Little St Mary's Church

The crenelated tower of Little Saint Mary's Church rises above Trumpington Street with a profile that breaks the skyline. This structure serves as the official chapel for Peterhouse, the oldest college in Cambridge. Inside, the building houses a sanctuary that replaced an earlier thirteenth-century church dedicated to Saint Peter. In eighteen thirty-eight, the poet Thomas Gray, who lived next door, famously kept a rope ladder in his room, fearing a fire. He escaped out his window whenever students pranked him with false alarms.