Old Court

Examples of Rooms in Old Court

B4 D10 E7a H1 H13 H15 Gyp Rooms

The present college buildings which surround the ‘Old Court' were built over a period of seventy-seven years, from the mid-seventeenth-century to the early eighteenth (1638-1715). There is no record of the architect who designed these beautiful buildings, the prospect of which, looking across King's College lawns, is one of the most famous in England. (Clare tradition has it that the architect was the great Inigo Jones; but this tradition cannot be verified.) The building programme was prompted by the acquisition of land belonging to King's across the river to the west of the college (Butt's Close); accordingly the first new buildings to be constructed were the East and South Ranges (1638) and then the bridge (1639-40). The North and West Ranges, including the Hall, were built in 1686-8, and the programme was completed with the construction of the Master's Lodge in 1715. (The present chapel dates from a somewhat later time; its foundation stone was laid in 1763.)

The en-suite rooms tend to be at the upper end of the price range, but all rooms are of a high standard and the majority contain at least a handbasin - there are one or two that do not have hand basins.

Students eat their main meals in the Hall and Buttery (in Old Court), but snacks and light meals can be prepared in the "gyp-rooms" adjacent to the bedrooms, one gyp-room serving four or five students.