Stories of a City: The Cambridge tour continues. Off to Garret Hostel Lane. . .

In her monthly column for Velvet, Cambridge novelist Susan Grossey takes us to a different city site each month - and tells us their stories, past, present and personal. The destination this time? Garret Hostel Lane. . . Illustrated by Lucy Jones of Poppet Pics

I grew up in the tropics, and my strongest memory of my first winter in Cambridge in 1984 is of how utterly, numbingly cold it was. (Another memory is of falling off my bike on the ice on West Road and just lying there crying with laughter because I couldn’t stand up and anyone who tried to rescue me landed on their bottom as well, with eventually six of us prostrate in the road.) And the image of the cold that sticks with me most vividly is the swirling mists and looming chilly stone walls of the gentle curve of Trinity Lane as it turns into Garret Hostel Lane. An anonymous local had already by then chalked the helpful (and regularly refreshed) direction “TO THE RIVER” on the wall, and who can resist such an invitation?

In my opinion, this atmospheric diversion needs to be taken in two different seasons: mid-winter and high summer. In the frigid months, you can all but see the inhabitants of old in this rare survivor of the many higgledy-piggledy passages that used to wind their way to the river, before the rest of them were cleared to provide wealthy colleges with unobstructed river frontage. Picture the monks in their rough hooded cloaks hurrying through the river mists, walking close to the high walls to avoid the rainwater and worse in the middle of the lane.

Nowadays you can admire the many architectural flourishes, from the sculpted heads in roundels and the huge griffin gargoyles on the walls of Gonville and Caius, to the extravagant drainpipes and lovely light-filled Jerwood Library of Trinity Hall. But in early days this was a plain and functional passage, and signs of this humble beginning still remain. As you turn into Garret Hostel Lane, about halfway down the wall on the left is surprisingly rustic, with a great patch of it simply whitewashed.

But then you are reminded of the grandeur of the buildings behind that wall when you turn the final corner and see the two magnificent wooden doors, each containing one of my very favourite things: a human-sized door within a cart-sized one. Both are studded with forbidding nails, as though ready to repel an invading force (originally Catholics, perhaps, and now tourists). Sadly, the original Garret Hostel was demolished several centuries ago, and the college that owned it – Michaelhouse – disappeared into Trinity in the mid sixteenth century.

Today’s students do not make much of a mark on the architecture around here, but their presence is certainly felt at two places along your route. Two stretches of black iron railings are commandeered as billboards, with laminated posters zip-tied to them advertising concerts, plays, readings, debates, protests and other events. Quite what other purpose those railings have I am not sure: both sets seem wildly over-protective of tiny, insignificant patches of land.

In the summer, the atmosphere is very different. The sun is high in the sky and finally illuminates the old brickwork and stone, with the gatehouse of Trinity New Court shown at its buttery best. Groups of visitors and language students are drawn water-wards by the chalk arrows and the promise of punts at Trinity’s slipway. I have always loved their punning punt-y names, from the easily-deduced “Blind Mice” to the more esoteric “Codon” (a codon is a DNA or RNA sequence of three nucleotides – obvs, really).

But what I really love about this location in the summer is a little harder to spot. The Garret Hostel bridge over the river is a modern replacement – built in 1960 out of a rather unlovely substance known as prestressed concrete. But from ugliness can spring beauty, and on a sunny the day the patterns projected on the underside of the bridge – in essence, reflections of the water reflecting the sun – are ever-changing and mesmerising. Stop and stare for a while, and let Cambridge into your soul.

Susan Grossey is the author of many historical crime novels, including the Hardiman books, set in Cambridge in the 1820s. The second in this series – Sizar – was published in December 2024. See susangrossey.com

For more about Lucy and her work, follow @lucyjonespoppetpics on Instagram.