Note 65 — Chapter V

From the Hall we can often obtain permission to ascend to the unique glory of St. John's College, the Combination Room, which is incomparably finer than any other apartment of the same kind, either at Oxford or Cambridge. It is a spacious panelled gallery, running east and west, nearly 100 feet in length, lighted by transomed windows[65] along the southern side, and with a richly decorated plaster ceiling, the work of the same Italian artists who erected the fountain in the Great Court of Trinity, just at the time when this room was in building. For here we have got beyond Lady Margaret's "First" Court. The Combination Room forms the north side of the "Second" Court, erected at the very end of the sixteenth century (simultaneously with the Great Court of Trinity) by another noble benefactress, Lady Mary Cavendish, Countess of Shrewsbury, whose coat of arms (Cavendish impaled with Talbot) stands over the western gate.