Weeknotes 2025-W37 › College updates › Biennial silver audit [01GU]

I am Junior Inspector of Plate at Clare College, which is a role that I would not have believed existed prior to coming to Cambridge. We have a great deal of very old and valuable silver (and gold), most of left to the college during the past four centuries by various Fellows—including the 16-17th Century mad scientist William Butler. Every two years we must check that we actually still have all this stuff and know exactly where it is stored. The final two days of this week have been spent doing very little else but cataloguing and reorganising when needed. It has been a very interesting experience, but I can’t say I am not looking forward to being finished—last night I actually dreamt that I was still in the cellar scrambling to find where a given piece is recorded, worrying I had marked the wrong row in the catalogue, etc.