St Edward's Passage

St Edward's Passage
St Edward's Passage, looking from King's Parade to Peas Hill
Maintained byCambridge City Council
Length145.40 m (477.0 ft)[1]
LocationCambridge, England
Postal codeCB2 3PJ
Coordinates52°12′16″N 0°07′04″E / 52.2045°N 0.1178°E / 52.2045; 0.1178
Construction
Construction startc. 13th century

St Edward's Passage, known in the 18th century as Chain Lane,[2] is a Y-shaped alleyway in Cambridge, England, between King's Parade—opposite the main gate of King's College—and Peas Hill. It houses the entrance and churchyard of the Church of St Edward King and Martyr; the Cambridge Arts Theatre; several cottages; G. David, an independent bookshop run from the same building since 1896; a few businesses; and student accommodation. It is a narrow, dark lane, with riven-stone paving, which opens out onto the much wider and sunnier King's Parade.[3]

Excavations on the southern side in 1995 suggested that the lane had been established by the 13th century.[3] It is marked on Richard Lyne's map of the city from 1574, the earliest known map of Cambridge, and on John Hammond's from 1592.[4][5] According to Cambridge City Council, it "preserv[es] a sense of the cheek-by-jowl nature of the early town".[6]

  1. ^ "List of streets", Cambridgeshire County Council, 1 December 2012, p. 17.
  2. ^ "Placeholder for BC 007 2" and "Leases of tenement in Chain Lane (now St Edwards Passage), in parish of St Edward, Cambridge", Janus, Cambridge University Library.
  3. ^ a b "Cambridge Historic Core Appraisal: St Edward's Passage" (PDF). Cambridge City Council. 2016. p. 3. Archived (PDF) from the original on 16 May 2018.
  4. ^ Clark, J. Willis (1921). Old Plans of Cambridge, 1574-1798, Bowes & Bowes, 1921.
  5. ^ "Unfolding landscapes", Cambridge University Library, 2003.
  6. ^ Cambridge Historic Core Appraisal: St Edward's Passage 2016, p. 2.