Talk:Great Court, Trinity College, Cambridge

Trinity Great Court run
The article refers to the video tape of the Coe/Cram run. Could someone put it on youtube and let us know the link?

Many thanks

Brian Sacks

Briansacks 19:19, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

What about Eric Liddle I'm sure (according to "Chariates of Fire") that he did the run Ochib (talk)

Air Density
The article specifies that the striking speed of the bells is affected by air density (the photo link is dead, btw), but it fails to mention that the same is true regarding the running speed of the athlete, with less dense air producing less resistance and therefore a faster achievable speed (however, he has to do so on less oxygen due to his pulmonary capacity remaining largely fixed). I do not know to what extent each effect compensates for the other, though. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.27.131.128 (talk) 15:34, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

King's Gate
A guide once told me that the King's Gate, used to stand a couple of feet further into the courtyard. When the other sides of the Great Court were complete, the college wanted to move the gate back a little, in order to make the court square. However to do this they needed to move it onto a couple a feet of St John's College land.... and this is why the clock strikes the hour twice &mdash; once for Trinity and once for John's.

Is this story true? If so, does anyone know what year the gate was moved. -- Solipsist 12:22, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

It is true. King Edward's Gate (the one with the clock) was part of the buildings of King's Hall, and located approximately where the sundial is now. When Nevile created Great Court, he moved the gate to its present location. The gate was moved in 1599-1600.

The story about St John's College land is false - King's Hall (one of the two colleges that was merged into Trinity) was located to the north of the old gate. Some of the King's Hall buildings still survive as King's Hostel.

For maps of Trinity before / after Great Court was built, see http://homepage.ntlworld.com/pbolchover/trinity/ -- Bluap 10:06, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The story I've been told about the clock striking twice is something to do with some decree that said there could only be a certain number of bells in that part of Cambridge - Trinity already had one but installed a second to stop St. John's getting one, hence the hour strikes twice. How true that is I don't know. Alaeangelorum 18:10, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

The story I've been told about the clock striking twice is that St John's took Trinity to court because the bell was too loud. The ruling in favour of St John's was that Trinity must install a quieter bell. Trinity did, but did not remove the loud bell. Given that St John's could just have gone back to court, this is probably apocryphal. Neil Dodgson 21:05, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Dimensions of Great Court and other "facts"
As "Keeper of the Clock" in Trinity I am interested in the facts being correct.

Firstly, the distance around the cobbles is 341m. I have measured this myself. The perimeter of the grass will be much less than this, but this figure is of no importance. The "exact dimensions" given (South - 87.8m, West - 105.2m, North - 78.3m, East  - 99.4m) are incorrect. Better figures are (measured around the cobbles) South - 82.5m, West - 99.9m, North - 69.4m, East  - 88.9m

Secondly, there is no change in the route taken by competitors around the court. The Great Court Run is only a true run if run on the flagstones. Competitors, such as Dobin, cannot claim to have completed the Run. A video of part of Dobin's run can be found at http://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/video/GtCtRun2007b.wmv where he can be seen running on the cobbles.

Thirdly, the duration of the striking of twelve depends on the meteorological conditions of the day in question. On a cold, dry, high-pressure day the bells strike more slowly than on a warm, humid low-pressure day. The difference is as much as 15% which is 6 seconds out of the "normal" 43 seconds. For typical October days (the official run takes place in October) the likely difference is more mear +/- 1 second. Moreover, depending on when the clock has last been wound, the duration of the strike varies. This is because the wire rope that drives the strike winds around a drum on more than one layer. If the rope is on the second layer the strike runs about 5% faster. This does not normally affect the official run.

Hugh Hunt, Keeper of the Clock, Trinity College, Cambridge

Hughhunt (talk) 21:41, 19 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the info. The RCHME report on Trinity College gives the dimensions as "273 ft. by 325 ft. average".  This corresponds to 89.6m by 106.6m, but presumably refers to the outer perimeter of the court. Peter Sager's book gives 370m for the length of the Great Court Run (and says that you can save 15m by running on the cobbles) – the original German addition is dated 2003, before the distances were put on Wikipedia (but those figures might have been on the net somewhere else).  The college website gives 341m as the length of the run, which is presumably based on the measurements that you made.  Bluap (talk) 00:11, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

There's an image of Great Court at http://www2.eng.cam.ac.uk/~hemh/TCGtCt.jpg and using for scale the accurate measurement of 341m along the line shown I have estimated the distance around the grass (on the cobbles) as 299m (more than 12% shorter). You can see how much can be gained by cutting the SW and NW corners and the video shows Dobin cutting the NW corner.

For completeness I estimate the distance around the outside, along the walls, to be about 367m.

Hughhunt (talk) 16:19, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Dubious
Appears only to be based on anecdotal evidence. Contact college to confirm? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.111.184.8 (talk) 18:18, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Duration of clock striking twelve
I've just added data measured (automatically) over 2018-2020 of the duration of the Great Court Run bells. Perhaps this stuff needs its own page? Or is it OK here? I've been Keeper of the Clock since 2004 and have been measuring all sorts of things as accurately as I can. Trinity Clock Monitoring  This strike duration data is definitive, I'd say, for the time being. No doubt future generations of Clock Keepers will meddle with things, as every generation does, and the timings will change. Perhaps I'll measure this all again in a few years time. Hughhunt (talk) 12:35, 19 September 2022 (UTC)