Lost Cambridge

The book by Paul Ritter from 1964 is digitised here – a gem I found in Plurabelle Books, Coldham’s Road, Cambridge. It’s near the Beehive Centre, the turnoff being at the Cromwell Road – Coldham’s Lane Junction. A little treasure trove of used books – the sort of shop that all cities need. …and also … More “Planning for man and motor” – trying to get inside the mindset of retrofitting towns and cities for the motor car in the 1960s

The news was confirmed by the Petersfield Area Community Trust, who were formally notified so as to enable them to put together a bid under Community Right to Bid “We received notice on Wednesday of the intent of Cambridgeshire County Council to sell the Grade II listed former Mill Road Library building. Notice was given … More Cambridgeshire County Council to sell the old Mill Road Library building

It could have been very different – 147 applicants went for the post. Had he not been successful, his daughter Olivia Newton John, who passed away 24 hours ago (at the time of typing) might have been born in another town. Above – Brinley Newton-John (who I blogged about here) from what is now Hills … More Cllrs Clara Rackham and Lilian Mellish Clark appoint Brinley Newton-John as Headmaster of the Cambridge County High School for Boys – Christmas 1945

…and a partially-built one too! I’m giving a talk not just on the unbuilt concert hall proposed in the 1960s, but one that will cover the partially-built one where we got the inside but not the outside. The outside of what was proposed in the late 1850s is the building pictured in the event listing … More Cambridge’s Unbuilt Concert Hall – with Open Cambridge 2022

The 1960s & early 1970s were a time of huge change in the structure of education – a debate that still goes on today regarding the merits of grammar schools. The evolution of state schools in and around Cambridge is a subject worthy of a Ph.D thesis given how many of us – myself included, … More What children thought about school in the 1960s – and what they wanted to see changed, at a time of huge structural change in education. And not just in Cambridge.

There’s a thesis or three plus several books waiting to be researched and written on the impact of the Co-operative women’s guild on the UK’s social history. Sadly the Guild closed in 2016 after an existence of over 133 years. I acquired a handful of magazines that were produced for the national guild by the … More The Co-operative women’s guild magazines of the mid-1980s – produced in Cambridge

…and what can Cambridge’s smaller museums learn from it? This is something I’ve been pondering for years, and follows on from an earlier blogpost here. The item about what is effectively a museum shop is at section 4.2 of the Museum of Cambridge’s Strategy Plan 2022-27 – which you can read here. In their own … More Museum of Cambridge seeks to ‘develop its retail experience’ – how have other museums done this well?

It’s something that has been on my mind for years, and is something I’d love to see generations of young people take up and run with. I was reminded of this while browsing through the London Transport Museum’s archive of tram posters. What would posters past, present, and future look like in the imagination of … More Imagining a schools and colleges art programme for children and teenagers on Cambridgeshire’s past, present, and future.

Cambridgeshire County Council’s Communities, Social Mobility and Inclusion Committee (CoSMIC) meets on Thurs 21 July 2022 to discuss and approve a new forward plan for the archives service now located in Ely. Their vision from item 9 in the meeting papers here looks something like this: Above – screengrabbed from item 9 in the meeting … More Cambridgeshire Archives Service Forward Plan 2022-24 – and the Museum of Cambridge’s Strategic Plan 2022-27.

On the day the Census 2021 headline data is released, there is value in analysing what the plans for Cambourne stated in its early days vs what has actually been delivered, and what the further plans are. Have a look at South Cambridgeshire’s results here. You can also see the results of other areas at … More Analysing Cambourne’s contemporary history