St John’s College Library Newsletter L
LENT 2023
VOLUME 6, ISSUE 2
Five centuries of Buttery renovations The opening of the new Buttery, Bar and Café in January this year is a nice example, so far as archives’ work is concerned, of looking both backwards and forwards. There was a certain amount of interest internally in the history of the College Buttery, and it was lovely to be able to share with colleagues in the Communications Office a letter which was sent to Nicholas Metcalfe, Master of St John’s 1518-1537, which partly concerned the building of the original Buttery. Metcalfe was away from Cambridge and John Smith, Fellow of the College, was overseeing estates business. On the subject of the Buttery, and justifiably proud of his efforts at fundraising, he wrote: “the botry ys couryd ouer and the windows glasyd and ii buttry hettchys ys mayd and the new tabyll paynted but al these shall stand the Colege in nothyng for I wyl pay for yt of such money as dyd I opteyne for the Colege” (“the buttery is covered over and the windows glazed and two buttery hatches is [sic] made and the new table painted, but all these shall stand the College for nothing for I will pay for it of such money as did I obtain for the College”). For an account of 20th-century Buttery developments, Alec Crook’s book Penrose to Cripps: A Century of Building the College of St John the Evangelist, Cambridge is invaluable. Committee minutes, though closed for this period to general researchers, give a more detailed picture of ‘behind-the-scenes’ discussions. A report prepared by the Steward for the Kitchen Planning Committee in 1968 elaborates on the two main reasons for the building of a new Scholars’ Buttery and other kitchen buildings (the dilapidated state of current buildings and the need