PETERHOUSE

Just five minutes’ walk from the city centre, Peterhouse is an exciting and friendly place to live. It’s perfectly situated for student life – close to the arts, engineering and science faculties. Managing to be both traditional and informal, Peterhouse welcomes students from all backgrounds, though they will have in common high academic ability and commitment, and a willingness both to work hard and to contribute to College life. The size of the College, both in terms of its physical space and student body, give us our cozy, friendly atmosphere. But despite our small size, there is always something to do, be it music, sport, drama or subject-specific societies!

THREE THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT PETERHOUSE

1.???? Peterhouse is the oldest college in Cambridge, having been founded in 1284, with its dining hall believed to be the oldest non-ecclesiastical building in Europe that is still used for its original purpose. The earliest statutes of the college enjoined that all conversation in Hall should be in Latin, with French permitted as a fall-back.

2.???? The Deer Park, formerly known as the Grove, was actually home to a small group of deer from 1857, though by 1935 they had all succumbed to infection, perhaps transmitted by the sheep who also grazed the land.

3.???? It’s ‘Peterhouse’, not ‘Peterhouse College.’ Peterhouse was actually known as St Peter’s College until late in the nineteenth century, after which (nobody seems sure why), it began to be known as Peterhouse, which had perhaps previously been a pet name. Nowadays, its students and alumni, known as ‘Petreans’, enjoy teasing those who mistake the name, pointing out that ‘Peterhouse College’ is a tautology, given that a house (Latin ‘domus’) is just another name for a college.