Churchill
"What's your name? What course do you study?" Three years later, our conversations ponder "Where are you living next year?" and "What's next?" The questions have changed, but the friendships have endured. Churchill was designed to face the post-war century ahead rather than the ones behind. No medieval quadrangle but a deliberate ring of brick and open sky, laid out so that no court outranks another and no one walks in through a grander gate than anyone else. It took us three years to realise we had been living inside an idea. First year, we didn't see it. We started with awkward staircase hellos, the matriculation formal and the Michaelmas bops. Later we saw the Northern Lights over the fields because Churchill is one of the only Colleges with enough sky to see them properly. We ended the year with the first May Ball in a long time, and our Marriage formal.
Second year, the shape started to show. College parents, JCR officers, society chairs, boat club early mornings and trips away for varsity.
The Buttery quietly shifted under us; once the loud heart of our social lives, now a place we'd work for hours and somehow love more. Churchill hall food became famous. The formals, once a novelty, became a regular part of College life.
Final year, the circle closed. Academic lock-in in the Bevin, library windows fogging in winter. The things we'd loved earlier didn't fade; they sharpened. Final Bridgemas. Final Halloween. Final Bop. The same laps of the perimeter path are now walked slower, in fuller company.
The old Cambridge Colleges communicate that you are standing in history. Churchill teaches you that you are building it, and that the future is not inherited but made. As we step off our perimeter path for the last time, Churchill has taught us to remember that the future, like our unique College, is what we make of it.
Cormac Hoare
JCR president 2024/2025
