Gliding beneath the Bridge of Sighs on a punt is as quintessentially Cambridge as it gets – and now a new addition to the St John’s fleet has been officially blessed by the College Chaplain.
In a special riverside ceremony at one of Cambridge’s largest colleges, a new punt was formally named in honour of Louis Leakey (1903-1972), the pioneering paleoanthropologist whose discoveries reshaped the understanding of human evolution.
Students, Fellows, and staff gathered to watch as The Rev’d Graham Dunn, College Chaplain, blessed the newest punt to be added to the fleet before it made its maiden voyage on the River Cam. He led a short service with a reading and prayer of blessing at Cripps Punt Pool.
Leakey, who studied Anthropology and Archaeology at St John’s, spent his career uncovering evidence of early humankind in East Africa and proved that humans were far older than previously thought, and that evolution was centred in Africa rather than in Asia. He also mentored future generations of researchers, including Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey.
It is the first punt to have been built entirely at St John’s, and the craftsman has promised it will only be Leakey by name, not by nature.
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