I have purchased a number of books about the history of Cambridge the town, and a number of our famous and/or high-achieving residents outside of the field of academia. These have long been out of print and are seldom seen outside the realms of buyers & sellers of second hand books. I’ve saved them to the Internet Archive here.
Cambridge town planning reports
Cambridgeshire Regional Plan 1934 – W.R. Davidge
Railways to Cambridge – Actual and Proposed – 1938 – Reginald B Fellows
Cambridge Today and Tomorrow – 1945 – Cambridge Communist Party
Labour’s Plan for Cambridge – 1945 – Cambridge Labour Party
Cambridge Planning Proposals Vol 1 – 1950 – Holford & Wright
Cambridge Planning Proposals Vol 2 – 1950 – Holford & Wright
Cambridge Planning Proposals – Large Map (very colourful!) – 1950 – Holford Wright
Community Patterns Spheres Of Influence, County Plan 1951 – Cambridgeshire County Council
Guide to the Cambridge Plan – 1956 – Derek Senior
Cambridge – the future of the Backs – 1956 – Richard Gray
History of Local Government in Cambridge 1835-1958 – Cambridgeshire County Council
The Case for Cambridgeshire – 1960 [opposed to a county merger with the Isle of Ely Council]
Dreaming spires and teeming towers – 1963 – Thomas Sharp (who wrote Oxford’s post-war development plan, like Holford Wright but for Oxford)
Cost Benefit Analysis Town Planning Cambridge – 1966 – Nathaniel Lichfield
Cambridge draft town centre plan proposals – 1968 – Cambridgeshire County Council
Cambridge Public Services Handbook – 1968 – Cambridge City Council (before restructure of local government)
Cambridge Townscape – 1971 – Cambridge City Council
Cambridge Sub Regional Plan – Part 1 – 1974 by John Parry Lewis
Cambridge Sub Regional Plan – Part 2A – 1974 by John Parry Lewis
Gradual renewal of The Kite – 1976 – Kite Community Action Group
St Matthew’s [Petersfield] District Plan – 1977 – Cambridge City Council
Cambridgeshire Association for Local History
I am also in the process of digitising the back catalogue of annual publications from the Cambridgeshire Association for Local History to 2015. Their publications from 2015 to the present time are here.
The publications go back to 1952, and slowly but surely I am digitising more and more of them:
- 1969 – including Recollections of Cambridge drawn from J Vinter 1846-1923, written up in 1920
- 1971 – including the Cambridge Corn Exchange by Mike Petty MBE (who is still with us!)
- 1974 – including The Old Post Office on Petty Cury
- 1975 – including Cambridge’s First Railway by Tony Kirby (who is still with us!)
- 1976 – including Pauper inventories under the old poor laws
- 1980 – including the Cambridge City Coronership (written by a former coroner)
- 1981 – including the Cambridge Central Aid Society
- 1982 – including the waterside district of Ely
- 1983 – including the origins of the villages colleges that surround Cambridge
- 1985 – including the old Alexandra Hall / YMCA concert hall where many 1960s bands played
- 1986 – including the huge number of pubs in Cambridge
- 1987 – including Voluntary housing in Cambridge
- 1996 – including John Bolton’s furniture removals – his warehouses still prominent off Mill Road
- 1997 – including the Robin Hood of Quy (on the north-eastern edge of Cambridge)
- 1998 – including the Falcon Inn (somewhere underneath Lion Yard and a notorious slum)
- 1999 – including the Spinning House – the Vice Chancellor’s private prison for women
- 2000 – including History Road Cemetery
- 2001 – including the establishment of the Cambridgeshire Constabulary
- 2004 – including John Grafton and the gas works of Cambridge
- 2009 – including Romsey Town in the 1960s by Allan Brigham
- 2012 – including Dr Bushell Anningson’s sanitation report for Cambridge 1876
- 2013 – including the start of the Mill Road History project
I have also recorded a number of presentations as well as filming and producing my own videos. I have been asked by the Cambridgeshire Association for Local History to list them here.
CALH Presentations – extended videos
Dr Ceri Law – Religious change in Cambridge in 16thC – 02 April 2016
The history of Cambridge Preservation Society – 07 Jan 2017
Tony Kirby – The history of Cambridge housing. 05 May 2018.
Mike Petty – The Cambridgeshire Collection – 07 March 2020
Mill Road History Society
Becky Proctor – History of Mill Road – Mill Road History Talk – 22 July 2015
Dr Philip Howell – The Spinning House – Mill Road History. 11 Jan 2017
Antony Carpen – Women who made modern Cambridge – 10 October 2018
Event playlists:
Cambridge – Shaping our city. Summer 2016.
Lost Cambridge 