The hidden tower block at Peterhouse, Cambridge

Abstract

‘This could well be Cambridge’s master-piece of the sixties’, wrote the young architectural critic Nicholas Taylor in 1964. The subject of his fervour, the high-rise William Stone Building at Peterhouse, is still standing. However, this striking building remains little known to architectural historians and even to passers-by, despite its considerable height. This article charts the process and debates behind its commission and execution, to trace an interlacing history of architectural modernism and conservationism in post-war Cambridge.