Try to mount Jesus' horse, or even climb into New Hall's infamous
bucket, and you'll soon realise that most colleges take a dim view of
interactive art. Churchill, then, is unique among the Cambridge colleges
in that it hosts Barbara Hepworth's Four-Square Walk-Through. The clue
is in the name - this is a sculpture that's meant to be seen from the
inside, with the freedom to crawl, leap and climb.

As freshers, we were made to confront the Hepworth early on for the
Treasure Trail, scrabbling over it, fitting our team through the
portholes. Later, in the weeks before exams, we'd gather around it with
a boombox and a tray of hall food, splayed on the grass, oblivious for a
brief moment to the trials ahead. On the edge of the fields, it marked
the end of something, perhaps the bubble within a bubble Churchill
creates for itself.

This year's freshers arrived to a bare plinth, the statue having been
quietly removed for cleaning. When it was finally returned, we heard
that someone's first climb had left him with a sprained arm. After Pav,
we retreated to the bench facing the Hepworth for a smoke. We were hit
by the cheapening glint of it newly cleaned, the sculpture now seeming
insignificant, narrow. A dog made up into some pastiche of a lady.

The Hepworth we knew was more a brutal totem than a work of art. The
bronzes of ancient Greece were more delicate, erotic, masterful, but
what Dame Hepworth had fashioned was a delimiter. Some of this is thanks
to the placement of the sculpture. A copy exists in the Barbara Hepworth
Museum at St Ives, and nestled among the overgrown and weeping branches
it looks like a relic from some imagined future. Ours is (or was) a
monument to that relic, to permanence, and to what lies beyond it.