Lost Cambridge

Summary On how changing technology drove changes in social habits in Cambridge One of the things you notice when going through old local newspapers is how the public announcements of meetings list venues that don’t seem familiar to the present day. In Cambridge, the papers of 100 years ago list venues such as St Andrew’s … More How new technology changed Cambridge in 20th Century. Ft The Co-operative movement

Summary Florence Ada Keynes said that Mayor Horace Darwin (1896/97) was heartbroken that Belcher’s design was not carried by the council and ultimately rejected in a ratepayers’ referendum. These are the quotations of the guildhall we could have had. Pokey and unimpressive, the old Shire House in Market Square via Cambridge local historian Fonz Chamberlain … More John Belcher’s report for his 1898 Guildhall Plan

Summary: The Mayor of Cambridge Florence Ada Keynes (1932/33) spoke powerfully at a prize-giving in the city “Music is one of the wonders of the world. It has its origin far back in human history, and it has a great influence on human emotions. “At the same time, music is one of the most educative … More Mayor Florence Ada Keynes on music – February 1933

Summary This is what happens when you don’t give your civic heroes a decent budget to build great things – immediate needs come first and they build what they can I knew that Florence Ada Keynes had a bit of a struggle to get the current guildhall in Market Square built, but I didn’t realise … More Florence Ada Keynes gets it in the neck from Cambridge over new guildhall designs

How a local artist started off as a satirical sketcher in our local news, before going onto greater things. But not before he and his brothers in arms had faced the crimes against humanity at the hands of Imperial Japan. I fell down another interwebz whirlpool when I posted a copy of a sketch I’d … More Cambridge artist Ronald Searle and the fall of Singapore in 1942

Summary Two of Cambridge’s civic heroes were at the forefront of the fight against Fascism – and Cambridge’s organisation to receive refugees was years ahead of many other towns and cities – beginning as early as 1933 As far as politically-active women go, in the 1930s both Eva Hartree and Leah Manning were two of … More Eva Hartree and Leah Manning’s fight against the fascists in the 1930s

Summary The grim and darkly comic tale of John Green’s execution by hanging in front of a crowd of several thousand. Almost as spoofed by Monty Python in The Life of Brian. …but reading between the lines it makes for depressing reading. The tale of John Green of Whittlesey The story has been written up … More Cambridge’s last public hanging at Castle Hill

Summary Transcript of a long lost article by my hero Eglantyne Jebb that was buried in the Library of Wales. You can find the article here -in The Welsh Outlook, December 1914. I’ve transcribed it below for ease of access. WHERE WILL THE WAR LEAD TO BARBARISM OR TO A HIGHER CIVILIZATION? MANY of those … More Where will the War lead? To barbarism or to a higher civilisation?

Summary i.e. one based in Cambridge that is even bigger than the one held at Wood Green or the East Anglian event I was at today I had a nice day out in Stowmarket at the East Anglia Museum of Living History for their annual living history fair. It took about an hour to get there … More What would a massive Cambridge Living History Fair look like?

Summary In researching the impact that women had on transforming Cambridge from a patriarchal feudal town dominated by the university into a modern city, Votes for Women inevitably features. But do we know the full story? TL:DR. No, we don’t know the full story. The first hint at the role the women of Cambridge in … More Cambridge Suffragists and Votes for Women