Chris Koenig examines the bizarre goings-on at a Queen's College annual dinner

Waggish academics have long delighted in puns, but one of the more obscure ceremonies still performed occurs at The Queen’s College.

Hardly have members recovered from their devouring of a wild boar’s head in late December before it is time to turn up again for another feast: this time for something called the Needle and Thread Dinner — traditionally held on New Year’s Day (though I am told it will this year be held later this month.

The bizarre goings-on at the dinner may date back to the Middle Ages and are based on a pun — or more precisely, a rebus — on the surname of Robert Egglesfeld, who founded the college in 1341.

Someone sometime must have reckoned that the Norman French for needle and thread, aiguilles et fils, sounded a bit like Egglesfeld and that therefore — strange reasoning here — both items should feature in an event originally designed to celebrate the feast of the circumcision of Christ (January 1).

At the dinner, or Gaudy, each guest is solemnly handed a needle and thread and told: “Take this and be thrifty.” Perhaps this could be a reference to Egglesfeld’s own thriftiness for, as college founders go he was not a rich man. He was the third son of a landed family from Eaglesfield, Cumbria, who had inherited nothing. He rose to the positions of King’s Clerk to Edward III and chaplain to Queen Philippa, who became the first patroness of the college. Queen’s consorts thereafter, he stipulated, should always become patronesses.

Traveller and writer Celia Fiennes (1662-1741) described the ceremony in the 17th century and mentioned that there is “certain sum laid out in Needles and Thread which was left by the founder”. Certainly he went into enormous detail in laying out the statutes of the college, right down to the colour of the clothes that members wore when dining in hall. Celia Fiennes visited shortly before the old buildings were demolished in the early 18th century. She would not recognise the present structure in High Street, which incorporates a cupola sheltering a statue of Caroline of Ansbach, consort of George II, who had given £1,000 towards the building fund.