The 19th Century

Until the mid-nineteenth century, Pembroke remained a very small college. In the 1830s and 1840s the numbers of undergraduates admitted varied, typically, between nine and fifteen a year. They included the greatest name produced by nineteenth-century Pembroke, the distinguished physicist George Gabriel Stokes (senior wrangler in 1841 and later briefly Master of the College), and John Couch Adams, discoverer of Neptune. The jurist Henry Sumner Maine was senior classic in 1844. Nonetheless, one critic, writing in 1868, was guilty of only partial exaggeration when he wrote of the college as a 'delightful, peaceful, drowsy, comfortable, venerable, useless caravanserai of idleness'.

Modern Pembroke was the creation of the years after 1870, when a number of trends came together. One was the expansion of the university syllabus, from mid-century onwards, beyond the core of classics and mathematics to embrace natural sciences, history, law and the other major modern disciplines. This increased the attractiveness of Cambridge to the offspring of the middle classes, especially after the abolition, by 1871, of all the statutes which had restricted access to degrees to members of the Anglican Church. In 1870, John Power became Master and C.E. Searle Tutor. They engineered a great increase in admissions; between 1870 and 1880 the number of undergraduates rose from 43 to 122. They also presided over a large building project, made possible financially by the legacy of Sara Lonsdale. Much of the modern building was erected at this time. In the 1870s a new Hall was built (replacing, alas, a small but charming 14th century predecessor), together with a new Library, a new Master's Lodge (now N staircase) and the residential block known as Red Buildings, all to the design of the fashionable architect Alfred Waterhouse. New Court by George Gilbert Scott was added in the 1880s, and the Pitt Building by W.D. Caroe in the early years of the present century. Scott also extended the Chapel eastwards to cater for the increased numbers of worshippers. In 1886, Pembroke undergraduates established a Mission in South London at Walworth, which, as Pembroke House, is one of the few college Missions to survive to this day.

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