Lost Cambridge

I’m hoping Cambridge City Council will enable this paper commissioned by them can be digitised and made public along with their past historical papers stored in archives. The same goes for the surrounding district councils & Cambridgeshire County Council given that the Mayor of Cambridgeshire & Peterborough is soon to go to consultation on a … More Abandoned proposals for Cambridge Light Rail Transport – 1991 by Colin Buchanan & Partners

I spent this afternoon recording a piece to camera having stumbled across a series of documents two undergraduates studying Architecture at Cambridge were looking at for their project. Reviewing the footage it looks like I’ll have to re-shoot it because I spent too long looking down! *Don’t look down, there’s only shoes and floor and … More Why did it all kick off in The Kite, Cambridge? The redevelopment plans from the late 1960s speak volumes

From the town planning news cuttings files in the Cambridgeshire Collection (which you can visit to see for yourself), in May 1975 Cambridgeshire County Council (which had more town planning powers for local planning than it does today) finally rejected the Parry Lewis report on Cambridge & the Sub-region. Their vote was based on a … More Cambridge’s asks its residents to make a Blueprint for Cambridge after Parry Lewis is rejected by the councils

A pattern emerges from town and transport planning articles from the 1960s & 1970s in the Cambridgeshire Collection, collated by generations of archivists. The screenshots are from and courtesy of the Cambridgeshire Collection. They kindly gave me permission to make this short video where I explain how you can view the files yourself. The big … More “Take the shackles of the town so I can plan…!” John Parry Lewis’s impossible job

When I get round to writing that musical on the history of Cambridge the town, I’m having a scene with Gordon Logie, Cambridge City Council’s principal architect singing about his future plans to the tune of Year 3000 by Busted. Above – Busted. Ages ago I convinced myself that one of the best ways to … More “He said “I’ve been to the Year 2000″”

I say we accept his offer! During The Great Cambridge Transport and Town Planning War of the 1960s The Vice Chancellor of the University of Cambridge told the world that his University had a duty to improve the City of Cambridge. Furthermore, he proposed that the University should contribute 50% of the costs of a … More Vice Chancellor Sir Ivor Jennings QC says Cambridge University has a duty to improve the city – and says University will contribute 50% of the cost of a new large public hall. 1962

The well-known organisation that we see with their brass bands playing Christmas Carols in town in December seemed to have a very different image in Cambridge nearly 140 years ago. Mike Petty spotted this article from 1885, where the Cambridge branch had hired Sturton Hall (later the Kinema) as their premises for meetings. The problem … More Life at the rough end of Cambridge with the Salvation Army – who weren’t always the good guys. Lost Cambridge 1885.

Edward Heath’s Conservatives however had other ideas – leading to the county council structure (with the addition of Peterborough, which became a unitary council in the 1990s) that we are familiar with today. I’m not quite sure how I stumbled across this document – The Royal Commission on Local Government for England, 1969 – summary … More How the Royal Commission on Local Government 1969 could have left Cambridgeshire looking very different

What happened to Gordon Logie’s vision for the Lion Yard of 1965? Mike Petty spotted a very interesting article in the Cambridgeshire Collection which has a very interesting picture of the model of what we did not get. Above from the Cambridge Daily News here. Some of you may have spotted the Guildhall and the … More “An informal, friendly place to stroll through, peer into shop windows, chat with friends, lounge in pubs or sit in the sun”

Because if expensive consultants get things wrong, the impact on future plans could be significant. It stems from this. You can read the full report for the city & district councils here. The quotation concerned in on p118. What was claimed What actually happened Throughout the early 1980s, the continued decline in the provision of … More What should the role of local historians be in the local planning process?