Corpus Christi and
the Eagle Pub

The building through time

The buildings of the Eagle have been much altered over the years, but many original features still remain. There are two main areas - the Street Range on Bene’t Street and the Yard Range behind. During renovations of the Eagle in the late 80s, College Fellow Oliver Rackham wrote in detail about the structure of the building through time. What follows is excerpted from those writings.

This is a rare example of a purpose-built inn of Shakespeare's time, and a relatively rare survival of a lower-middle-class urban building. It contains a remarkably wide range of timbers. It has excellent surviving examples of early interior decoration. It has one of the earliest cellars in Cambridge outside the colleges, with a fireplace.

The building is of four storeys — cellar, ground floor, first floor and garrets. Originally it was almost entirely timber-framed and had three rooms on each floor (except the cellar), with the chimney stack between the north and middle rooms. The gallery, which runs along the yard side at first-floor level, connects the three upstairs rooms and the stairs of the Yard range. The plan is an odd shape, neither square nor straight, with a bend in the alignment where the south rooms align. This is common in tightly-packed towns, in which buildings were rebuilt one by one and had to be fitted into awkward spaces between neighbouring buildings. The Eagle was meant to be seen from the Yard, the doors and all the large windows are on this side.

The differences between the Street Range and the Yard Range result mainly from different materials and social status and indicate no great difference in date. The Yard Range was comfortable but unpretentious and in the vernacular tradition. The Street Range was meant to look like a Baroque country house.

In the 16th century, Cambridge was even less well supplied with woodland than it is now; yet almost every house was timber-framed. How (and why) was this done? The Eagle provides a rare opportunity to study the materials of an Elizabethan house in an area without a woodland.

In Cambridge, oak would have been brought from a distance. The commonest timber in the building is reused oak from various medieval buildings; the joints suggest a range of dates from the 13th century. Many of them are soot-blackened, indicating that they previously formed the roof of a hall-house heated by a central hearth. Other reused timbers come from floors and other components of medieval buildings (one rafter was made out of a chopping block). Other wood includes elm, aspen and pine. Wattle-and-daub infill between the wall timbers are hazel, ash and sallow, with some maple and aspen.

Much survives of the original pine floorboards on all three floors. They are very wide and thick and left round underneath. Contrary to medieval practice, the Eagle has always had ceilings. The ground-floor ceilings appear to be original and are formed on a layer of reeds trapped above a batten nailed under every joist.

In three of the four surviving main rooms, several square feet of painting are preserved. The paintings are in three layers, representing successive redecorations; the exposed layer is the last redecoration before the fashion for wallpaper came in. In the north first-floor room, I counted nine layers of wallpaper plus three layers of paint. [Note, sections of painted wall can be seen behind glass in the building today.]

In the mid-17th century, the fortunes of the inn suddenly rose and the Street Range was rebuilt with a fashionable and imposing brick facade. But during the 18th century, as the inn's status declined in status to a tavern, there was little alteration, although a second cellar was dug under the Yard Range and a passage tunnelled through the base of the central chimney to enable barrels to be dragged into the middle cellar. There were some alterations to the windows and smaller fireplaces were inserted inside the original ones, probably to burn coal instead of mixed fuels.

A further expansion in the 1820s brought the Eagle to the height of its fortunes. The Street Range was refaced, partitions were removed to create a huge banqueting room and even smaller fireplaces were nested inside the previous ones. When the foundation stone of Corpus’ New Court was laid in 1823, a substantial dinner was held for 170 workmen at the ‘Eagle tavern’. During this period a tenement was added onto the west of the main building and the whole new front pointed with Ketton stone.

Under the Bursarship of Patrick Robert Stopford in the late 1980s, there were major building projects on and around the Eagle site. These included the refurbishment of many associated buildings together with the construction of the Beldam building and the McCrum Theatre. The works also included the restoration and conservation of the Eagle, in association with Greene King. Whilst the pub was closed from 1988-92, the number of bars was increased from three to five by re-establishing the Street Range, and there was major reconstruction of the galleried walkway and the roof, and redecoration of the interior.

The Eagle was officially reopened in 1992 by the Master Michael McCrum. In 1993 the David Urwin award for Best restoration, extension or alteration of an existing building was given to Nick Cannell, Greene King & Co. Architects, and John Wisbey, Ison Wisbey Associates.