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13 April 2026

W is for…Walnut and Wolfenden

Before fixed names were given to Emmanuel’s buildings and courts at the end of the nineteenth century, a multiplicity of terms were used, many of them short-lived and/or colloquial. A letter written in 1695 by Thomas Dillingham, an Emmanuel graduate, recalled ‘the entry through which we got from the Quadrangle [Front Court] into Wolfenden’s Court’. James Wolfenden, a college Fellow during Dillingham’s undergraduate days, had evidently resided in the narrow courtyard that once occupied the site of the current southern Front Slips. The term ‘Wolfenden’s Court’ is not found in the college’s own records; indeed, the courtyard was known as ‘Long Court’ for most of the eighteenth century. Front Court, in particular, has been known by a variety of names over the centuries. In 1735, Thomas Wiseman, a handyman frequently employed by the college, presented a bill for painting the ‘posts & Rails [in] the Walnutt Tree Court’. An invoice handily submitted at the same time, by a different contractor, refers to mowing the grass in ‘the great court’ and ‘the Eagle court’. As it is known that Eagle Court was what is now called New Court, the logical deduction must be that ‘Walnutt Tree’ and ‘great court’ refer to the same place, i.e. Front Court. This would indicate that the tree that once grew in the centre of that quadrangle, as depicted in David Loggan’s well-known engraving of the late seventeenth century (pictured), was a walnut. If so, this would (alas) quash the romantic theory that the tree was an oak, planted to celebrate Sir Walter Mildmay’s famous metaphor about the college he had founded. While it is unlikely that another tree will ever be planted in the soil of Front Court, it might be worth noting that walnut trees can be successfully grown in pots…

W is for…Westmorland Building

The elegant Classical range on the south side of Front Court, now known as the Westmorland Building, has had an adventurous history. The original building on the site, erected in the mid-1580s, was known for several centuries as the ‘Founder’s Range’. It was said to have been built to a very high standard, and indeed it appears to be in excellent repair in Loggan’s engravings. Yet in 1718, the college sent out an appeal letter to raise funds for the reconstruction of this allegedly ‘ruinous’ structure. Perhaps ‘unfashionable’ might have been nearer the truth. The replacement building, the shell of which was completed by 1722, was furnished with a swish portico over the central staircase entry, surmounted by a carving of what the stonemason referred to as ‘the Founders Coarte of Armes’. The arms are, in fact, those of the Fane family. In 1599, Francis Fane, 1st Earl of Westmorland, had married the heiress Mary Mildmay, granddaughter of Emmanuel’s founder. Two of their descendants were major contributors to Emmanuel’s 1718 appeal: Thomas Fane, 6th Earl of Westmorland, who gave £500, and his brother John, later 7th Earl. Thomas also provided the architect of the new building, in the person of his own estate manager, John Lumley. The Founder’s Range was gutted by fire in 1811, and the under-insured college was obliged to launch another appeal. One of the chief donors to the repair fund was John Fane, 10th Earl of Westmorland. The range was formally renamed the ‘Westmorland Building’ in the late nineteenth century, as a tribute to the earls’ generosity. The image above shows the 1718 appeal letter (left), a contractor’s 1725 bill for work on the staircases of ‘the New Building’, and a photograph taken in about 1960, showing the building’s formerly soot-blackened façade.

Amanda Goode, College Archivist

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