Cambridge Religious Heritage

The best way to experience the city and university of Cambridge is with a Cambridge Official Walking Tour. Discover why this beautiful city is known and respected throughout the world. Our Blue/Green Badge guides are the only tour guides allowed inside the University of Cambridge colleges.

Where? Cambridge.

Tour provider Visit Cambridge and Beyond

Contact

Peas Hill, Cambridge, CB2 3QB
Telephone: 01223 791501
Email: tours@visitcambridge.org
Travel Trade Contact: 01223 791501

Website

Visit Cambridge

Itinerary

This 3-hour walking tour, led by qualified Green Badge Cambridge City Guides, explains why Cambridge is known as the home of the English Reformation.

Our walking tour will take you on a journey of more than 1,000 years, uncovering the stories of early Christianity, the Crusades, the early US Pilgrims and the Reformation. You will visit the Round Church one of only 4 Crusader Churches in the country from the 12th century; St Edward’s King and Martyr Church – “Cradle of the English Reformation” where the first openly evangelical sermon was preached.

Then you will continue to the magnificent King’s College and Chapel King’s College was the home of Charles Simeon, an influential preacher and founder of the Church Missionary Society. The chapel is home to the only complete set of Renaissance stained glass showing Old and New Testament stories - hear how they were saved from Cromwell’s purge.

Our visit continues to Great St Mary’s Church, The University Church where both Martin Bucer and Erasmus preached. German reformer Bucer was also buried, disinterred, martyred and re-interred in the church.

Our guide will then highlight the many connections with the US including Emmanuel College, where many of the university educated early settlers studied, including John Harvard, Little St Mary’s, where George Washington’s uncle was the vicar and his coat of arms remains showing the stars, stripes and eagle symbols and Peterhouse, the college of Mayflower passenger and senior elder of the new colony William Brewster.

Finally, an exclusive visit to the extraordinary collection of the Parker Library, home to the “Canterbury Gospels” brought to England in 597 by St Augustine to convert the English to Christianity. Also, the Bury Bible, a masterpiece of medieval art from 1135, Thomas Becket’s Psalter and many other historic manuscripts collected by Archbishop Matthew Parker during the Reformation.