Chapter XVIII - The Buildings and Furniture remaining from the Godshouse period

Summary

The purchase of the Fishwick tenements by Basset in 1468 completed the site of Godshouse; thereafter it neither gained nor diminished in area up to the advent of the Lady Margaret. Even more may be said, for all her buildings were comprised within its space and the first structure placed upon land outside the Godshouse site was Fellows' Building, erected in 1640–2. The area thus attained in 1468 was nearly equal to the present open space of the Great Court of Trinity; to be more exact, the Great Court has an area of about ten thousand square yards while the site of Godshouse occupied about nine thousand. The development since 1448, when the tenements of Tiltey and Denney alone were possessed, becomes impressive when it is recognised that, at the date when the Lady Margaret's statutes were given and accepted, the college possessed and had possessed for nearly forty years a site which already

had absorbed the full frontage to Preacher Street (St Andrew's Street) which it has to-day, from Walks Lane (Hobson Street) to Hangman's Lane or Rogues' Alley (Christ's Lane);

included the whole area of the present first court and ran back behind it to the watercourse, shewn in the plan, a few feet to the west of Fellows' Building;

included sufficient space behind the north range of the court to provide a marginal area between that range and the triangular space acquired 28 August 1507.