Biography | Charles Darwin — The First-Court Rooms Where He Kept the Beetle Cabinet

Darwin's name was entered in the admissions books at Christ's College, Cambridge, on 15 October 1827.

He did not come into residence at once.

He had forgotten much of his school Greek and was tutored before the Lent Term of 1828.

College rooms were full, so he first lodged over a tobacconist's on Sidney Street.

He arrived in Cambridge on 26 January 1828.

On All Saints' Day, 1 November 1828, he moved into a set of rooms in First Court.

He later described them as the middle staircase of the old court, one flight up, right-hand door.

College tradition holds that William Paley had once occupied the same set.

Darwin's father still intended him for the church.

A country living would have given him leisure to collect.

At Christ's he became an avid beetle hunter and had a six-drawer cabinet built for the specimens.

John Stevens Henslow, the professor of botany, became the teacher who redirected the life.

Darwin took his B.A. in 1831, tenth in the list of candidates who did not read for honours.

The rooms on G staircase, First Court, were restored in 2008-9 to an early-nineteenth-century appearance and are still used for teaching.

The pin is First Court, not a later court or the Fellows' Garden statue.

Photo: Christ's College First Court, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons