Reality Checkpoint

Parker's Piece is a 25-acre (100,000 m2) flat and roughly square green common located near the centre of Cambridge, England, regarded by some as the birthplace of the rules of association football. The two main walking and cycling paths across it run diagonally, and the single lamp-post at the junction is colloquially known as Reality Checkpoint. The area is bounded by Park Terrace, Parkside, Gonville Place, and Regent Terrace. The Cambridge University Football Club Laws were first used on Parker's Piece and adopted by the Football Association in 1863. "They embrace the true principles of the game, with the greatest simplicity" (E. C. Morley, F.A. Hon. Sec. 1863). 'The Cambridge Rules appear to be the most desirable for the Association to adopt' (C. W. Alcock 1863, FA committee member and founder of the FA Cup).The grass is mown and the area is known today chiefly as a spot for picnics and games of football and cricket, and serves as the games field for nearby Parkside Community College. Fairs tend to be held on the rougher ground of Midsummer Common. Daytime events and concerts are occasionally held on the Regent's Terrace side of Parker's Piece, while north-western quarter is still maintained as a venue for league cricket. In 1838, a feast for 15,000 guests was held on Parker's Piece to celebrate the coronation of Queen Victoria. There is a blue plaque dedicated to Jack Hobbs on the wall of the building known locally as Hobbs Pavilion.

Gonville Place is a road (part of the A603) in southeast central Cambridge, England. It forms part of the city's inner ring road. At the southwest end is the junction of Regent Street and Hills Road, where the road continues as Lensfield Road. At the northeast end is the junction of Parkside and Mill Road, where the road continues as East Road, a dual carriageway. To the northwest is Parker's Piece, a large grassed area with footpaths. There are panoramic views of Parker's Piece from Gonville Place. The distinctive Parkside Pools indoor swimming pool building with a wavy roof was built 1998–99, with support from the United Kingdom National Lottery.There is a YMCA on the southeast side of the road opposite Parker's Piece. Behind the YMCA is Fenner's, the cricket ground of the University of Cambridge, which has hosted first-class cricket since 1848. The Best Western Gonville Hotel is also located on the southeast side of Gonville Place, near the south corner of Parker's Piece.There was little development around Gonville Place until the 19th century. The most important building along it in the early 19th century was the Cambridge Town Gaol. However, by the late 19th century, the construction of large houses with landscaped gardens meant that the street became a fashionable residential area. Some of these houses were replaced during the 1960s and 1970s. The street now forms part of the busy ring road, with the associated traffic problems that brings, especially for the many cyclists in the city.A stage of the 2014 Tour de France started from Gonville Place.

Parkside Community College is a secondary academy school with 600 places for children aged 11–16, situated in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire. It is part of the United Learning Cambridge Cluster, along with Parkside Sixth, Coleridge Community College, Trumpington Community College, and Cambridge Academy for Science and Technology (formerly UTC Cambridge). Cambridge Academic Partnership joined the United Learning group of academies as a unit in September 2019. It is located next to the main Cambridge Parkside Police Station, the main Cambridge Fire Station and the National Express coach stops. It is east of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. From 1960 to 1974 it was the Cambridge Grammar School for Girls, after which it became the co-educational comprehensive Parkside Community College. It was the first school in the UK to be designated a Media Arts College under the UK government's specialist schools programme, in 1997, and was granted Foundation status in 2003.In 2005 Parkside Community College formed the Parkside Federation with Coleridge Community College, which had then been placed in special measures. The school achieved Academy status in 2011 when the federation converted to a multi-academy trust. At the same time it opened a new sixth-form college, Parkside Sixth. In 2017 the trust changed its name to the Cambridge Academic Partnership. The Cambridge Academic Partnership would later go on to change its name to the United Learning Cambridge Cluster. The history of the school is related in An Epoch-Making School, by former Deputy Principal Rosemary Gardiner (1983).

Regent Street is an arterial street in southeast central Cambridge, England. It runs between St Andrew's Street, at the junction with Park Terrace, to the northwest and Hills Road at the junction with the A603 (Lensfield Road and Gonville Place) to the southeast. Regent Terrace runs in parallel immediately to the northeast. Beyond that is Parker's Piece, a large grassed area with footpaths. On the southwestern side of the street is one of the larger University of Cambridge colleges, Downing College. The St Andrew's Street branch of Hobson's Conduit was added in 1631, providing a water supply for the eastern part of the city. It flowed from the conduit head along Lensfield Road in the south of Cambridge, then Regent Terrace, and on to St Andrew's Street.In 1871, Henry Sidgwick, a Fellow of Trinity, alongside Anne Clough (the first Principal of Newnham College) and Eleanor Balfour (Sidgwick's future wife) oversaw the purchase of 74 Regent Street to house five female students who wished to attend lectures but did not live near enough to the University to do so. The following year, this moved to Merton House on Queen's Road, and in 1875 the first building for Newnham College was built at the current site on Sidgwick Avenue.

Cambridge is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2015 by Daniel Zeichner of the Labour Party.Centred on the university city of Cambridge, it is one of the country's oldest continuously constituted constituencies. It was created in 1295 and returned two Members of Parliament (MPs) and was represented in the House of Commons of England until 1707, then in the House of Commons of Great Britain from 1707 to 1800, and then in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom from 1801 to 1885. From 1885 onwards, the seat has elected one MP. It was held by the Conservatives from 1967 to 1992, since when it has been represented alternately by both Labour and the Liberal Democrats. In the 2016 referendum to leave the European Union, the constituency voted 73.8% to remain.

Cambridge Assessment International Education (informally known as Cambridge International or simply Cambridge and formerly known as CIE, Cambridge International Examinations) is a provider of international qualifications, offering examinations and qualifications to 10,000 schools in more than 160 countries. It is a non-profit and non-teaching department of the University of Cambridge.

The Free Press is a pub in Prospect Row, Cambridge, England. The tiny snug, 6x5ft, is "surely the smallest pub room in Cambridgeshire", and the fittings are either original from the 1940s or copies. It is on the Regional Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors for East Anglia.

The Church of Our Lady of the Assumption and the English Martyrs, also known as the Church of Our Lady and the English Martyrs (OLEM), is an English Roman Catholic parish church located at the junction of Hills Road and Lensfield Road in southeast Cambridge. It is a large Gothic Revival church built between 1885 and 1890.

Downing College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge and currently has around 650 students. Founded in 1800, it was the only college to be added to Cambridge University between 1596 and 1869, and is often described as the oldest of the new colleges and the newest of the old. Downing College was formed "for the encouragement of the study of Law and Medicine and of the cognate subjects of Moral and Natural Science", and has developed a reputation amongst Cambridge colleges for Law and Medicine. Downing has been named one of the two most eco-friendly Cambridge colleges.

Emmanuel College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was founded in 1584 by Sir Walter Mildmay, Chancellor of the Exchequer to Elizabeth I. The site on which the college sits was once a priory for Dominican monks, and the College Hall is built on the foundations of the monastery's nave. Emmanuel is one of the 16 "old colleges", which were founded before the 17th century. Emmanuel today is one of the larger Cambridge colleges; it has around 500 undergraduates, reading almost every subject taught within the University, and over 150 postgraduates. Among Emmanuel's notable alumni are Thomas Young, John Harvard, Graham Chapman and Sebastian Faulks. Three members of Emmanuel College have received Nobel Prizes: Ronald Norrish, George Porter (both Chemistry, 1967) and Frederick Hopkins (Medicine, 1929).In every year from 1998 until 2016, Emmanuel was among the top five colleges in the Tompkins Table, which ranks colleges according to end-of-year examination results. Emmanuel topped the table five times (2003, 2004, 2006, 2007 and 2010) and placed second six times (2001, 2002, 2008, 2009, 2011 and 2012). Its mean score for 1997–2018 inclusive places it as the second-highest-ranking college after Trinity.

Fenner's is Cambridge University Cricket Club's ground.

The Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI) is a centre for research into the polar regions and glaciology worldwide. It is a sub-department of the Department of Geography in the University of Cambridge, located on Lensfield Road in the south of Cambridge. SPRI was founded by Frank Debenham in 1920 as the national memorial to Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his companions, who died on their return journey from the South Pole in 1912. It investigates issues relevant to the Arctic and Antarctic in the environmental sciences, social sciences and humanities. The institute is home to the Polar Museum and has some 60 personnel, consisting of academic, library and support staff plus postgraduate students, associates and fellows attached to research programmes. The institute also hosts the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research.