Welcome to ‘Lost Cambridge’ – a blog maintained by Antony Carpen
This blog is all about the history of the borough of Cambridge – the ‘town’ side.
If you are interested in the history of Cambridge the town and the people who made our modern city, please support my research in bringing their records of achievement to wider audiences. Click here if you would like to make a donation or take out a small subscription to support my ongoing work.
On Cambridge the town
Many a book has been written about the University of Cambridge, but very little in comparison has been written about the history of the people of the town that long pre-dates it. This blog aims to help rebalance things. This blog also has a number of other aims too:
To make our civic history much more accessible to the casual browser – by unlocking historical treasures that are either hidden away in archives or locked behind unknown walls
To share sources of new and existing information – whether old books, new books through to unearthed findings and new research
To feed people’s curious minds on how Cambridge got to here, and the journey we took in order to get to this place, by going beyond the written or printed word and making accessible pictures, photographs and videos of our town
To connect people with those who have already done a huge amount of work in bringing our borough’s history to life – people such as Allan Brigham, Fonz Chamberlain, Hilary Cox and Kay Blayney
To publicise local events that feature our local and civic history – in particular to help the next generation of historians get involved
To drag local and civic history kicking and screaming into the 21st century and into the digital age – controversial to some, but the data on website hits already demonstrates that people far beyond a small specialist localised audience are more than interested. Let’s make our history accessible.
To provide an online home where we can collate new finds quickly (without them gathering dust) before they move onto more permanent civic online homes such as Capturing Cambridge
To inform the future of Cambridge – including things like the Greater Cambridge City Deal <- in fact specifically that, so that decision makers, councillors, residents and campaign groups have access to a much-needed historical context of the choices that we all face as our city grows.
Lost Cambridge 