A first look around the University Arms Cambridge

The city’s oldest hotel is about to reopen following a two-year refurbishment

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The magnificent marble fireplace in the library will be lit for the first time in a century when the University Arms Cambridge reopens

Many great innovations have come out of Cambridge: Francis Crick’s co-discovery of DNA, Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, and Stephen Hawking’s speculations about time and space, among others. But alongside these sits a lesser-known wonder: football.

In 1848, the definitive rules for playing football were established in Trinity College, Cambridge. The first game to be played by this rule book was on Parker’s Piece, a huge green in the centre of the city, in 1863, when the Football Association was founded. The father of the FA, Ebenezer Cobb Morley, said of the then new guidelines: “They embrace the true principles of the game, with the greatest simplicity.” Copies of the rules were pinned to the trees surrounding Parker’s Piece, which is overlooked by Cambridge’s oldest hotel, the University Arms.

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