The Open Guide to Cambridge - Differences between Version 189 and Version 1 of Downing College

Downing is a college of the University of Cambridge, founded in 1800, and located towards the south of the city centre. The college comprises around 400 undergraduates, 250 postgraduates, and 50 fellows.

Downing's buildings are remarkable amongst Cambridge colleges: spacious, and uniformly neoclassical, they are set in large, campus-like grounds, and so is somewhat reminiscent of Stowe. This fashionable elegance has led to Downing to become a popular venue for conferences, weddings, and events. Sufficiently distant from the tourist hot-spots, (such as Kings College and The Backs), Downing is rarely overwhelmed with visitors.

Next to the college are a group of University laboratories, lecture theatres, and museums, known as The Downing Site. During daylight hours, a pedestrian gate which leads between the Site and the College is a popular short-cut for members of the University walking to the railway station from central colleges and departments -- a practice frowned-upon by the college.

Sir George Downing inherited considerable wealth from his grandfather, a disreputable man who Pepys described as a "perfidious rogue". Sir George, concerned about succession to his baronetcy, drew up a complex will, including an ordered list of hypothetical offspring who stood to inherit his grandfather's ill-gotten fortune. Unfortunately, no heirs were ultimately forthcoming, and in this case his will mandated the founding of a Cambridge college. Potential alternative benefactors contested the legality of Sir George's will for over thirty years, substantially diminishing the size of the bequest, and greatly slowing the development of the college.