Seal of approval

There’s a great story that floats around the College, known by many, but best told by Head Gardener Steve Coghill: "The Founder’s Fountain was once used to save the life of a landlocked seal". It’s the kind of story you desperately want to be true, but the problem with any institution as old as King’s is we tend to play centuries-long games of broken telephone.

So stories like this run the risk of being at the very least exaggerated, if not entirely apocryphal, by the time they reach you. Conveniently, Steve at least knew where he’d got the tale: L. P. Wilkinson’s A Century of King’s. No page number, but the job was already narrowed down somewhat. A few pages into Wilkinson it became apparent he hid much of the ‘less serious’
(read ‘more interesting’) anecdotes in the endnotes, and there hidden in one covering the dedication of the West window of the Chapel was the following line:

'The fountain, five years after its erection, proved unexpectedly useful by reviving a seal'

Assuming ‘erection’ meant a fully completed fountain, the seal should have arrived sometime in 1884. Handing this information to College Archivist Patricia McGuire, the ‘proof’ was found rather quickly. It turns out the Bursar's clerk used to keep an office diary, where he would write admin dates, payments, Tripos results as well as paste cuttings from newspapers when they related to King's or Kingsmen. Unfortunately, only two years of these diaries have come into the Archives: 1905 and 1884. And lo and behold, pasted in place for Tuesday 22 July 1884 was the news clipping shown below.

This story is true. As it happens, we absolutely did save a seal’s life.

Is there a King’s story you would like to see fact-checked?
We are happy to do some sleuthing on your behalf
and give it our seal of approval (or not).
Get in touch with communications@kings.cam.ac.uk