Ancient oaks, a lemon and a disappearing whale

It has been a few years now since the £7bn Thameslink upgrade simplified the journey between Croydon and Cambridge. I’ve been to Cambridge a few times before, for team building weekends and nights clubbing at The Junction, but somehow never quite made it to the city centre for a weekend of regular sightseeing. This weekend I put that right, taking the Thameslink north for some art, good food and extraordinary architecture.

The River Cam and Magdalene College

It hardly needs saying that these are not normal times. If you were visiting Cambridge in the time before Covid-19 you could enjoy a peek into the grounds of the 31 colleges that make up the University of Cambridge, but right now these are closed. However, there is still plenty to enjoy. In this post, I thought I would share what I thought were the highlights of our stay and add a few more pictures to the zillions that must have been shared online over the years.

A whale at the Fitzwilliam

There are so many wondrous exhibits at the Fitzwilliam Museum that it almost feels wrong to single out one highlight, but there was something rather special about seeing Hendrick van Anthonissen’s View of Scheveningen sands, with a stranded sperm whale (c. 1641) and discovering a somewhat surprising history.

The painting has been whale-less for most of the 148 years that it has been at the Fitzwilliam. One theory is that the whale was painted over by an unknown hand some time after the completion of the original painting as beached whales were considered unlucky. The mystery of what all the folk gathered on the beach were looking at in the empty sea was finally solved when the painting was sent for cleaning in 2014.

The restored whale

It is quite a testament to the skills of modern conservation that it was possible to separate the overpaint from the original paint and reveal the intact whale underneath. The full story of the restoration is told on the ArtUK website and there is a handy panel next to the painting in the Fitzwilliam showing how it appeared before the whale was revealed.

Other highlights from my wander included Pieter Brueghel the Younger’s Winter landscape with bird trap, 1626; the striking juxtaposition of wooden statues of St. Sebastian (c. 1525) and an Iraqi prisoner of war (2011); Jean-Léon Gérôme’s dashing portrait of his younger brother Claude-Armand Gérôme (1848) at the age of 21, two years before his brother died of meningitis; a dynamic painting of David and Goliath by Degas (1859); a charming 17th century cat-shaped jar; and a stunning relief of an Assyrian eagle-headed deity (c. 879 BC) from Nimrud, Iraq.

There is so much to see at the Fitzwilliam from stunning ancient artefacts to modern art, not to forget the extraordinary interior decoration of the building. Astonishingly, entry is free but under current conditions pre-booking is required.

The Octagon Tower at Ely Cathedral

On one day of our stay we made the 15 minute by train to Ely and enjoyed a tour of the extraordinary Octagon Tower. It’s a wondrous creation born out of disaster, namely the collapse of the 200 year old crossing tower in 1322 which left a crater in the middle of the cathedral. Theories abound as to the cause but a popular reasoning is that the work on the nearby Lady Chapel in 1321 had disturbed the water table, affecting the ground under the tower.

The large void in the damaged cathedral presented a challenge and the response was a work of considerable ingenuity, rightly considered as one of the wonders of medieval engineering. The solution was a octagonal stone tower, avoiding the dodgy centre ground occupied by the original tower, completed by a vaulted wooden roof capped by a wooden lantern framed by eight vertical oak posts. The new tower was finished in 1342.

Marvel of medieval engineering

The Octagon Tower looks stunning as you look up at the star-shaped vaulting, but the tour gives you a chance to better appreciate the engineering behind it. Our guide led us up the narrow staircases to see the eight great oaks and the sixteen supporting raking shores in the roofspace, then opened up a couple of the panels decorated with angels to give us a close-up view of the decoration leading up to the central boss (Christ pointing to the wound in his side) which was placed here in the 1330s. Finally, we climbed higher to the roof of the Octagon tower and completed a slow circuit on the walkway installed during the pandemic.

I have seen plenty of beautiful cathedrals in my time but this was rather special and we were surprised to find that the experience eclipsed the awe we felt just a day earlier when we visited King’s College Chapel. Highly recommended!

Kettle’s Yard House

The remarkable Kettle’s Yard house is the preserved home of the late Jim Ede, where he lived with his wife Helen from 1957 to 1973. Throughout their time in the house (actually four remodeled early nineteenth century cottages, with an extension in 1970) the Edes acquired an incredible collection of art, which they shared with the community by opening their home to visitors. A tour of the house in the hands of the incredible knowledgeable guides is a real privilege.

Kettle’s Yard

I don’t think I have ever visited a house where so much care and thought has gone in to the arrangement of the art, following the directions that the Edes left. One of the guides is tasked with regularly replacing a single fresh lemon on a pewter serving dish in the dining room, which has been deliberately placed to echo the yellow dot in Joan Miró’s ‘Tic Tic’ which normally hangs nearby (this is currently away on loan but has been replaced with Barbara Hepworth’s Two Figures, Yellow and Brown) which Jim used to demonstrate the importance of the spatial relationships between artworks. It must be the most famous lemon anywhere.

Another example would be Gaudier-Brzeska’s sculpture of a dancer, so carefully positioned that once a year, for just one week and only at the right time of day, a perfect shadow is cast on the blank wall behind it.

There is so much to like as you wander the rooms, the guides supplying all the information you could need. I was surprised to find myself even appreciating the careful arrangements of pebbles in the house and in complete agreement with Ian Hamilton Finlay’s contribution – an artwork that says simply ‘Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, England, is the louvre of the pebble’.

Pebbles at Kettle’s Yard

Our weekend in Cambridge coincided with the beginning of Michaelmas Term at the university, with parents unpacking boot loads of student possessions and excited students exploring the city for the first time, adding to the buzz of the place. It’s hard to imagine what this place is like in a normal tourist season, but I expect it’s much busier than we saw it. I was glad to have finally had a good look around.

Gallery