Six wives of One King

Day 3 Cambridge, Buckden & Kimbolton.

Today saw us travelling North from Hampton Court across London to Cambridge by train and underground. Pausing momentarily to take a photo at Platform 9 ¾ at Kings Cross railway station (for all you Harry Potter fans ) we boarded our final train to Cambridge.

In Cambridge, we saw what is my favourite of all the buildings that Henry VIII has left us, Kings College Chapel. Henry didn’t start it but he finished it and in some style too. Finished in 1525, the building is full of superb features, the largest fan vaulted roof anywhere in the world. The stained glass windows are fantastic and have a guide book alone, in one of the windows we see Henry VIII as Soloman and Katherine Howard looking up at him. Also high up on the East window her initials alongside Henry. There is also Anne Boleyn initials carved in the provost stall along with a falcon with a queen’s crown. Quite how they remain when Henry ordered Anne Boleyn to be airbrushed out of history remains a mystery.

Pausing again for a while outside Trinity college Cambridge in front of an apple tree, a descendant of” The Tree” that Isaac Newton sat under ( he was a professor of mathematics at Trinity), we set off by road to Buckden Towers.

Buckden Towers on the edge of the fens, is where Catherine of Aragon was sent to by Henry VIII. She lived there for 16 months before Charles Brandon tried to move her to a more secure place. He was prevented by the local men standing guard with farm weapons. This standoff lasted for 5 days before he went away to get some more men.

Bathed in sunshine, Catherine’s garden was a quiet little haven with features recreated form the period that she would have known. Buckden has seen many famous & royal visitors down the centuries and today it is a Catholic missionary centre and busy with visitors from Spain, which given Catherine was Spanish seemed appropriate somehow.

On to Kimbolton castle next where Catherine in failing health and spirits spend the last 20 months of her life almost a recluse and with just three maids for company and support. Kimbolton is now a private school with extensive grounds and has been substantially remodelled in the early 1700’s but the Headmasters office is the room where she wrote her last letter and Catherine died. A very odd feeling indeed to stand in that room.