Free School Lane is a historic street in central Cambridge, England which includes important buildings of University of Cambridge. It is the location of the Whipple Museum of the History of Science, the Department of History and Philosophy of Science (HPS,) the University's faculty of Social and Political Sciences, and is the original site of the Engineering Department, and the Physics Department's

Cavendish Laboratory The Cavendish Laboratory is the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge, and is part of the School of Physical Sciences. The laboratory was opened in 1874 on the New Museums Site as a laboratory for experimental physics and is named ...

. At the northern end is Bene't Street and at the southern end is Pembroke Street. To the east is the New Museums Site of the University. To the west is Corpus Christi College.

The Free School

The name of the street comes from the "Free School" which was established in the 17th century by

Dr Stephen Perse Stephen Perse (1548 – 30 September 1615) was an English academic and philanthropist, who founded schools that still carry his name. Biography He was probably educated at Norwich School, and took his B.A. degree at Gonville and Caius Col ...

who left money in his will to educate 100 boys from Cambridge, Barnwell, Chesterton and

Trumpington Trumpington is a village and parish to the south of Cambridge, England. The village is an electoral ward of the City of Cambridge and a ward of South Cambridgeshire District Council. The 2011 Census recorded the ward's population as 8,034. T ...

. This school later became the first site of the

Perse School (He who does things for others does them for himself) , established = , closed = , type = Public schoolIndependent day school , religion = Nondenominational Christian , president = , head_label = Head , ...

(now in Hills Road). The Whipple Museum is situated in the original school hall.

Friar House

While at Cambridge University,

Clive James Clive James (born Vivian Leopold James; 7 October 1939 – 24 November 2019) was an Australian critic, journalist, broadcaster, writer and lyricist who lived and worked in the United Kingdom from 1962 until his death in 2019.Germaine Greer Germaine Greer (; born 29 January 1939) is an Australian writer and public intellectual, regarded as one of the major voices of the radical feminist movement in the latter half of the 20th century. Specializing in English and women's literatu ...

lived at Friar House, an early-17th-century Grade II

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern I ...

with a

timber frame Timber framing (german: Holzfachwerk) and "post-and-beam" construction are traditional methods of building with heavy timbers, creating structures using squared-off and carefully fitted and joined timbers with joints secured by large wooden ...

and

pargeting Pargeting (or sometimes pargetting) is a decorative or waterproofing plastering applied to building walls. The term, if not the practice, is particularly associated with the English counties of Suffolk and Essex. In the neighbouring county of No ...

at the corner of Bene't Street and Free School Lane.Bene’t Street
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References

Streets in Cambridge Schools in Cambridge History of Cambridge Corpus Christi College, Cambridge {{Cambridgeshire-geo-stub