This sharply dressed Gothic building honors William Pitt the Younger, a Pembroke undergraduate who became Britain’s youngest prime minister in seventeen eighty-three at the age of twenty-four. After Pitt died in eighteen oh six, his memorial committee paid for a statue in Hanover Square, discovered it still had money left over, and offered Cambridge enough to give the University Press a handsome home. Edward Blore, later architect to Queen Victoria, drew it. Builders laid the foundation stone on the eighteenth of October, eighteen thirty-one, finished the job in eighteen thirty-three, and spent ten thousand, seven hundred and eleven pounds, eight shillings and nine pence... roughly a million pounds in modern terms.
The Press itself, though, is older by three centuries. Henry the Eighth granted letters patent in fifteen thirty-four, making Cambridge University Press the oldest university press in the world. That charter let Cambridge choose three stationers and printers - book tradesmen, really - to print works approved by the Chancellor. A splendid idea, though actual printing took its time. Not until fifteen eighty-three did Cambridge have a printer who truly printed books: Thomas Thomas of King’s College. His first book, in fifteen eighty-four, had the wonderfully firm title Two Treatises of the Lord His Holie Supper.
Now glance up at the oriel window above the entrance... that room still pulls its weight. The Oriel Room is where the Syndicate - the Press's governing committee - still meets to approve Press business.
Before this building, John Field ran the Press and set up a printing house on land now occupied by the Master’s Lodge of St Catharine’s College. John Hayes followed him, then Cornelius Crownfield, described as a Dutchman and a very ingenious man. In printer-speak, that is high praise. Then came Charles John Clay. Cambridge partnered with him in eighteen fifty-four; he dominated the Press for forty years, at least quadrupled turnover in his first decade, and retired in eighteen ninety-four, leaving his son John in charge. Between eighteen sixty-three and eighteen seventy-eight, Clay added machine rooms, warehouses, and a foundry.
Inside, compositors set type by hand from cases. Capitals sat in the upper case, small letters in the lower case... and there you have two everyday phrases born in a print shop. Their union meeting was called a Chapel, and its elected steward was the Father of the Chapel. For over a century, this place worked as Cambridge University Press in the most literal sense. The presses finally moved to Shaftesbury Road in nineteen sixty-three; today the building serves as offices and conference rooms.
Walk south down Trumpington Street. Mill Lane is the next turning on your right, leading to the Mill Pond; the pub on the corner with the river behind it is the Mill, your final stop. If you want to look inside later, check the current opening times.
