope.

In an era when the received wisdom is that young people have the attention span of a hyperactive flea and want nothing more than to be famous, it is heartening to see that proved wrong about twenty thousand times over. Every student in Cambridge must have worked hard to get here and they will continue to work hard throughout their course or be, as the charming lingo has it, rusticated (literally, sent to the country for a while) or even expelled. The majority will use their brains to contribute positively to the world afterwards, and as a consumer of books and drama and music and the legal system and transport infrastructure and medical services and a thousand other things, I am delighted that people are still studying these subjects.

But the students contribute more than that to our town. I think one of the most seductive things about Cambridge is that it is a constant mixture of old and new. The history of the place is undeniable – it ambushes you around every corner. Here is where Newton pondered gravity. The DNA chaps sank their pints here. Sylvia Plath penned her poems in this house. But no-one wants to live in a museum, and the students make sure that we don’t.

We may smile indulgently to see the newbies imagining that they are the first to put on a nudist play or jump across Senate House Passage or protest on the lawn in front of King’s – but I love the energy and idealism that they project. I take comfort from seeing that they are still passionate about things, still determined to make their mark, still alert to injustice, still unafraid to have their say. The alternative – a world where young adults are too frightened or too complacent to speak out and experiment – is a ghastly prospect. So welcome, all you striplings, and let’s see what you have in store for us this year.

Susan Grossey is the author of many historical crime novels, including the Hardiman books, set in Cambridge in the 1820s, the second volume of which, Sizar, is out now. See susangrossey.com

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