View from Panton Street looking towards St Eligius Street. The Spital House, or hospital of St Antony and St Eligius, was founded in 1526, but was replaced in 1968 by this terrace of six almshouses built by the Cambridge Municipal Charity.
Eligius (known in French as Éloi, also anglicised as Loy or Loye) was a 7th-century Franco-Flemish or Merovingian bishop of Noyon and Tournai, patron saint of metallurgists, veterinarians, horses and electricians. His feast is celebrated in Cambridge circles on 1 December. The better-known St Antony of Padua is the patron saint of lost property. Their precise connection with the almshouses is obscure.
This is Fitzwilliam Street, in Little St Mary's parish. Probably its most famous resident was Charles Darwin, who lodged here while studying at Christ's College (1828-1831). Darwin's mentor, the Professor of Botany John Stevens Henslow, was a curate at Little St Mary's.