Fairways Guest House

 Homerton College Fairways Guest House in Cambridge is only 5 minutes walk to Homerton College Tel 01223 246063

Homerton has an unusual and interesting history. In 1730 a society was founded by 'a few Protestant Dissenters' in London for the 'education of young men for the Christian ministry', namely the Congregational church. This became known as the 'King's Head Society', after the inn near the Royal Exchange where they met. The Society began a series of weekly lectures, placing carefully selected students in dissenting academies in London. By 1768, it had grown to the point where the Society bought a large house in Homerton High Street, in the East End of London, to house about 12 students a year, together with a few other 'private scholars' and a Resident Tutor.

By 1817 it became known as 'Homerton Academy Society' and then 'Homerton College Society'. For a time it was affiliated to London University, but after the transfer of its theological function to New College London in 1850, Homertonwas re founded by the Congregational Board of Education and became solely concerned with the training of teachers, both men and women, for Board schools.

In 1894 it moved to Cambridge to get away from an increasingly industrialised East End and acquired the buildings known as Cavendish College in Hills Road. These still form the core of the old College. Almost immediately it became women-only since a mixed college was an anathema to an all-male University at that time.

Kings College

The King's College of Our Lady and St Nicholas in Cambridge was founded in 1441 by King Henry VI and munificently endowed. The Founder's statutes provided for a Provost and seventy poor scholars. Scholarships were restricted to Etonians, but a few pensioners and Fellow commoners from other schools were admitted from the middle of the sixteenth century. By the statutes of 1861 open scholarships, financed by the Fellows greatly reducing their dividends for many years, were founded, and since then pensioners and scholars from other schools have been admitted in increasing numbers. Until 1853 students at King's were exceptional in being awarded University degrees by the College.

The original site of the College lay to the north of the current College, between the present Chapel and Senate House Passage. The first College buildings were begun in 1441 on what is now the site of the western quadrangle of the Old Schools. Only the south and part of the west sides of this old Court were completed to the intended design: the rest was hastily finished when the King began to build a larger court on the site further south; but until 1828 the Old Court provided nearly all the undergraduate College rooms. It was then sold to the University, which demolished most of it apart from the gateway arch opposite Clare College.

In 1443 King Henry began to buy up the site of the present Front Court and Back Lawn. This was a built up part of the town with shops, houses, several university hostels, the parish church of St JohnZachary, and the original site of Godshouse (now Christ's College). He had always meant the College to be built south of the Chapel but this was prevented by shortage of money and the Wars of the Roses. However, he acquired ground across the river, including Scholar's Piece, the walks beside Queen's Road as far as Garret Hostel Lane, and the site of Clare gardens (ceded to Clare in the seventeenth century).