Definitely the college with the silliest name in Cambridge, and probably the most frequently misspelt (if punctuation errors for Queens' are ignored). It was founded in 1348 as Gonville Hall by Edmund Gonville and then again by John Keys in 1557, who obviously was pretentious enough to want to have is name spelt in Latin. On or other of them decreed in the founding statutes that no Welsh people or cripples should enter the college - which I believe they may have recently dropped.
Keys was also keen on gates, and had three erected in the college for symbolic purposes: the gate of humility (marked 'humilitas'), the gate of virtue ('virtuis') and the gate of honour ('honoris') through which students pass when they graduate. Popular legend has it that 'necesitas' was one inscribed above on of the toilet doors

Quite rich, but rather behind Trinity and John's in the weath stakes. Consequentally, most of the buildings are quite pretty in a renaissance kind of way, although their more recent accomodation block Harvey Court is so ugly that it has been Grade II* listed.

Well-known Caians include: William Harvey (discovered blood circulation), John Venn (of the diagram fame), George Green (Green's Theorem, Green's Functions), Alain de Botton and Stephen Hawking is a fellow.

Founded in 1348 by Edmund Gonville, a clergyman who had a hand in quite a lot of pies in mid-fourteenth-century Cambridge. Its official name was something like "The College of the Blessed Annunciation of the Holy Virgin Mary" but mostly it was called Gonville Hall.

It was founded on a spot currently occupied by Corpus Christi College, previously the site of an unfortunate hospital which got knocked down to make room. 5 years after being founded it was being run by Gonville's friend William Bateman, who moved it to its present spot slap bang in the middle of Cambridge with a view to merging it with Trinity Hall, which he'd just founded and which is situated behind Caius. In the end he didn't, which is a Good Thing.

By 1557 it was running out of money. Fortunately, an alumnus named John Keys (Caius) (who was both pretentious and a Renaissance Humanist, making it almost certain that he'd want to spell his name in Latin) was by that time a rich professor in the University of Padua and an expert on classics and medicine. He gave the college a lot of money on the conditions that he be appointed Master and that it be renamed "Gonville and Caius College". And that's what it is now.

Caius also has possibly the dirtiest front of any Cambridge college, which is unfortunate as it'd be quite pretty if they cleaned it.

Apparently the college features in the film "Chariots of Fire", but I've never seen it so I can't comment.


Re "necessitas": there's a little passageway which has some toilets on it, and it's called the Gate of Necessity. There are some very unclear marks above the arch at one end of it that might say "necessitas", but it's hard to be sure. The regulations book calls it the Gate of Necessity though and that's good enough for me.

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