Old Court from Silver Street

Old Court elevation from Silver Street

This shows the outside of the buildings erected in 1449. The decorative lozenges in the brickwork were rediscovered during cleaning in 1989.

The part of staircase C that juts out into the street was formerly euphemistically known as a garderobe. During restoration of room C1 in 1983, an original chute was rediscovered within the fabric of the garderobe.

On the extreme left is the original south-west corner tower of Old Court, commonly known as Erasmus's Tower. The small window in the top left corner is from a tiny room in the tower, reputed by oral tradition to have been Erasmus's study.

It is probable that habitable rooms in the attics were not an original feature of Old Court, but were added later. It can be seen here that it was very awkward getting new fireplaces in the attics to connect to the original chimney stacks. A huge mass of heavy brickwork for the attic fireplaces and stacks was introduced, supported only by the internal timber frame of the building, which subsequently became extremely distressed at the new load put upon it.

The white cylindrical street lights, erected in 1956, are known locally as Richardson Candles, and are a feature of the Cambridge city centre.

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