Tenth College: Darwin College

I know I am a bit behind on the College challenge, BUT since I will be on this island for another year I can come back to Cambridge in case I don't manage to see all of the Colleges in the days I have left...

More good news: today I'll show you one of the Colleges I grew to love the most. A very good friend of mine is a student there which is why I have spent quite some time on its grounds! I give you:

Darwin College!

A very cool thing about Darwin College is the fact that it has an island (with a cute little bridge to cross over). Also the river you can see on the picture ends at one of the punting stations, so people can punt around the island as well.

I assumed that this college was one of the old batch, but 'tis not so! Darwin College was founded in 1976 by no other than the three colleges Gonville and Caius, St' Johns and Trinity and named after one of Cambridge's most famous alumni: Charles Darwin.

Part of the land conveniently belonged to the Darwin family already, so I can see where the name is coming from (not that these theories Darwin was formulating were reason enough to name anything after him, of course...). Darwin College is the first graduate-only college and also the first one to accept both male and female students (at this point I want to add that female students were not regarded as full university members until 1948!! I am in shock! And this is not even that bad! Harvard only accepted women from 1977 on. I would have never guessed that it was that late!)

The island has a very nice path above the water - it's like going on an adventure!

One of the coolest features this college has to offer are the incredibly fancy interior decorations. The room above is where we very casually had tea after lunch once. Does it not look great?

And it's mostly like that (from what I have seen). This is where I was waiting for my friend the other day reading the paper:

In this college you don't feel like a knight (like at King's and co.), you feel like a Sir!