Continuing from Part 1 here. The screenshots are from the Cambridgeshire Collection – please visit and support them because without our archives, we lose so much of our collective history. Below the headline at the time of the Munich Crisis included a photo of the Mayor of Cambridge’s air raid shelter, along with the distribution … More Cambridge prepares for war – 1936-39: Part 2
Summary: Photographs from the Cambridge Daily News in the Cambridgeshire Collection show that war did not come as a surprise – in fact local readers were fully aware that fighting had broken out in other parts of the world a few years before, and was only a matter of time before it reached these shores. … More Cambridge prepares for war – 1936-39: Part 1
In 1884 a large expansion to the Cambridge Library on the Guildhall site – now occupied by Jamie’s Restaurant, was opened. Cambridge Free Library was originally housed in on the site of the Friends Meeting House on Jesus Lane. The founding father of Cambridge’s public libraries was Mr John Pink – photo from the Cambridge … More Cambridge Free Library opens – 1884.
Summary: A number of books have been written by (and about) the women who made modern Cambridge – including more than a few that are out of print but are available at knockdown prices. Mrs Jean Barker – Lady Trumpington Our fourth woman Mayor of Cambridge and the most high profile one of recent … More Published works on the women who made modern Cambridge
Summary: What a rare long service medal tells us about the early days of organised fire fighting in Cambridge. The medal looks like this: It belonged to James William Pearl, and shows he received the long service medal first for five years, then for another five years, and then the twenty year service bar. The … More Cambridge Fire Brigade’s early fire fighters
Summary: Ten months on from when I first made a call for the Cambridge and County Folk Museum / Museum of Cambridge to be expanded, some more thoughts about purpose following an intense summer of research in local archives. The picture postcard view of Cambridge looks something like this: “Stereotypically, this is what many politicians … More What would the purpose be of an expanded Museum of Cambridge?
Summary: Mayor Eva Hartree had to face down a protest outside her house when Cambridge Borough Council voted to build a new bus terminal for the town. Some of you may have seen the news story on proposals from Stagecoach to double the size of Drummer Street Bus Station. Nearly a century ago, when proposals … More Drummer Street Bus Station 1925
Summary: Taking advantage of leaps and bounds in communications technologies as applied to the field of history to find and share more of our civic and social histories. (I’m scanning and uploading images of v old books and pamphlets I’m buying off various websites to https://archive.org/details/@antony_carpen&tab=uploads) Just over a decade ago, Margaret Thatcher was invited to … More Digitising and opening up the history of Cambridge (the town)
This article from the British Newspaper Archive here which I’ve transcribed below shows the assessment Alfred Waterhouse gave to Cambridge Borough Council on the designs submitted for the Cambridge Corn Exchange. The old Corn Exchange – which later became a garage, a club, a car park and now is where a corporate hotel built in the 1980s … More Alfred Waterhouse assesses the top two designs for a new Corn Exchange in Cambridge. 1870
Summary: General election time straight after the end of The Great War. Conservative candidate Sir Eric Geddes, parachuted into the seat standing for The National Coalition of Liberals and Conservatives against Rev T Rhonnda Williams standing for a Cambridge Labour Party still in its infancy. Sir Eric Geddes at the time of this speech in the … More Sir Eric Geddes threatens to hang The Kaiser – Cambridge Guildhall December 1918
