
Bridge of Sighs
Covered Gothic Revival stone bridge with barred windows, linking two college courts over the river.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Bridge of Sighs at St John's College in Cambridge follows William Henry Fox Talbot, a Trinity graduate turned inventor, who came here in the mid eighteen-forties with a camera and a new way of putting pictures on paper. It touches the barred Gothic windows and the curfew they may have policed, and a June night in nineteen sixty-three when students arrived by punt with an unusual load. Best heard from the riverbank or Kitchen Bridge, where you can see the whole arch.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Mathematical Bridge
Wooden footbridge across the river, its graceful arch built entirely from straight timbers.
St John's College
Tudor college of red-brick Gothic courts, a grand dining Hall and a riverside Bridge of Sighs.
Gonville & Caius College, University of Cambridge
Historic college beside the Senate House, whose engineering students once put a van on its roof.
The Backs
Riverside lawns and college gardens along the Cam, with grazing cattle and chapel views.
Clare College
Fourteenth-century college with a classical stone court and a seventeenth-century bridge over the river.
Queens' College
Riverside college of medieval brick courts and the wooden Mathematical Bridge spanning the Cam.