Blue Plaques

The Cambridge City and South Cambridgeshire Blue Plaque schemes recognise people and events that have made a significant impact on the area, the UK or, indeed, the world.

Information about Blue Plaque People and Events

Find out about the fascinating people and events that have been recognised with a blue plaque in Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire.

Agnes Arber FRS (1879 – 1960)

Eminent botanist, historian, philosopher. Established her laboratory at her house at 52 Huntingdon Road, Cambridge where the plaque is located

Agnes Arber (1879 – 1960) was a plant morphologist and became the third woman (and first female botanist) to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. Arber was also awarded the Linnean Society gold medal. Due to the University of Cambridge administration at the time, Arber spent a large proportion of her career working in a small laboratory in her own house at 52 Huntingdon Road rather than having a formal position and space in the University.

Born Agnes Robertson, 23 February 1879, she was the first child of Agnes Turner and Henry Robertson. Aged eight, she attended the North London Collegiate School for Girls, which provided girls with a serious education, rather than a ‘finishing’ in social graces, and had a strong commitment to teaching science. Ethel Sargant, a plant morphologist from Girton College, Cambridge, came to read papers at the school’s science club; Agnes Robertson went on to work in Sargant’s laboratory, in the garden of her home in Reigate, during vacations.

She studied for a degree at University College London (UCL), and went on to take a further degree at the University of Cambridge, in Newnham College. At this time, in 1899, women were not members of the University, admitted to practical classes in laboratories, or awarded degrees.

In 1902 Agnes returned to Ethel Sargant’s laboratory in Reigate, and in 1903 published her first paper in the Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, ‘Notes on the anatomy of Macrozamia heteromera’. She returned to UCL as a research student carrying out research on gymnosperms, and in 1905 she was awarded a DSc. Shortly after being appointed lecturer in August 1909 Agnes left UCL and married Edward Newell Arber, moving to Cambridge.

In 1912 Agnes Arber was appointed to a one-year research fellowship at Newnham College, and published her first book: Herbals, a survey of the beautiful books that were the centre of botanical studies for several centuries, important for naming and classifying plants for medicinal purposes. In July 1912 the couple’s only child, Muriel, was born.

In 1918 Newell Arber died at the age of 48. Arber did not remarry, but carried on with her research, largely unpaid, as a single parent. Muriel said of her mother, ‘She snatched time from her writing to do the necessary minimum of domestic things, not the other way round.’

Before Ethel Sargant’s death, she had asked Arber to take over the production of a book for the Cambridge Botanical Handbooks series, and in 1925 she published The Monocotyledons; this group of plants formed a strong strand of Arber’s empirical research. This was followed by Water Plants, published by Cambridge University Press in 1920, and The Gramineae in 1934.

For 17 years Arber worked in the Balfour Laboratory that belonged to Newnham College. It had been established in 1884 with £1000 in donations, because although at the time they were permitted to attend University lectures, laboratory demonstrations and practical classes were generally closed to women. Teaching was provided mainly by female research fellows of Newnham and Girton Colleges, who also undertook their own biological sciences research in the Balfour Laboratory. As women gained access to University resources, the laboratory went into decline; when the space was sold to the University, they were unable to allow Arber to continue her work. Arber was offered the laboratory equipment she had used in the Balfour to use in her home at 52 Huntingdon Road, Cambridge, and thanked the Principal for the ‘opportunity of quiet and independent research this afforded [her]’. Her experience of working in Ethel Sargant’s garden laboratory likely opened her up to the possibilities.

(Photo copyright the National Portrait Gallery)

In 1950 she published The Natural Philosophy of Plant Form, which linked her practical experience with a discussion of her ideas about the philosophy of plant morphology. The following book, The Mind and the Eye, received a favourable review in Nature: ‘Mrs Arber’s book stands out as a work of genuine scholarship and special timeliness. It ought to be prescribed reading for every fresh graduate who proposes to begin research’.

The obituary of Arber in the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London said ‘To many she was the ‘lady of botany’ and young biologists should think of an acute and powerful observer wrapt in penetrating and ever more powerful philosophy, who grasped the world without travel, and how they attract into the circle of discussion such another if they are fortunate.’

Agnes Arber died 22 March 1960 in Cambridge.

(Photo L:R Professor Anne Ferguson-Smith (Cambridge University), Penny Heath (CambridgePPF), Lucy Pollard (Agnes great niece) and Cllr Baiju Thittala Varkey (Mayor of Cambridge) by Chris Loades copyright Cambridge University)

Agnes’ blue plaque was installed at 52 Huntingdon Road in 2024, which was also the 300th anniversary of the appointment of the first Professor of Botany at Cambridge, and was marked by a year of celebration for the University Department of Plant Sciences.

An unveiling event for the plaque took place on 30 May 2024 at Cambridge University Botanic Garden. During this event an Agnes Arber PhD thesis prize for comparative biology was announced, which it is hoped will support the next generation of pioneering botanists, following in the footsteps of Agnes.

Sam Brockington a Professor of Evolutionary Biology & Curator at Cambridge University Botanic Garden in May 2024 said, “the University’s rich legacy in botany is marked by notable discoveries across many areas of the Plant Sciences. This year of celebrations is highlighting some of our scientific achievements including the work of Agnes Arber. We are delighted to be supporting a blue plaque to recognize her work.”

Lucy Pollard, Agnes’ great niece in 2024 “’our family are delighted that she is to receive this belated recognition. I remember her as a kind, quiet, unassuming person: I’m ashamed that, as a child, I had no idea that she was also a distinguished scholar”.

The plaque and unveiling event for Agnes Arber were kindly sponsored by Cambridge University and the family of Agnes Arber. The plaque was kindly installed by D J Everson.

Rev. W Awdry (1911-1997)

Creator of Thomas the Tank Engine books. Lived at the Old Rectory in Elsworth 1946 – 1952, where he wrote five of the books. Blue plaque is located on barn next to the Old Rectory, Church Lane, Elsworth

Wilbert Vere Awdry (1911 – 1997) was an Anglican clergyman, railway enthusiast and hugely successful children’s author who created the enduringly popular Railway Series of books and characters, including the much-loved Thomas the Tank Engine.

Awdry had just become Rector of the parish of Elsworth in 1946 when the success of his first two books led the publisher, Edmund Ward, to commission Awdry to write a new book for the Railway Series every year. He would do so for the next 24 years, writing five titles at Elsworth before moving on to serve another Cambridgeshire parish, Emneth. When Wilbert Awdry put down his pen in 1972, his son, Christopher – for whom the first stories were written – went on to write 16 more titles.

What began as a father’s stories to amuse his three year old son, in bed with measles, became a literary, publishing, merchandising and financial phenomenon. At the time of his death in 1997, Awdry’s Railway Series books had sold in the order of 50 million copies, in a dozen languages, and inspired videos, toys, games, clothes and a popular television film series. Well known narrators of the stories include Johny Morris, Willie Rushton and Ringo Starr.

Image: Rev Awdry with Ringo Starr and crew in 1984 (copyright Mattel Inc)

The success of the series is attributed to the small landscape format of the books; the striking, colourful illustrations, and the quality of Awdry’s text which captures the rhythm and repetition of rolling stock. For all their simplicity, the stories were based on real incidents: a derailment, the loss of some trucks, even a fish found in an engine’s boiler.

Speaking on Desert Island Discs in 1964, Awdry explained why railways fascinated him, giving insight into the source of his creativity:

“Of all the mechanical contrivances made by man, the steam engine is the most human. The steam engine is an extrovert….He likes you to know how he’s getting on and how he’s feeling about things…On the move, locomotives, always have something to say.”

Wilbert was born on 15th June 1911 in Ampfield, near Romsey in Hampshire, where his father, Vere, was vicar. Wilbert’s name came from combining his father’s favourite brothers names, William and Herbert.

As a boy, Wilbert was influenced by his father’s love of railways: real and and model. He poured over his father’s copies of The Railway Magazine, and walked by the Baddesley stretch of railway line where plate-layers had their huts. The excitement when an engine or train thundered past left a deep impression.

The family moved to Wiltshire in 1917, to a house next to the Box Tunnel and the start of the Great Western line incline. Lying in bed, young Wilbert listened to the rhythmic sounds of the engine shunting trains up the incline, later drawing on this memory as inspiration for the story where Edward helps Gordon to get up the hill.

Aged 13, Wilbert went to Dauntsey School, and in 1929 was among the first intake of undergraduates at St Peter’s Hall (now St Peter’s College) at Oxford. Graduating with a third class degree in Modern History, Wilbert decided to become a parson, and spent a year at Oxford’s theological college, Wycliffe Hall. From 1933 – 1936, he taught in Jerusalem at St George’s School, fulfilling his Wycliffe tutor’s view that holding down a secular job was key preparation for being ordained.

Back from Jerusalem, and having been ordained, Awdry took up a post as deacon in Odiham, Hampshire. In 1938, he married Margaret Wale, whom he had met in Jerusalem and the following year they moved to West Lavington in Wiltshire where Awdry was appointed curate. War was looming, and there was little peace for Awdry, whose pacifist views were out of line with seniors in the diocese.

Turned out of the parish, he was offered a post by the sympathetic Bishop of Birmingham, Dr Barnes, and Wilbert and Margaret moved to King’s Norton, arriving in time for the Blitz. Their son was born in 1940, and three years later, when Christopher was in bed with measles, Awdry sought to amuse him by telling stories about a row of engines.

The stories evolved as Wilbert answered Christopher’s questions, giving each engine a name and personality. Christopher wanted to hear the stories about industrious Edward, pompous Gordon and argumentative Henry again and again, and so Awdry wrote them down, along with simple drawings.

Margaret considered them better than most children’s books available during the war and persuaded him to look for a publisher. Awdry’s first three stories, written on scraps of paper, were sent to an agent who eventually found a publisher in Edmund Ward. Keen to redress the dearth of children’s books during the war, Ward accepted the manuscripts.

By the time the first book, The Three Railway Engines, was published, just days after VE day in May 1945, Awdry was already writing a second, in which he introduced Thomas – the most child-like of all his characters – based on a model tank engine he had made for Christopher at Christmas.

Image: Model of Thomas the Tank Engine (copyright Mattel Inc)

Edmund Ward published Thomas the Tank Engine in 1946, the year Awdry moved to Elsworth, where he would live, work and write for the next six years. By then, Wilbert and Margaret had three children: Christopher and two daughters, Veronica and Hilary. The war years had taken their toll on the upkeep of the Church, the school and the Rectory. Awdry’s first task was to make the Rectory fit for his wife and young family to live in. It was infested and primitive, with no mains water. Besides, the church was leaky.

Costs for repair and maintenance were significant, and Awdry’s attempts to make the Rectory fit for tenants to help share the costs led to tedious tangles with ecclesiastical grant-giving bodies. Besides, stepping into the shoes of the previous incumbent – who had been Rector for 19 years – was not proving easy.

An unexpected boost from his publishers was timely. Edmund Ward had hired a new editor, Eric Marriott, previously with Cambridge University Press. Marriott saw the appeal of Awdry’s first two books, with their bright illustrations and “small books for small hands” format. He challenged Ward’s plan to just reprint the first titles, insisting that there should be a new book each year. Marriott’s determination paid off, and was key in the success of the Railway Series. Awdry was offered £75 to write the next book. In Brian Sibley’s 1995 biography, The Thomas the Tank Engine Man, he recalls Rev W Awdry’s reaction to this news: “To me, this was marvellous. I couldn’t get over my amazement that a publisher should actually ask me to write a book for him!” In 1948, the year that British Railways were nationalised, James the Red Engine became the third book in the series, followed the next year by Tank Engine Thomas Again.

Although Awdry had initially parted with copyright for a flat fee, Edmund Ward offered an ex gratia payment for the fourth book of £200: a godsend for the Awdry family on their shoestring existence at Elsworth.

Image: Rev Awdry (copyright Mattel Inc)

As well as helping to pay the bills, the money enabled Awdry to invest in a model railway in one of the Rectory outbuildings. He started work, finishing just in time for the Church fete in July 1949. Admission fees went to the fete, but subsequent contributions for viewings raised money for the church in the shape of an altar frontal and an oak box for communion wafers, with an engraved plaque commemorating the support of Thomas the Tank Engine!

Awdry’s knowledge of railways and engines was considerable. From the outset, every story in the Railway Series was based on something that had actually happened to some engine, somewhere, sometime. However, his commitment to railway accuracy and authenticity in the text was not shared by the illustrators commissioned for the books. Notably, C Reginald Dalby, whose gem-like pictures first appeared in James the Red Engine and who helped to set the style for the series, had a disregard for detail which infuriated Awdry.

Inaccuracies and inconsistencies in Dalby’s illustrations led to endless correspondence from readers. Dalby’s depiction of landscape was also at odds with Awdry’s own ideas of a sense of place where his stories were set. This led Wilbert, with his brother George, to invent a new setting for the stories: the fictitious Island of Sodor. The brothers made maps and wrote a detailed history of the island, its people and railway engines, which helped shape many of the events described in later volumes.

Awdry’s enthusiasm for railways was not limited to his books. He built and exhibited ambitious model railways around the country and was involved in railway preservation societies, such as the TalyLlyn Railway in Wales, which inspired the Skarloey Railway on the Island of Sodor, and featured in Four Little Engines (1955) and The Little Old Engine (1959).

Margaret died in 1989, and Wilbert’s health began to decline. The Reverend was awarded an Order of the British Empire in the 1996 New Year’s Honours List. He died peacefully in Stroud, Gloucestershire on 21st March 1997 at the age of 85.

Awdry Blue Plaque

In December 2020 a blue plaque was installed on the barn of the Old Rectory on Church Lane, Elsworth, next to where Awdry lived and wrote and next to The Holy Trinity Church where he served. The plaque was unveiled by the Revd Nigel di Castiglione, the current Rector. Elsworth Village Primary School took part in the celebration and pupils produced hand-drawn pictures which were displayed in the church. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic Awdry’s daughter Veronica was unable to attend but a letter from her was read out at the event in which she said “I am delighted and moved at the news that a Blue Plaque has been put up in tribute to my father, the man who wrote the stories about Thomas and engines with personalities, but who was also, most importantly, a very dedicated and hardworking Rector.”

We are very grateful to global toy company Mattel for sponsoring this plaque (Mattel are the owners of Thomas the Tank Engine brand) and to the owners of the barn for allowing the plaque to be installed on their property. We are also very grateful to the teachers and pupils of Elsworth Primary School for their artwork and all those people who’s efforts made this plaque happen.

Syd Barrett (1946 – 2006)

He was a musician, songwriter, painter and founder member of Pink Floyd. Location: inside Anglia Ruskin University.

The Cambridge & District Blue Plaques Scheme is run by local charity Cambridge Past Present & Future. However sometimes blue plaques are put up by other organisations that are not part of this official scheme. You can easily tell because the blue plaque won’t have the crest of either the City Council or South Cambridge District Council. Whilst we are not responsible for these plaques we felt it might be helpful for people to be aware of them. The blue plaque for Syd Barrett is one of these and was put up by the BBC as part of a national initiative.

On June 9, 2017, a Blue Plaque for Syd Barrett was unveiled at Anglia Ruskin University on their original arts building by his sister, Rosemary Breen, who said that Syd would “have loved it.” The plaque is located inside the university but can be visited when the University is open. Click here for information about the plaque unveiling.

Roger Keith “Syd” Barrett, was born on 6 January 1946 in Cambridge, the fourth of five children. His parents Max and Winifred Barrett actively encouraged his music and art interests from an early age. He picked up the nickname ‘Syd’ during his attendance at the Cambridgeshire High School for Boys on Hills Road, which was the name he used until the 1970s, before reverting back to his original Roger.

Syd was co-founder of the rock band Pink Floyd along with Roger Waters, who he knew from his Cambridge primary school, and David Gilmour, a fellow former Cambridgeshire College of Arts and Technology student he had met as a teenager. During his time at the college (now part of the Cambridge School of Art and Anglia Ruskin University) Syd had become known on the local music scene, and following his move to London to attend the Camberwell Art College, Pink Floyd was formed in 1965. The band was one of the first British psychedelic groups, achieving worldwide acclaim and distinguished by their extended compositions, sonic experimentation, philosophical lyrics and elaborate live shows, with Syd as their creative innovator.

Pink Floyd’s debut album ‘The Piper at the Gates of Dawn’ was released in August 1967. Mostly composed by Syd, it is counted as one of the greatest British psychedelic albums. However, around the same time, Syd had started to exhibit serious mental health issues, largely attributed to the use of psychedelic drugs. His behaviour became more and more erratic, and along with various particularly troublesome USA performances, Syd and Pink Floyd parted company in March 1968.

Syd continued as a solo artist, releasing two albums – ‘The Madcap Laughs’ in January 1970 along with ‘Barrett’ in November the same year. Syd’s musical activity during this time was largely studio-based, with his last solo appearance on John Peel’s BBC radio programme in February 1970. In August 1974 Syd withdrew from the music industry, returning to live as a recluse in Cambridge and a life of painting.

Roger ‘Syd’ Barrett died of pancreatic cancer on July 7, 2006 at Addenbrooke’s Hospital. His music has influenced scores of musicians over the years and in 2010 EMI Records released a new collection of tracks on the album ‘An Introduction to Syd Barrett’. In 2011 the book ‘Barrett, The Definitive Visual Companion’ was published by Essential Works, which provides a comprehensive study of Syd as an artist.

Basque Refugees

Twenty-nine Basque children, refugees from the Spanish Civil War, were cared for by local volunteers in a house provided by Jesus College, from January 1938 to November 1939. Location: 1 Salisbury Villas, Cambridge, CB1 2JF

The destruction of the Spanish town of Guernica, which inspired Pablo Picasso to paint his masterpiece of the same name, also brought nearly 4,000 children to Britain as refugees from the Spanish Civil War.

Public opinion was outraged by the bombing of Guernica, the first-ever saturation bombing of a civilian population. The Basque government appealed to foreign nations to give temporary asylum to the children, but the British government adhered to its policy of non-intervention. The Duchess of Atholl, President of the National Committee for Spanish Relief, took up the campaign to urge the government to accept the Basque children and finally, permission was reluctantly granted. However, the government refused to be responsible financially for the children, saying that this would violate the non-intervention pact. It demanded that the newly formed Basque Children’s Committee guarantee 10s (50p, but the equivalent of about £50 in 2010 values) per week for the care and education of each child.

The children left for Britain on the steamship Habana on the 21st May 1937. Each child had been given a cardboard hexagonal disc to pin on his clothes with an identification number and the words ‘Expedición a Inglaterra’ printed on it. The ship, supposed to carry around 800 passengers, carried 3480 children, 80 teachers, 120 helpers, 15 Catholic priests and 2 doctors. The children were crammed into the boat, and slept where they could, even in the lifeboats. The journey was extremely rough in the Bay of Biscay and most of the children were violently seasick.

The steamer arrived at Southampton on 23rd May. Thousands of people lined the quayside and the children, in spite of their ordeal, were excited, thinking that the bunting that was up everywhere was to celebrate their arrival: later they learned that it had been put up for the coronation of George VI which had taken place ten days earlier!

They were sent in busloads to a camp at North Stoneham in Eastleigh that had been set up in three fields. The setting up of the camp in less than two weeks was the result of a remarkable effort by the whole community: volunteers had worked round the clock and all through the Bank Holiday to prepare it.

The children were completely unprepared for camping: the majority had lived in densely packed flats in the working class districts of one of the most industrialised city in Spain. In fact, many of the children did not stay there long: the idea was that they should be dispersed in homes or ‘colonies’ as soon as possible. (The Basque government insisted they stay in groups, to preserve their national identity.) The first to offer asylum was the Salvation Army, which undertook to take 400, followed by the Catholic Church, which committed itself to take 1,200 children. Little by little, from the end of May, the children left the provisional camp in groups to go to other homes situated all over Great Britain and staffed and financed by individual volunteers, church groups and trade unions.

The Cambridge colony was considered to be one of the most privileged. From June 1937 until January 1938, 29 children from the ‘Ayuda Social’ orphanage in Bilbao, whose fathers, militiamen, had been killed in the early stages of the war, were housed in a former derelict vicarage at Pampisford, then transferred until November 1939 to a house in Station Road Cambridge leased by Jesus College. The children had all been brought up in an intensely political atmosphere and were very receptive to and benefited from the support of local academics and students. A programme of essentially child-centred educational activities was drawn up, mornings being dedicated to schoolwork, afternoons to painting, music and handicrafts. The children produced their own magazine ‘Ayuda’, which came out monthly. Their music teacher was Rosita Bal, a pupil of de Falla, and she trained them in music and dances that were performed in concerts all over East Anglia and London. Professor Francis Cornford, whose son, the poet John Cornford, had been killed fighting with the International Brigade in Spain, invited the children for a month in the summer of 1938 to his mill at Ringstead, on the Norfolk coast. Another academic family actively involved with the children was that of the Dean of Trinity College, Dr H F Stewart, who with his wife, Jessie Stewart, offered much hospitality to the children. Their daughter Frida organised fund-raising tours all over the country for the Cambridge colony’s concert party

After the fall of Bilbao and Franco’s capture of the rest of northern Spain in the summer of 1937, the process of repatriation began. By the late 1940s, most of the children had been reunited with their families, either in Spain or in exile. Over 250 children settled permanently here. Despite the hardships that were endured, life in the colonies was a unique experience of community living. From a practical point of view, it was a positive experience – there were undoubtedly happy times – nevertheless, the underlying sadness and anxiety of separation from their families would never be forgotten.

Natalia Benjamin

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Rupert Brooke (1887 – 1915)

He was poet known for his romantic verse and sonnets written during the First World War. Location: Orchard House, Mill Way, Grantchester

Rupert Chawner Brooke was an English poet known for his romantic verse and idealistic war sonnets written during the First World War. His poem ‘The Soldier’ contains the immortal lines: “If I should die, think only this of me: That there’s some corner of a foreign field that is forever England”.

Brooke began writing poetry whilst at boarding school in Rugby, and in October 1906 he went up to King’s College, Cambridge to study Classics. He lived in Grantchester, at The Orchard House (next to The Orchard Tea Room) from 1909-1911 and at The Old Vicarage from 1911-1912, which inspired one of his best known poems of the same name, with the final lines:

Stands the church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?

A blue plaque is mounted on Orchard House, Mill Way in Grantchester and commemorates Brooke’s stay at both properties

Brooke became a Fellow of King’s College in March 1913 as a result of his thesis entitled ‘John Webster and the Elizabethan Drama’. In the following year he enlisted at the outbreak of war in August 1914 and was commissioned into the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, taking part in the Antwerp expedition in October 1914. Brooke sailed with the British Mediterranean Expeditionary Force on 28 February 1915 but developed pneumococcal sepsis from an infected mosquito bite. He died of septicaemia less than two months later on 23 April 1915, on a French hospital ship moored off the Greek island of Skyros in the Aegean Sea, while on his way to the Gallipoli landings. As the expeditionary force had orders to depart immediately, Brooke was buried at 11 pm in an olive grove on Skyros.

His most famous collection of poetry, containing all five war sonnets, ‘1914 & Other Poems’, was first published in May 1915. On 11 November 1985, Brooke was among 16 First World War poets commemorated on a slate monument unveiled in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey. The inscription on the stone was written by Wilfred Owen, a fellow war poet. It reads:

My subject is War, and the pity of War.
The Poetry is in the pity.

Archie Scott Brown (1927 – 1958)

Despite having a severe disability, he was an international racing driver and won the most presitigious races of his day in Lister Jaguar sports cars, built in Cambridge by George Lister & Sons. Location: 163 Hills Road, Cambridge, CB2 8RJ

Born in Scotland, Archie Scott Brown moved to Cambridge in 1951 where he formed partnerships that led to his world success in motor racing.

He was born with severe physical handicaps (as a result of Rubella suffered by his mother in her pregnancy) and had to undergo over twenty operations in his early childhood to enable him to walk. He also lacked a right forearm, but his family were determined that he should have as many chances in life as possible. He learnt to drive, aged 10, in the streets of Paisley and his father, a garage owner, built him a car for his eleventh birthday, thus empowering his passion for cars and racing.

After school and a brief year at university, Archie took a traineeship with a tobacco company, which required him to work in East Anglia. On moving to Cambridge, he began driving competitively. At a race meeting at Bottisham he met Brian Lister (of George Lister & Sons, engineering, Abbey Road) and Don Moore and explored their common interest in cars and racing. The three men quickly realised the value of their combined talents: Lister built a sports car, Moore tuned it and Archie Scott Brown drove it and won races, in April 1954 at Snetterton. In 1955 he won the Empire Trophy at Oulton Park. In the same year he was sacked from the tobacco company, set up (with others) a garage on the Huntingdon Road and moved to 17 Portugal Place.

Despite other people’s misgivings over his handicap (and twice racing authorities attempted to ban him from events), Archie never allowed it to stop him, disregarding the real pain he suffered. He went on to many more successes at Silverstone, Oulton Park and Goodwood. Lister built new models, switching in 1957 to Jaguar engines, which Archie tested and raced with great success.

Archie enjoyed a relationship with the racing public and his peers that virtually no British driver, before or since, has even approached. He gave his time freely, lived modestly and would drive anything. It was typical of him that he would take extra trouble to cheer up a child fan. Having agreed to open a local school’s summer fete, he learnt that one boy couldn’t attend because of illness. So Archie drove to Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Trumpington Street and stopped the car outside the ward window so that the boy could see both it and himself. His charm, spirit and flamboyance made him loved as well as admired in and outside his sporting circle.

His 1957 season was a remarkable one. He won 13 races with the Lister-Jaguar MV 303, setting or matching the fastest lap on each occasion, and setting four new absolute lap records. The season ended with his winning the Goodwood Trophy. He then took a trip to New Zealand, entering several race meetings there.

In 1958 he was permitted to enter the Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps, a highly testing circuit, but while in the lead lost control in adverse conditions. The crash caused huge damage to the car, ignited the fuel tank and fatally injured Archie Scott Brown. He died on 19 May 1958.

Cambridge Mayoralty

Cambridge was granted the right to appoint a mayor or reeve of their choice by royal charter of King John, on 8th May 1207, giving it 800 years of mayoralty. The Guildhall site has been a seat of law enforcement and local government since 1224. Location: Inside the main foyer of The Guildhall, 318 Market Hill, Cambridge, CB2 3AD

Cambridge Philosophical Society

The Society was a catalyst for the development of modern science in Cambridge. In 1833 the building at 2 All Saint’s Passage was opened to house their meeting room, library and collections.

Cambridge’s oldest surviving scientific society was founded to create a forum for discussion and public communication of scientific research. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Society played a key role in raising the profile of the sciences in Cambridge. From 1833 its meeting room, library and collections were housed at 2 All Saints Passage, Cambridge, CB2 3LS, where the plaque has been erected.

In 1819, the Cambridge Philosophical Society was founded by Adam Sedgwick, John Stevens Henslow and Edward Clarke as a place where university graduates could meet to discuss current scientific ideas and present new research. Though Regency Cambridge had several professors in scientific subjects, few undergraduates attended their lectures, the university did not offer science degrees, and there was little encouragement or funding for original research. Sedgwick and Henslow envisaged a Society, independent of the university, which would facilitate cooperation between scientific thinkers, create a forum for the public communication of results, inspire investigations in new fields, form links to other scientific bodies around the country, and preserve the research of the Society’s fellows in print.

Within a year of its foundation, the Society had instituted the practice of fortnightly meetings, had set up Cambridge’s most extensive scientific library, had collected and curated Cambridge’s first museum of natural history, and had begun publishing Cambridge’s first scientific periodical. Emboldened by the early success of the new Society, its fellows began to push for reform of scientific teaching and research in the university and colleges. In the Victorian period, fellows of the Society were involved in the creation of science degrees, the building of university and college laboratories, and in numerous campaigns for increased funding and job opportunities for young researchers.

Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Society continued to provide a public forum for Cambridge science and played a key role in raising the profile of the sciences in Cambridge. Speakers in this building included Adam Sedgwick, William Whewell, John Stevens Henslow, George Airy, Charles Darwin, George Gabriel Stokes, John Couch Adams and James Clerk Maxwell. The Society also acted as a seedbed for university science with many facilities growing out of different elements of the Society: the Society’s library became the university’s Central Science Library; its museum became the university’s Zoology Museum; and the Society’s journals were considered the natural place to publish research articles produced by the university’s Cavendish Laboratory.

Today, the Society continues to support the sciences in Cambridge. Its flagship Henslow Fellowships have been awarded annually since 2010. These fellowships fund three years of postdoctoral research across a wide range of disciplines including earth sciences, chemistry, biochemistry, zoology, engineering, physics and medicine. The Society also supports doctoral students through its programme of travel grants and final-year funding. Remaining true to its roots, the Society still provides important spaces for scientific communication: its fortnightly meetings have taken place uninterrupted since 1819; and it continues to publish two world-class journals – Biological Reviews and Mathematical Proceedings.

A commemorative blue plaque to the Society was erected in March 2019 on 2 All Saints Passage. The plaque was unveiled by Sir Martin Rees at an event at Cambridge University Library to commemorate the Society’s bicentenary.

You can find out more about the Society via their website.

Oliver Cromwell (1599 – 1658)

At the Black Bear Inn, which stood on this site in Market Square, Cromwell met the Eastern Association to plan the Parliamentarian war effort in this region. MP for Cambridge. Lord Protector of the British republic. Location: Market Passage, Cambridge, CB2 3PF

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Cromwell

DNA “The Secret of Life” 28th February 1953

At The Eagle Pub, near the old Cavendish Laboratory, Francis Crick and James Watson first celebrated the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA. This breakthrough relied on data from Rosalind Franklin, Maurice Wilkins and other scientists. Location: 5 Bene’t St, Cambridge, CB2 3QN.

For decades the Eagle was the local pub for scientists from the nearby Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University. It was there on 28 February 1953 that Francis Crick and James Watson, who had been working at the laboratory that day, celebrated the discovery of the structure of DNA.

The Eagle Inn has a long history as a significant part of the Cambridge scene. Some of its timbers as well as its name go back to the 16th century. During the great era of the stagecoach, visitors rolled in underneath its arch after a long day’s journey up from London.

The property was acquired by neighbouring Corpus Christi College, and in the twentieth century the accommodation was taken over as student lodgings. The pub occupied rooms at the back of the yard, where locals, visitors and students enjoyed its traditional atmosphere. During World War II American servicemen based in the area gathered in the bar, and wrote names and service numbers on the ceiling in smoke – now preserved under varnish.

By the 1950s the University Cavendish Laboratory had long been famous for pioneering work on the structure of the atom. It had also become, in 1947, the temporary home of a Medical Research Council Unit, researching the structure of biological molecules. Francis Crick joined the Unit in 1949, having shifted his interests from physics to chemistry and thence to biology. Two years later a young American biologist, James Watson, joined the team. He had attended a conference that year, 1951, in Naples at which he had seen X-ray diffraction pictures of DNA. DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) was one of the subjects of the moment for biologists looking at molecular structure. It was realised that somehow the structure of DNA was crucial to how living cells replicated. The work of Linus Pauling in America and of Maurice Wilkins at King’s College London (who had shown the X-ray picture) was moving towards identifying the precise structure: possibly a helix, but what were the components, how did they fit together and how could the form reproduce itself?

Crick and Watson found themselves sharing an office in the Cavendish and an enthusiasm for this puzzle. Drawing together the clues from published research, they also made contact with Wilkins again, and the work being done by Rosalind Franklin and her research student Raymond Gosling. Franklin, a Cambridge graduate of Newnham College, was working in Wilkins’s team at King’s, but the relationship was an unhappy one, lacking the constructive collaboration that Watson and Crick enjoyed. She was concentrating on X-ray diffraction to examine the structure of DNA, and described her findings at a colloquium in November 1951. On this basis, Watson and Crick constructed a model of the structure. When they invited her to see it, Franklin pointed out a number of errors. Watson had not remembered her findings accurately enough.

There was a pause of several months until information from other experiments reached them, and they returned to considering how the chemicals in DNA – adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine, or A, T, G and C could fit the information they had. Further photographs from King’s helped, in particular Photo 51, a high-quality X-ray diffraction image taken by Raymond Gosling, a graduate student working under the supervision of Rosalind Franklin, in May 1952. They showed more clearly the size of the molecules and the helical construction. Watson pursued the idea of pair bondings that might fit the two-chain helical structure deduced by Crick. With the physical aid of cardboard cut-outs a possible pattern emerged, which they constructed in a model as a double helix. Everything fitted.

On 28 February 1953 Crick announced dramatically in the Eagle pub that they had found the secret of life. The formal scientific presentation of their results, with those of Wilkins and Franklin, appeared in Nature in April 1953.

In 1962 Crick, Watson and Wilkins were awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine “for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material”. (Rosalind Franklin had died of cancer in 1958, and as the Prize is never given posthumously was not able to share the credit that was her due.) Their work initiated a flood of further research round the globe to read in detail the secrets of the code of life.

The MRC Unit moved out of the Cavendish to the School of Medicine where it became the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. A large model representing the double helix can be seen through its window, at the building on the Addenbrooke’s site.

Professor Watson unveiled another representation of the double helix in November 2005 in the grounds of Clare College.

The first blue plaque celebrating this event was unveiled by James Watson in 2003 but it provoked debate because it made no mention of Rosalind Franklin, whose scientific work provided data on which the discovery relied. In recent years there have been efforts to increase awareness of the role played by important female scientists, whose work has sometimes been overshadowed by their male colleagues. Rosalind Franklin was one such scientist and so the DNA plaque without her name became emblematic of this cause. To the extent it had been graffitied with ‘+ Franklin’ (see photo below). Over time the condition of the plaque had deteriorated and we decided to replace it, and this gave us the opportunity to recognise the work of Franklin, Maurice Wilkins and others, as well as that of Crick and Watson.

The new plaque was unveiled by Professor Christopher Howe at a ceremony at Corpus Christi College/The Eagle in August 2023.

Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882)

He was a naturalist, geologist and biologist who is best-known for his theory of evolution.

Charles Darwin was a British naturalist, geologist and biologist who is best-known for his theory of natural selection.

Two plaques in Cambridge commemorate the time Charles Darwin spent in the city:

One is above Boots on Sydney Street, there was once a building here where he lodged during 1828 while an undergraduate of Christ’s College,

This one is at 22 Fitzwilliam Street, where he stayed in 1836.

After completing his degree in 1831 Darwin took the position as a naturalist on the five year voyage of HMS Beagle, undertaking a scientific survey of South American waters, the Galápagos Islands, Tahiti, New Zealand and Australia, returning via Cape Town and St Helena and Ascension.

The voyage proved to be the turning point in Darwin’s life, and after returning to England in October 1836, he began to pursue his career as a scientist. He returned to Cambridge for several months to sort out the specimens from his voyage, lodging in Fitzwilliam Street before moving to London, where he married his cousin Emma Wedgwood in 1839.

During his time in London, Darwin began formulating his early evolutionary theories. Following a move to Kent in 1842 he developed his work on natural selection, publishing ‘On the Origin of Species’ in 1859, and ‘The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex’ in 1871.

Darwin’s rooms in Christ’s College were made into an exhibition space. The Cambridge University Library holds many of his documents, including letters, and Cambridge University Press has published much about Darwin, including the correspondence series. In his autobiography in 1876 he wrote, ‘Upon the whole, the three years which I spent at Cambridge were the most joyful in my life.’ Darwin was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws (LL.D) from the University of Cambridge on 17 November 1877. He died on 19 April 1882 and is buried in Westminster Abbey.

Ann Docwra (1624 – 1710)

She was a Quaker minister and campaigned for freedom and toleration in matters of religion and conscience. She gave a site to the Quakers for a Meeting House while still living there. Location: 12 Jesus Lane, Cambridge, CB5 8BA

Anne was born into a well-to-do Essex family, the Waldegraves, and her father, a county gentleman and JP, gave her a good education, including, very unusually for women, the study of law, for he said women as well as men must live under the law and should understand it. By the time she was 18, civil war had broken out between King and Parliament, and the social, political and religious ideas of the time were all being openly challenged.

She married James Docwra, of an old landed family who by 1655 had become a supporter of the new and controversial Quaker movement, then barely ten years old.

After James Docwra died in 1672, Anne moved to Cambridge where she welcomed Quakers, local or travelling, into her house. This was no easy course. The movement, begun by George Fox, was frequently attacked, for it rejected a number of current religious and social conventions. The Society of Friends (its formal name) had no priests or pastors and no liturgy. Adherents refused to pay tithes; the tenth of income, which traditionally was paid for the upkeep of the Church but which by this time, was often payable to laymen. George Fox insisted all men were equal, and no formal deference was due to any, not even the king. He instituted the pacifism that has also remained a tenet amongst the Friends.

Quakers were teaching in Cambridge from as early as 1653, when two women were condemned to a public whipping after discussing their religious views with some students. Fox himself visited in 1655 and was heckled and harried by students, but managed to hold a meeting with Friends. It was probably in that year that the Jesus Lane site was first used for meetings, though for years after, individual Quakers were subject to assault and frequently imprisoned. In 1660 the Meeting House was attacked and completely wrecked.

Anne’s first published writings date from 1682, when she issued ‘A Looking-glass for the Recorder and Justices of the peace, and Grand Juries for the Town and County of Cambridge’. In this she argued that ‘there is no law to Compel People to conform’, that there should be freedom of belief and discussion of religion should be done ‘in Truth and Righteousness’. She also strongly upheld the role of women in the Friends, to be one of active support and sometimes guidance to the men. There were differences of opinion within the early movement, but Anne supported George Fox, whom she met in London, and deplored publicly some of the divergent movements, even where her nephew was involved. She wrote a number of other pieces around both the organisational issues, and the spiritual nature of the movement. She wrote ‘I am sure I have no enmity in my Heart against any of them [churchmen], but do desire well for them: God’s love is Universal to Mankind …I heartily wish that they would understand and practise this, it would soon put an end to Differences in Religion.’

As a final gift to the Quakers of Cambridge she bequeathed her property in Jesus Lane on a thousand year lease, with other property and money to fund a graveyard. She died and was buried in Cambridge in 1710.
Anne Docwra stood out in her times for her writings and her independence ‘a spirited, intelligent, articulate, educated, and wise lady’.

Jim Ede (1895 – 1990)

He was ‘a friend of artists’, returning to England from Morocco to create Kettle’s Yard, where he lived and displayed his art collection from 1957 to 1973. Location: Kettle’s Yard, Castle St, Cambridge, CB3 0AQ

Harold Stanley ‘Jim’ Ede was born on 7 April 1895 near Cardiff. He attended the Leys School in Cambridge, studied painting at Newlyn Art School and, after service in the First World War, attended the Slade School of Art in London. In 1921, Jim Ede married Helen Schlapp, the daughter of a professor of German at Edinburgh University, and found work in the photographic department of the National Gallery in London. The following year, he was appointed Assistant at the Tate Gallery, London, a change he describes as ‘phenomenal’: ‘I gave up painting and became absorbed in the work of contemporary artists. I wrote a great deal about modern painting and sculpture, and came to know most of the leading artists of the day, and also the ones who were not yet known.’

It was while at the Tate that he formed important friendships with Ben and Winifred Nicholson, David Jones, Christopher Wood and other artists, and began collecting their work. He made trips to Paris that allowed him to meet avant-garde artists such as Pablo Picasso, Joan Miro, and Constantin Brancusi.. He was also able to acquire the greater part of the estate of Sophie Brzeska, the partner of the sculptor, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, who had been killed in the First World War. Ede strongly believed in the quality of Gaudier-Brzeska’s work, and made it his mission to promote it, including through his best-selling book, ‘Savage Messiah’.

It was while living at 1 Elm Row, Hampstead, in the 1920s and 1930s, that Ede began the practice of opening his house and engaging with new visitors. His guests included a great variety of artists, musicians, actors and literary figures, such as Georges Braque, Sergei Diaghilev, Vaslav Nijinsky, Naum Gabo, John Gielgud, Henry Moore, and Ben and Winifred Nicholson.

In 1936, Ede retired due to persistent ill health, and began spending part of the year in Tangier, Morocco. He commissioned a modernist house there, called ‘White Stone’, where he and Helen lived until 1952. During the war years, Jim travelled to the USA, with Helen, on lecture tours to raise funds for Allied War Relief. It was during this period that he came to know Richard Pousette-Dart and William Congdon. The Edes also opened their house in Tangier to servicemen on leave from Gibraltar, providing weekend retreats. In 1952, motivated by a desire to be nearer to their children, they moved to Les Charlottières, Chailles, near Amboise in the Loire Valley, France.

It was during this time that Ede found himself ‘dreaming of the idea of somehow creating a living place where works of art could be enjoyed, inherent to the domestic setting, where young people could be at home unhampered by the greater austerity of the museum or public art gallery and where an informality might infuse and underlying formality’. In 1956, the Edes moved to Cambridge and renovated four derelict cottages to create Kettle’s Yard, which was opened to the public in December 1957. Here, Ede installed his collection of art, furniture, glass, ceramics and other natural objects he had gathered during his life, including the first piece of furniture that he bought aged 12 – a bureau which visitors now pass as they enter the house. By carefully positioning each work of art and object he aimed to create a perfectly balanced whole, as he explains in the seminal book on Kettle’s Yard, ‘A Way of Life’ (1984).

Ede described Kettle’s Yard not as an art gallery or a museum, but ‘a continuing way of life from these last fifty years, in which stray objects, stones, glass, pictures, sculpture, in light and in space, have been used to make manifest the underlying stability which more and more we need to recognise if we are not to be swamped by all that is so rapidly opening up before us.

Ede held open house for two hours each day during term-time, inviting students of the University and other visitors to view the house and collection. Many visitors returning to Kettle’s Yard today recall being invited in as a student to enjoy tea and toast and to learn about art. An important tradition that continues today was the loan of works of art from the collection to students, to be hung in their college rooms for the academic year. Through this generous initiative, Ede enabled others to also live with and curate art and in their own domestic spaces.

It was always Ede’s intention that he would give Kettle’s Yard to a higher education institution, and on 30 November 1966, he officially handed over responsibility for the building and the collection to the University of Cambridge. From 1966, he devoted considerable energy to fund-raising for an extension to accommodate the growing collection, music events, and temporary exhibitions. The extension, designed by Sir Leslie Martin and David Owers, was opened in 1970 by Prince Charles with a performance by Daniel Barenboim and Jacqueline du Pré. Ede continued to live there as ‘honorary curator’ until 1973, when he and Helen left for Edinburgh. Helen died in 1977 and Jim devoted the last years of his life to working as a hospital visitor, until his death in 1990.

Kettle’s Yard continues to thrive today as a unique space in which to view a world-renowned collection of twentieth century art. It also welcomes visitors to enjoy its exhibition programme of modern and contemporary art and public programme of talks and events that reflects both Jim’s support for contemporary artists and his wish that art was for everyone.

Henry Fawcett (1833 – 1884)

Despite being blinded aged 25 in a shooting accident, he became a Liberal MP who campaigned for women’s suffrage. He was later appointed Postmaster-General and introduced parcel post, postal orders, telegrams, and Post Office Savings. He lived in Brookside with his wife and daughter from 1874 to 1884. Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Location: 19 Brookside, Cambridge, CB2 1JE

Henry Fawcett, son of a Salisbury draper, came up to Cambridge in 1852. He entered Peterhouse but after a year migrated to Trinity Hall. This was a time when many students still idled their way through university, but Fawcett pursued the serious studies necessary to take the Mathematical Tripos and graduated in seventh place (Seventh Wrangler) in 1856. He was elected into a Fellowship at Trinity Hall, with the intention of going into law. His early interest in politics and economics continued to grow, and he was developing radical views, under the influence of John Stuart Mill and others.

In 1858 a tragic accident with a shotgun left him blind, but he was determined that this should make no difference to his plans in life. He returned to Cambridge to resume his studies and teaching, and in 1863 was appointed to a new chair as Professor of Political Economy. His interest was practical as well as theoretical, and two years later he entered Parliament as a member for Brighton. During his political career he advocated social reforms for factory and agricultural workers, votes for women, the abolition of religious tests at Oxford and Cambridge and reforms to aid the peoples of India. He was an impressive orator and his independence of thought made him respected by many, if not always by his own party.

As a participant in the women’s suffrage movement, he met the lively and talented Garrett sisters. Though Elizabeth turned down his proposal, to pursue a career as a doctor (against heavy odds), Millicent agreed to marry him, despite his handicap, in 1867. In partnership they supported each other’s work. Millicent gave Henry much secretarial assistance, and Henry encouraged Millicent in her writing and in public speaking. He had published a Manual of Political Economy in 1863, and encouraged Millicent to write and publish Political Economy for Beginners in 1870.

At this time the Fawcetts lived at 18 Brookside, when in Cambridge, and in Lambeth when Fawcett needed to attend parliament. (From 1874 he was member for Hackney.) The house in Brookside was host to many eminent visitors and it was here that the plans that led to the founding of Newnham College were laid. (Their daughter Philippa became a student there in 1887, and astounded conservative opinion by coming top of the University maths list in 1890, ahead of all the men.)

Fawcett had always been a vigorous sportsman and never allowed his blindness to limit his participation. He continued to row regularly with a dons’ boat, to swim (and dive) and even to skate. When the Cam froze over, he skated to Ely, heedless of the dangers of a plunge into the icy waters.

In 1880 Gladstone formed a Liberal government and appointed Fawcett Postmaster General. In this role he was immediately active, seeing the potential for new services that would aid small businesses in particular, and contribute to the national economy. He introduced the parcel post, postal orders and the sixpenny telegram and Post Office Savings schemes. At the same time he looked after the welfare of the Post Office’s employees, who included numbers of women. He also introduced female medical officers

Fawcett had not long to make improvements, for in 1882 he fell ill with diphtheria and was left much weakened. He continued to work, and to support the cause of women’s suffrage, even though Gladstone ignored the movement in the Parliamentary Reform Act of 1884.

In November of the same year Henry Fawcett died of pneumonia at his Brookside house. His funeral saw an unprecedented display of mourning from the many groups of people from very varied walks of life with whom he had worked. Mourners came from parliament and the government, from the University and Trinity Hall, from many branches of the Post Office and its employees, from his constituency and other political groups. The wreaths and flowers covered his coffin and filled another carriage. The long procession that set off for Trumpington church was a witness to the love and admiration felt for his kindliness and his strong principles, his independence and his energy.

He was buried in Trumpington churchyard. The music for the funeral service was played by Villiers Stamford.

Millicent Garrett Fawcett (1847-1929)

She was a leading suffragist and co-founder of Newnham College, and a lifelong campaigner for women’s education and equal citizenship. To quote from a speech she gave in 1913: ‘Courage calls to courage everywhere’. Location: 19 Brookside, Cambridge, CB2 1JE, where she lived.

Millicent Garrett Fawcett (1847-1929) was born in Aldeburgh in Suffolk into a family of pioneering Victorian women. Her father, Newsom Garrett, was a prosperous businessman who built the Maltings in Snape.

Her older sister, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1836-1937), like virtually all the women in the Garrett Family, was an active campaigner for the vote and became the first woman to qualify as a doctor in England. Another of Millicent’s sisters, Agnes Garrett (1845-1935) and her cousin Rhoda Garrett (1841-82) were also trail blazers, setting themselves up as professional interior decorators and designers, R and A Garrett was the first design and decorating company run by women.

Millicent Garrett Fawcett was educated briefly at Miss Browning’s Boarding School at Blackheath run by an aunt of the poet, Robert Browning. At the age of 19 she heard the radical MP, John Stuart Mill make the case for votes for women. She was too young to sign the 1866 suffrage petition but dedicated her life thereafter to the struggle for the vote and in 1891 wrote a new introduction to Mary Wollstonecraft’s great feminist treatise, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Millicent joined several women’s suffrage groups which were writing letters, holding meetings, and lobbying for the vote, becoming President of the largest, the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, from 1897 until 1919. The NUWSS had some 450 branches in towns and villages throughout the country and around 40 in the Eastern counties. 400 students from Girton College and Newnham College marched in London with their banner proclaiming ‘Better is Wisdom than Weapons of War’, which can still be seen in Newnham College.

Millicent Garrett Fawcett’s sympathies had always been with the Liberal Party but she lost patience with the attitudes of Liberal politicians to women’s suffrage. When the Labour Party adopted the policy that it would refuse to support any franchise measure that did not include votes for women on the same terms as men, the NUWSS abandoned its position of political neutrality and advised its supporters to vote Labour. She lived to see her vision of a world in which men and women would vote alongside one another on equal terms become a reality when universal adult suffrage was introduced in 1928, a year before her death.

In 1867 she married the Liberal MP for Brighton, and later Hackney, Henry Fawcett, a strong supporter of votes for women. Henry Fawcett, who had lost his eyesight in a tragic shooting accident, became Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge University. He was an innovative Postmaster-General introducing Post Office Savings Accounts, the telegram, and the parcel post. Acting as Henry’s amanuensis, Millicent Garrett Fawcett was admitted into meetings to which women were usually denied access. It was a very happy marriage and their only daughter Philippa (1868 –1948) was born in 1868. The family moved into 18 Brookside in 1874. The meetings to set up a college for women took place in their drawing room, which regrettably no longer exists. After Henry’s death from pleurisy in 1884 Millicent, widowed at thirty-seven, and bequeathed £9,535 in his will, left Cambridge to live with Philippa and Agnes in London.

Newnham College was co-founded in 1871 by Millicent Garrett Fawcett and her supporter and friend, Henry Sidgwick, and other enlightened members of their social and intellectual circle who believed in higher education for women. Philippa was among its early students. She was a brilliant mathematician and Millicent had the pleasure of watching her daughter gain the highest examination marks and being declared ‘above the Senior Wrangler’ in the Mathematical Tripos in 1890. This, at a time when women at Cambridge were not awarded degrees by Cambridge University and were thought to have limited abilities in Mathematics and Science.

Millicent Garrett Fawcett believed that the vote could only be won through peaceable and lawful means. Her supporters were often referred to as the ‘constitutional suffragists’. The term ‘suffragette’ was invented by The Daily Mail to describe Emmeline Pankhurst and her supporters in the Women’s Social and Political Union which was formed in Manchester in 1903. At first, Millicent welcomed the heightened interest in ‘the cause’ achieved by the suffragettes who used such tactics as chaining themselves to railings and dropping leaflets from the top of high buildings and generously acknowledged how successful the WSPU had been in putting votes for women at the centre of the political arena where her own supporters had failed. However, she grew dismayed as the suffragettes were driven to adopt violent methods.

In What I Remember (1924) Millicent Garrett Fawcett writes; ‘we were convinced that our job was to win the hearts and minds of our countrymen to the justice of our cause, and this could never be done by force and violence’. Yet once the NUWSS had passed a conference motion unequivocally condemning all acts of arson and damage to property she refused to succumb to demands to denounce every woman who broke a pain of glass or set fire to a pillar box. Instead she spoke publicly against force-feeding, the terrible conditions in prison, and the unfairness of the draconian sentences for relatively minor public order offences.

Millicent Garrett Fawcett presided over banquets to welcome released prisoners and praised the courage of women prepared to suffer, and even to die, for their beliefs. The words ‘courage speaks to courage everywhere’ on her statue in Parliament Square are taken from a speech after the death of the suffragette Emily Wilding Davidson who threw herself under the King’s horse at the Epsom Derby in 1913. The Great Pilgrimage of 1912, in which a number of Cambridge suffragists took part, followed the same routes across the country as medieval pilgrims and women wore sashes proclaiming that they were ‘law abiding women suffragists’.

When the First World War broke out in 1914 the NUWSS underwent its greatest internal crisis. Many members saw support for war in any form as a vio-lation of fundamental suffragist principles which were based on peace, non-violence and co-operation. Millicent Garrett Fawcett called upon her supporters to participate in ‘well-thought out plans of national usefulness’, such as the humani-tarian relief work of the Scottish Women’s Hospi-tals for Foreign Service set up by the suffragist Elsie Inglis, but she was faced with mutiny. Support for women’s war work prevailed as official NUWSS policy but there were many resignations.

Millicent Garrett Fawcett is remembered for her lifelong campaigns for women’s suffrage, women’s education, and for equal citizenship when women were barred from entry into the professions and subjected to discrimination in many aspects of the law. But she supported causes which still have resonances for women all over the world. She was an opponent of ‘sweated labour’ and supported Clementina Black’s fight to protect low waged insecure women workers and secure trade union rights. She was entrusted by the government to report on conditions in South Africa and wrote a damming report of the use of torture in concentration camps in the Boer War. She championed the Personal Rights Association which exposed men who were sexually abusing children and exploiting vulnerable young women. Josephine Butler (1928), written with Ethel M. Turner, tells of Butler’s valiant battle to repeal the iniquitous Contagious Diseases Acts which permitted women suspected of prostitution to be arrested arbitrarily and subjected to humiliating internal examinations.

The legacy of this remarkable woman lives on in the unique collection of books held at the Women’s Library at the LSE (formerly the Fawcett Library). It is continued in the Fawcett Society which dates its origins to Mill’s petition and campaigns to remove the disadvantages that women experience in public life including employment, pensions, and the criminal justice system.

In 2018 Millicent Garrett Fawcett became the first woman to be honoured by a statue in Parliament Square, London and a Blue Plaque in her memory was erected at 18 Brookside in Cambridge.

Girton College & Founders

Established in 1869 as Britain’s first residential institution for the higher education of women. Principal founders Emily Davies and Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon. The college was relocated to its current site from Hitchin in 1873. The plaque is located on the entrance tower to Girton College (Tower Drive), Cambridge, CB3 0JG.

Girton College was founded in 1869. It was the first residential establishment in Britain to provide full-time study at degree level for women.

Its origins can be traced back to 1866 when Emily Davies and others interested in the higher education of women initiated a campaign to found, by public subscription, a college for women, ‘designed to hold, in relation to girls’ schools and home teaching, a position analogous to that occupied by the Universities towards the public schools for boys’.

The idea of founding a residential college for women at one of the older universities emerged from the national movement towards the emancipation of women in the mid-nineteenth century and was closely linked with the reform of education in schools and universities. In particular, the foundation of Girton was associated with the admission of girls to Local Examinations and the inclusion of girls’ schools in the schools inquiry commission (the Taunton commission), set up in December 1864.

A leading figure in both these campaigns was Emily Davies whose energy, determination and vigour was instrumental in the realisation of Girton College. Other key figures, who are commemorated in the College coat of arms were Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, Lady Stanley of Alderley and Henry Tomkinson.

Emily Davies by Rudolf Lehmann, 1880. Reproduction with kind permission from The Mistress and Fellows, Girton College, Cambridge.

On 16 October 1869, the College was opened at Benslow House, Hitchin under the name of ‘The College for Women’. In 1872 part of the present site, on the edge of Cambridge, was purchased and the College was renamed Girton College. The removal to new buildings, designed by Sir Alfred Waterhouse, took place in October 1873.

Also in 1872 an association was formed to ‘erect, maintain and conduct a college for the higher education of women’ and ‘to take such steps as from time to time may be thought expedient and effectual to obtain for the students of the College admission to examinations for degrees of the University of Cambridge, and generally to place the College in connection with that university’. However, it was not until 1948 that women were admitted to full membership of the University and Girton College received the status of a college of the University.

Until 1881 the position of women students was particularly fragile as they had to rely on the personal goodwill of University men to enter examinations and have them marked. Repeated applications to the University Senate for full admission failed, women had no formal right of admission to University lectures and laboratories until 1921. The first women were appointed to University lectureships in 1926. In August 1924 a Royal Charter was granted, constituting ‘The Mistress and Governors of Girton College’ as a corporate body. In 1954 a Supplemental Charter changed the title of the Body Corporate to ‘The Mistress, Fellows and Scholars of Girton College’ and constituted the Mistress and all actual Fellows of the College, Bye-Fellows excepted, being graduates, as the Governing Body of the College.

Men have been Fellows since 1976 and in 1979, 110 years after its foundation, Girton enrolled its first male undergraduates.

Davies, Sarah Emily, 1830-1921, pioneer for women’s education

Sarah Emily Davies (always known as Emily), 1830-1921, was a pioneer and a leader in the campaign for women’s education. Her papers reflect the work which she and her contemporaries accomplished for women in both educational and political fields and, in particular, her role in the foundation and early years of Girton College, Cambridge.

Emily Davies was born in Southampton on 22 April 1830, the daughter of the evangelical Anglican clergyman, John Davies. She spent most of her youth in Gateshead, Co. Durham, where her father was Rector of St Mary’s Church from 1839 until his death in 1861. However, visits to her brother, a clergyman in London, drew her into the Langham Place Group network and led her to examine the lives of women in Gateshead and to found a branch of the Society for the Promotion of the Employment of Women in the North East.

After her father’s death she moved to London in 1862 which brought her into closer contact with friends such as Elizabeth Garrett (Anderson) and Barbara Leigh Smith (Bodichon) and enabled her to play a more active role in the women’s movement. She immediately became involved with campaigns to improve women’s education, including those to admit women to University of London degrees, to admit girls to the Cambridge Local Examinations and for the inclusion of girls’ schools in the Schools Enquiry Commission. These campaigns led to other activities; she was a founder of the Kensington Society and of the London Association of Schoolmistresses and she was one of the first women to be elected to the London School Board. She was also active in the campaign for women’s suffrage.

Although her early successes were in securing improved secondary education for girls, Emily Davies’ central concern was the provision of higher education for women, and it is for this that she is best remembered. Her vision to establish a college ‘designed to hold in relation to girls’ schools and home teaching a position analogous to that occupied by the universities towards public schools for boys’ provided the first opportunity in the country for women to receive a university education on exactly the same terms as men and led to the foundation of Girton College in 1869.

Apart from periods of residence at Girton College, Emily Davies continued to live in London until her death, and after her retirement from Girton resumed her involvement in the suffrage movement. Throughout her life she was an active and vigorous committee woman. She published extensively on educational and suffrage issues and she was for a period editor of both the English Woman’s Journal and the Victoria Magazine.

Bodichon, Barbara Leigh Smith, 1827-1891, nee Smith, artist and women’s activist

Barbara Bodichon by Samuel Laurence. Reproduced with kind permission from The Mistress and Fellows, Girton College, Cambridge.

Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon (1827-1891) was the eldest child of the liaison between Anne Longden and Benjamin Leigh Smith, MP for Norwich, 1838 and 1841-1847. Born in Sussex, her childhood was spent between family homes in Hastings and London. From an early age she travelled widely, including an unchaperoned European tour with Bessie Parkes in 1850, and made a first trip to Algiers, which was influential in her life and art, in 1856. She was a cousin of Florence Nightingale and a friend of, amongst others, George Eliot, Emily Davies and Bessie Parkes. In 1857 she married a French doctor, Eugene Bodichon, a resident of Algeria, and for many years thereafter divided each year between Algeria and Britain.

Barbara Bodichon was an artist, a prolific painter of landscapes, her principal exhibitions taking place between 1850 and 1872 at the Royal Academy, the Society of Female Artists and the French Gallery, Pall Mall and other galleries. A leader of the campaigns for women’s work, suffrage, legal rights and education, she founded Portman Hall School and published ‘A Brief Summary of the Most Important Laws Concerning Women’ in 1854, published ‘Women and Work’ in 1857 and, with Bessie Parkes, founded the English Woman’s Journal in 1858. She was also instrumental in the foundation of Girton College in 1869.

Girton College Blue Plaque

On 30 June 2019 a blue plaque was awarded to commemorate the founding and founders of the college. The plaque was unveiled by The Rt Hon Baroness Hale of Richmond, President of the Supreme Court of the UK, as part of celebrations to mark the 150^th anniversary of the college. The plaque was kindly sponsored by Girton College. This was also the first blue plaque to be put up in South Cambridgeshire District and marked the expansion of the blue plaque scheme beyond the boundaries of the city of Cambridge.

The plaque is located on the entrance tower to Girton College (Tower Drive), Cambridge, CB3 0JG.

John Stevens Henslow (1796 – 1861)

He was a professor, churchman, botanist and geologist, and an innovator in universal education. He became a guiding light for his student Charles Darwin, and founded the Cambridge University Botanic Garden in 1831. Location: Entrance to Cambridge Botanic Garden, Brookside, Cambridge, CB2 1JE

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stevens_Henslow

Sir Jack Hobbs (1882 – 1963)

Born in the Barnwell distict of Cambridge, he learned cricket on Parker’s Piece. He played for Cambridgeshire, Surrey, and England, and was the first professional to be knighted, scoring 61,237 runs including 197 centuries in first class cricket. He played in 61 test matches and became known as ‘The Master’. Location: Hobbs Pavilion, Parker’s Piece, Cambridge, CB1 1JH

Jack Hobbs was one of the greatest batsmen known in English cricket. He was the eldest son in a family of twelve, the children of John Cooper Hobbs and Florence (nee Berry). He grew up in Rivar Place, (near York Street) Cambridge and went to St Matthew’s School. His father was on the staff at the University cricket ground, Fenner’s, and also acted as a professional umpire. When Hobbs senior became groundsman and umpire for Jesus College, his son took immense delight in watching cricket there. During the school holidays he used to field at the nets and play his own version of cricket with the college servants, using a tennis ball, a cricket stump for a bat and a tennis post for a wicket. This primitive form of practice laid the foundations for his skill. Although only 10 years old, Jack tried to produce the strokes he had seen University men employ in college matches.

Hobbs was self-taught and never coached. When he was 12, he joined the church choir team of St Matthew’s and was also ‘borrowed’ by the team of Jesus College choir to bat for them. He helped to form the Ivy Boys Club, and they played both cricket and football on Parker’s Piece. During this time he had to work: on leaving school he became an errand boy for a local baker, before moving on to work for a whitesmith, in premises later demolished for the Lion Yard shopping area.

Hobbs was able to watch the best batsmen of the day at Fenner’s, the University cricket ground, or on Parker’s Piece, and spent all the time he could spare practising himself, getting up at six if necessary to play before he went to work. In 1901 he played a few matches for Cambridgeshire as an amateur and the following year got a job as coach and umpire for Bedford Grammar School, and played sometimes, with success, for Royston.

The same year he was first spotted by the Surrey cricketer Tom Haywood who was fielding his own Eleven against Cambridge Town. Hobbs’ style and talent attracted his attention and the following year he suggested a trial for Surrey. This was not straightforward, for Hobbs senior had recently died, leaving his widow a large family to support. Haywood assisted by organising a benefit match, making it possible for Jack Hobbs to consider leaving home and job. The trial was successful and he was engaged on a contract at 30s [£1.50] a week in the summer and £1 in the winter – more than many Cambridgeshire workmen earned.

While he spent two years meeting the residence requirement to play for Surrey, he had ups and downs, but his best included fine innings of 86 against Guy’s Hospital and 195 against Hertfordshire. In 1905 he made his debut in first class cricket, scoring 88 in has first match and 155 in his second.

The following year he married Ada Gates of Cambridge, and they had in time 3 sons and a daughter.

His career with Surrey and then for England saw him make 61,237 runs, including 197 centuries. Between 1908 and 1930 he played in 61 Test matches. The First World War interrupted regular cricket series, and Hobbs worked in a munitions factory and then in the Royal Flying Corps as an Air Mechanic.

Throughout his playing career, cricketers were divided into ‘gentlemen’ who could afford to play without pay and ‘professionals’ who couldn’t. This carefully observed distinction mirrored the social structure of the time, but after the Second World War it became impossible to maintain.

In 1949 Hobbs was amongst the first professional cricketers to be made life members of the MCC (Marylebone Cricket Club) and in 1953 he was the first professional cricketer to be knighted.

Frank Woolley: ‘Jack was one of the greatest sportsmen England ever had, a perfect gentleman and a good- living fellow respected by everyone he met.’

Thomas Hobson (1544-1630)

He was both a carrier and a stable keeper. Discovering that his fastest horses were the most popular, and thus overworked, he established a strict rotation system so customers were only able to rent the next horse in line, which was ‘Hobson’s Choice’. The present Hobson House replaced a workhouse built by his charity. Location: 52–54 St Andrew’s St, Cambridge, CB2 3AH

Over a very long life, Thomas Hobson became one of the best-known names of his time. For decades he carried the goods of Cambridge townspeople and scholars up and down the London road in his great ox-drawn wagons. The wagons set out regularly from Hobson’s yard on Trumpington Street (a site now occupied by St Catharine’s College) to take the three-day journey via Ware to the Bull at Bishopsgate. He inherited this business from his father in 1568, and by the time he died in 1631, had seen three generations bringing their goods and packages to be loaded up.

That would have given him temporary fame, but an idea for a new business project brought him immortality. He decided to branch out, and offer a regular horse hire service. There was a need. Few townspeople could afford to keep their own horse. In addition the undergraduates, mostly gentlemen’s sons, were used to riding for recreation, though only the richest of them could afford to stable their own horses in Cambridge.

Hobson’s second good idea, and the one that counted, was to control the hire, to preserve his valuable animals. He would hire them out strictly in rotation. Each horse would get a decent rest, and the young gentlemen who hoped for fiery steeds on which to race or show off, would have to take Hobson’s choice of horse: that is, they would have no choice at all. If the slowest nag in the stable was the next out, that was what they would get. The ploy quickly became famous, and ‘Hobson’s Choice’ entered the language to mean ‘no choice’. Probably the soberer sort of customer liked the assurance that they would get a well-rested, reliable animal rather than one ruined by careless students.

Hobson’s name in Cambridge is also preserved in the parts of a scheme to bring fresh water to the centre of the town. People often had cause to complain about the rubbish and foulness in the King’s Ditch, which bounded the south and east sides of the town. (It crossed under Trumpington Street where the Pitt Press and Fitzbillies now stand.) A plan to divert water from the Vicar’s Brook northwards, alongside the Trumpington Road and into the Ditch was effected in 1610. It seems that people then suggested the fresh water might also be good to drink, in preference to that from some of the wells and pumps in town. More work was done, to construct additional channels and pipes and to build an outlet, or conduit, on Market Hill. (It now stands at the corner of Lensfield Road.) Why are the new stream and the conduit named after Hobson? He was certainly a benefactor, giving property to help maintain the system, but so were other men. Perhaps in addition he was one of those ‘people’ who pushed to get the whole thing done, using his many contacts round the town to lobby for the project? The open channel in Trumpington Street, for watering animals, was a very handy feature for Hobson himself.

He used some of the profits of his business to go in for property development, which was not popular with everyone. With a rising population, there was a demand for small houses for folk coming into Cambridge from the countryside, to make their fortunes. But many of the better-off residents, gown as well as town, were worried that the new-comers would be poor people with no skills or savings, who would end up begging for support from the parish rates. Hobson and others like him were blamed for encouraging the influx and for building their new properties with thatch roofs – a great fire hazard in built-up areas.

Maybe it was to redress this, that Hobson gave a particular legacy to the town: he provided land and properties in St Andrew’s Street for the building of a house (afterwards called the Spinning House) ‘as well for setting the poor people to work … as for a house of correction for unruly and stubborn rogues beggars and other poor persons who should refuse to work’. The Master was to be a weaver, who would supply wool and flax for the inmates to spin into yarn. (As time went on, the House became more and more a jail, and was used by the University to lock up town girl’s accused of prostitution. After particularly notorious cases in 1891, the University’s power was given up, and the Spinning House closed. It was demolished in 1901 and a police station built on the site.)

Hobson finally died in January 1631, commemorated also in a facetious poem by the poet Milton, who suggested Death had for years pursued Hobson up and down the London road, only catching him when a plague outbreak prohibited all transport. He was buried in St Bene’t’s church. There are several representations of Hobson, all showing a robust bearded figure, some clutching a bulging money-bag to symbolise the profits of his labours.

Thomas Hobson’s enterprise and business acumen certainly earned him a fortune and some of this he gave in charitable bequests to the town. It may be that the power of persuading others was an even more important factor in his legacy.

Sir Fred Hoyle (1915-2001)

Astronomer who discovered how carbon and heavier elements are made in stars. Cosmologist who named the Big Bang while promoting the alternative steady-state model of the Universe. Location: Ivy Lodge, 7 Linton Road in Great Abington where he once lived.

Fred Hoyle (1915 – 2001) was a hugely influential, distinguished and imaginative scientist who devoted his career to understanding the entire universe and its contents. A national figure, he received a knighthood in 1972 for his many distinguished contributions to the advancement of astronomy.

He grew up in west Yorkshire in Gilstead a village near Bingley, where he attended the grammar school. In 1933 he arrived in Cambridge after winning admission to read mathematics at Emmanuel College, at which he excelled. During the Second World War he worked on radar research for the Admiralty, returning to Cambridge in 1945 as a research fellow at St John’s College.

Hoyle’s Cambridge years 1945 – 1972 encapsulate his enduring contributions to astronomy and cosmology.

In 1946 he showed that inside massive stars very high temperatures led to nuclear fusion reactions that created carbon and the heavy elements from helium. He continued to work on this concept for the next ten years, becoming a world expert on the origin and distribution of the chemical elements in the universe by exploding stars.

From early 1950, Hoyle and his students pioneered of the application of early computers to model the evolution of stars. They used EDSAC at the University of Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory in Downing Street.

In the 1950s and 1960s Hoyle excelled at engaging with the curious public, captivated by his startling ideas on the nature of the expanding universe and its origin. His ‘steady-state theory’ was his response to those who concluded that the universe had a beginning. The steady-state universe was perceived as eternal and unchanging, with new matter being created to fill the voids as the galaxies became further apart. The term ‘Big Bang’ was a striking image conjured up for the public listening to his BBC radio broadcast on 28 March 1949, which he used to refer to the alternative theory to the ‘steady-state’.

In 1967 Hoyle founded the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy, located in the grounds of the University Observatories on Madingley Road. The Institute’s summer visitor programme was an immediate success in attracting world class researchers in astrophysics and cosmology to Cambridge.

Fred Hoyle’s unique approach to science included a large number of science fiction novels, most famously The Black Cloud published in 1950, in which he imagined adventurous scenarios that did not meet the plausibility requirements of the professional literature but delighted his fans.

The Hoyle family lived at Ivy Lodge in Great Abington in 1946, remaining there for a decade until moving to Clarkson Close, Cambridge. In his autobiography Fred says that although the move to Cambridge was an improvement in convenience, “we felt the loss of the sense of security one feels as a result of living for a decade in a village.”

The blue plaque was kindly unveiled by the Astronomer Royal, Lord Rees, at a special event at the Cambridge Institute of Astronomy in March 2022, and the plaque has been installed at Ivy Lodge, 7 Linton Road in Great Abington where he once lived.

We could not have created Fred’s blue plaque without the financial support from Geoff and Jo Harvey, Ceri and Alison Lewis, Steve Holmes and Elizabeth Crowe, Great Abington Parish Council and South Cambs District Council to whom we are incredibly grateful. The plaque is also supported financially by Cambridge Past, Present & Future.

Hughes Hall

Hughes Hall, a graduate college of Cambridge University, was founded in Crofton Cottages in 1885. It was the first British institution to provide specialised teacher training for women graduates. The College moved to its permanent home overlooking Fenner’s Cricket Ground in 1895. Location: 1–3 Merton Street, Cambridge, CB3 9JD

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hughes_Hall,_Cambridge

Charles Humfrey (1772 – 1848)

He was an architect, developer, banker and mayor. He led the development of Doll’s Close, a small field beside Newmarket Road, which included building houses and terraces in Maid’s Causeway and Willow Walk. They remain an enduring legacy to his native town. Location: Newmarket Rd, Cambridge, CB5 5DT

Charles Humfrey, baptised in Great St Andrew’s church, was given the same name as his father, a carpenter and builder. Charles jnr was sent to London to learn more of architecture from James Wyatt, and had some of his designs exhibited there.
Humfrey returned to Cambridge to take up his father’s business. He was fortunate to live at the time when the growth in population nationally meant more housing was required. In Cambridge, this and other changes led to the Enclosure Acts of 1802 and 1811 – the large open fields on other side of Cambridge, hitherto owned and occupied in narrow strips, were re-allocated and consolidated so that owners could use their fields as they wished, and not in co-operation with other strip owners. Those whose new holdings were close to the town now had the choice of agriculture or housing development.

Humfrey led the way, with the development of Doll’s Close, a small field beside the Newmarket road, just beyond the existing houses. His comprehensive scheme was to combine a row of substantial houses beside the road, with views of the common and the river, with more modest terraces to the sides and behind. Curtain walls linked the ranges into a tasteful whole, with a passage through one side to provide a back entrance to the gardens and yards. Most of this scheme survives today, on Maids Causeway, Fair Street, Short Street and Willow Walk. When built, Willow Walk also enjoyed open views in front, but subsequent building of New Squre cut these off.

He designed many other houses and terraces in and outside Cambridge, mostly in Cambridge white brick and in the restrained but dignified style of the early nineteenth century. Many survive today, in Tennis Court Road, Parkside and elsewhere, and influenced the lesser developers of that era. With William Wilkins (Blue Plaque in Lensfield Road), Humfrey significantly shaped the style and appearance of Cambridge in that era.

Humfrey’s own home, Clarendon House, occupied the area between the present Parker Street and Orchard Street. It was a fine house with extensive gardens of valuable fruit trees as well as lawns and borders. The servants’ houses in Orchard Street were built with first floor windows at the back, so that they could not look over his garden wall. This street survives as one of the prettiest in Cambridge.

Humfrey’s political interests were with the reformers of the day, and he became the second Mayor of Cambridge, after the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 cleaned up the previous corrupt administration. He also filled other public offices, and was very active in the social life of the town and University.

His financial affairs did not do well however, and despite his further useful housing projects across the town, he went bankrupt. His goods and house had to be sold in 1846, and he retired to Islington where he died in 1848.

Eglantyne Jebb (1876 – 1928)

She was a social reformer and researcher in Cambridge. She became involved in the Charity Organisation Society, housed at 82 Regent Street, and later founded Save the Children. It was her observation that ‘Every war, just or unjust, is a war against the child’. Location: 82 Regent St, Cambridge, CB2 1DP

Eglantyne Jebb was born into a well-to-do country family in Shropshire. She was one of six children of Arthur Jebb and his wife Eglantyne. The couple had markedly liberal and progressive ideas and encouraged the development of all their children.

After education at Oxford, and a short-lived attempt to teach, Eglantyne found herself in Cambridge, nursing her sick mother. Here she met Mrs Margaret Keynes, mother of Maynard Keynes, the economist . Mrs. Keynes was Secretary and driving force of the Cambridge-based “Charity Organisation Society” (COS), which aimed to define the best ways to run charities and aid groups, through research and scientific methods.

In 1903 Mrs. Keynes employed Eglantyne in the COS, whose office was in Regent Street, giving her the first real taste of effective charity work. Eglantyne researched the conditions of life in east Cambridge and wrote a well-received book on poverty in the city called Cambridge: A Social Study (Macmillan, 1906). This set out some forward-thinking ideas and practical suggestions – laying the ground for Eglantyne’s focus on education and continuing development programmes as keys to helping the disadvantaged. The book, and her work at COS, gave her a sound understanding of how to make a charitable organization work. She worked at the COS until spring 1908.

During 1917 Eglantyne volunteered to help her sister Dorothy, who had permission to import and republish news stories from Europe, which balanced the propaganda, put out by the British government. It became clear, as the First World War drew to a close, that there were terrible social effects from the allied blockade of Europe. The magazine served not only to increase the two sisters’ resolve to make a difference, but also made them, at the war’s end, amongst the most well-informed people on the state of European society. News was bad – there were shortages of food, linen for newborn babies and other daily necessities.

The blockade was extended after the 1918 Armistice and a “Fight the Famine Council” was started in order to get political agreement to raise the blockade. In 1919, Dorothy succeeded in getting this largely politically oriented pressure group to agree to a separate “Save the Children Fund”. This aimed to provide real aid to children across Europe.
On May 19th, Eglantyne, aided by her sister, led a major meeting at the Albert Hall to announce the fund.

“An associate of Eglantyne’s describes the scene: “The public arrived supplied with rotten apples destined to be thrown at the head of ‘the traitors who wanted to raise money for enemy children’. But they did not insult Eglantyne Jebb; they were forced to listen to her. She began hesitantly, then, gaining by the fervour of her mission, her voice became louder. Did she convince you? It was not by the arguments, but by the passionate conviction for the cause that she defended.”

On January 6th 1920, Eglantyne succeeded in starting the International Save the Children Union, in Geneva. She built up excellent relationships with other Geneva-based organizations, including the Red Cross who supported Save’s International foundation.
Eglantyne believed that every country should do its best to help its own people, and not just rely on aid. So as Save became a success across the British Empire – and spread to many other countries – the focus was not just on relief for war victims, but also for the disadvantaged children of each country. Whilst many other aid agencies were channelling help to adults, it was Eglantyne’s firm opinion that children had the greatest need. She wrote
“Every generation of children, in fact, offers mankind the possibility of rebuilding his ruin of a world”.
Through the children she saw the best hope of lasting peace.

By August of 1921, the UK Save the Children had raised over £1,000,000, and Central European conditions were slowly getting better. However, at that time a massive famine struck the ‘bread basket’ Volga region of Russia. Eglantyne and Save needed to go to work with renewed vigour. It was this event that also forced Eglantyne and Dorothy to realise that Save the Children needed to be a permanent organization, and could not simply be disbanded once the job of repairing war damage in Europe was done. So, from 1921 to 1923 Save the Children swung into action. Press campaign and movies were made, and feeding centres set up. 157 million meals for 300,000 children were provided during the Russian famine.

In 1923, Eglantyne drafted a declaration of the Rights of the Child. These five simple statements were endorsed by the League of Nations in 1924. Eventually an extended, seven statement declaration became the UN’s ‘Rights of the Child’.

Although her work took her interests far away from Cambridge (and she died in Geneva) her five years in the town learning how to analyse and respond to social need were a very important preparation to the later work for which she is deservedly reme.

Leah Manning (1886-1977)

Dame Leah Manning was a campaigner for children’s welfare and women’s rights. She trained as a teacher at Homerton College and started her career at the former New Street Ragged School, where the plaque is positioned in Young Street, Cambridge CB1 2LZ

Leah Manning by Palmer Clarke courtesy of Cambridge Collection

Leah Manning trained at Homerton College, and started her teaching career at the New Street Ragged School, from 1908 to 1917.

She made her mark campaigning for the local children of Barnwell, then an area of great deprivation. She lobbied the City Council to provide milk and school meals, and set up an after-school play centre and holiday activities, going on to head the first Cambridge Open Air School for sick and undernourished children from 1920-1930.

She was an activist for women’s rights, one of the first women JPs and joined in founding Cambridge’s first birth control clinic. Active in the Cambridge Labour Party she supported especially women workers in the General Strike and became President of the National Union of Teachers.

Internationally, Manning’s most lasting legacy is her effort to secure the evacuation to Britain of 4,000 children from Bilbao to Britain during the Spanish Civil War in 1937.

Manning was elected as MP for Epping in 1945, becoming heavily involved in policy-making for educational reform, social reconstruction and international peace. She was a lifelong champion of causes affecting women and children, advocating for women’s rights, birth control and equal pay.

Student Life and Early Teaching Career

Educated in a London Elementary School, Leah Manning entered Homerton College, Cambridge in 1906 as a trainee teacher. As a student she enjoyed her social life, played hockey and tennis, swam and enjoyed picnics on the river without permission or even chaperones! She chaired the debating society and drama club, and – already a strong Christian socialist – was secretary of the Christian Union.

Active in politics, she joined the Fabian Society and the Labour Party, and was mentored by Hugh Dalton, then a student at King’s College, later MP and cabinet minister.

From 1901 Homerton had supported and extended the ‘undenominational’ New Street Ragged School, in a very deprived area of east Cambridge. But College governors had become dissatisfied with its teaching. On completing her course, Manning was asked by Principal Mary Allan to take up a post at the school, expecting she had the skills and sense of responsibility to bring about improvement.

From 1908–1918 Manning promoted improvements in the education, health and welfare of children in her school and community. She was resourceful in setting up an after-school play centre, with student volunteers.

In this she gained support from Florence Keynes and the National Council of Women.

Leah Manning in 1906 courtesy of Homerton College

Teaching, Social Welfare and Civic Activity

Taking personal responsibility for the welfare of pupils and community, Manning cultivated strong resilience in the face of opposition. She publicly denounced the City Council over the death of an underfed child, was summoned before the committee for disciplinary action, but secured provision of milk and meals at school.

In the 1914–18 war she trained and worked in her spare time as a volunteer nurse in the tented military hospital on West Road. She took on significant public roles, on the Borough Food Control Committee, a local Insurance Committee, as Chair of Cambridge Trades Council, and of the local Independent Labour Party.

With local activists she campaigned for women’s rights, and in 1921 joined with others in opening Cambridge’s first Family Planning Clinic. That year she was appointed one of the first three women JPs in Cambridge Magistrates’ Court. In 1920 she was appointed to head a new open-air school for children in poor health, where she found success and fulfilment.

She remained as Headteacher until 1930, opening a new purpose built open-air school in 1927.

Trade Union and National Politics

Manning’s leadership qualities were in demand nationally as well as locally. In 1924 she was elected to the National Executive of the National Union of Teachers (NUT), a largely male dominated union. In 1930, she was the fourth woman president to be elected in 60 years.

As President she stressed her ‘faith in the value and potential of each individual life’. She was seen to preside over the annual conference with ‘efficiency, charm and dignity’.

In her membership of the Women’s Freedom League, she campaigned for equality of rights and opportunities between the sexes, to promote communal wellbeing, and for election of women to Parliament and other public bodies.

The first woman ever sponsored by the NUT for parliamentary election, she was elected MP for Islington East, 1931.

In the House of Commons she made education and foreign affairs her particular interests. She was a forceful advocate for women’s rights, equal pay and birth control.

Resolute in her own principles, she would defy the party whip when necessary. Despite her pacifism she respected a public vote in the 1935 ‘peace ballot’ for armed resistance against Fascist aggression.

International Aid and Child Rescue

Manning espoused internationalist ideals, cooperation for peace, was a founding member of the English Speaking Union, travelled frequently to Europe, and conducted a lecture tour for the Women’s Club of America.

In the 1920s she visited the USSR to observe socialism there, and Germany to meet opponents of Nazism. She was active in opposing the threat of fascism in the 1930s and 1940s in the Committee for Relief of Victims of Fascism and as Chair of the Women’s Committee against War and Fascism.

Her travels abroad were targeted in attacks by the press and political opponents, labelling her a ‘red menace’. But she retained her Christian faith, and much of her peace work was conducted in collaboration with the Quakers.

She visited Spain before and during the Civil War, publicising repression and persecution of the Basque people, and raising funds for medical supplies. At the request of the Basque government, she visited the besieged city of Bilbao in 1937 and personally arranged the evacuation of nearly 4000 children to Britain.

Leah Manning by Ramsay-Muspratt courtesy of Cambridgeshire Collection

National Politics, Children & Community

In 1945 Manning was elected MP for Epping, and brought her professional teaching experience to bear in policy-making for educational reform, social reconstruction and international peace. Her constituency included Harlow, and she vociferously defended the New Town policy for displaced Londoners.

She advocated decent housing for working people, with attention to building communities and good quality living environments.

‘Growing Up’ was the post-war Labour government’s plan for women and children. Manning authored a booklet explaining new approaches to childcare in the family and provision for nursery and infant education.

Action and enterprise continued to mark her years of retirement. A major commitment was family planning, and in 1964 she started a controversial new clinic in Harlow providing contraception for unmarried couples.

She won acclaim as a champion of women’s causes and as an outstanding constituency MP. She made BBC radio broadcasts, on topics including her memories of New Street Ragged School. In 1966 she was honoured as Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. A centre for the elderly in Harlow was named in her memory.

In 1970 she published her autobiography A Life for Education, of which a reviewer noted how, from an early age, she felt her Christian beliefs could be practically expressed through socialist politics – a clear moral purpose to bring human betterment at home and abroad.

Leah Manning Blue Plaque

Manning’s plaque is on the wall of the former New Street Ragged School, now the Jerome Booth Music Therapy Centre at Anglia Ruskin University, Young Street, Cambridge CB1 2LZ. We are grateful for the University’s permission to install the plaque. The blue plaque was unveiled by Manning’s friend, Stan Newens, at a ceremony at Homerton College on 28 September 2019 and followed up with another commemorative event at Anglia Ruskin University on 15 January 2020. The plaque was kindly sponsored by Homerton College.

We are grateful to Dr Peter Cunningham for writing this biography, which was taken from a pamphlet produced for the unveiling event. Click here to download the pamphlet.

John Maynard Keynes (1883 – 1946)

He was a Fellow and Bursar of King’s College, and was an economist, philosopher, businessman, civil servant, and diplomat. He founded the Cambridge Arts Theatre on 3rd February 1936. Location: 6 St Edward’s Passage, Cambridge CB2 3PL

John Maynard Keynes was the elder son of a Cambridge academic marriage, between John Neville Keynes, lately of Pembroke College and Florence Brown, one of the early students of Newnham College. Maynard was born and brought up at 6 Harvey Road, where his parents lived for the rest of their lives.

After school at Eton, he was admitted to King’s College to read Maths, but his energetic mind sought and absorbed material from many other fields. He graduated in 1905 and turned to Economics, which had only recently become a Cambridge Tripos course. Then, after two years in the civil service in London, where his work included the study of finance and currency in India, he returned to Cambridge as a lecturer in economics and a Fellow of King’s. From 1909 until 1915 he taught, studied and wrote, becoming also editor of the Economic Journal. His influence and reputation spread, and in the early days of World War I he was invited to work in the Treasury, where he stayed for the duration of the war. His work brought him in contact with a wide and influential circle including successive prime ministers. At the close of the war, he was involved as Treasury representative with calculations of German reparations. He disagreed strongly with the final punitive terms, and resigned his post to write Economic Consequences of the Peace.

He returned to spend more time in Cambridge, but observed in a letter to his mother, ‘It’s amusing to pass from Cambridge, where I’m a nonentity, to London, where I’m a celebrity.’
During the twenties and thirties he engaged in speculation in foreign currencies. After an initial failure, he exercised greater care and enjoyed great success. He was appointed First Bursar of King’s College in 1924 and was able to employ his skill in investment to the benefit of the College. ‘His success in increasing the revenues of King’s was spectacular…’ To combine his various interests, he spent long weekends at King’s, short weeks in London. He was engaged in boards and committees for a number of commercial organisations, but continued to teach and write. He published A Treatise on Money in 1930 followed by the General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money in 1936 which expanded further his international reputation and influenced President Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’ in America.

From his early days he took an active interest in books, becoming a regular customer of David’s bookstall on Cambridge market, and the arts. He was one of the Bloomsbury group, a set of artists and writers which had its origins in Cambridge before coalescing in that area of London. In 1919 the Russian Diaghilev brought his ballet company to London, with the celebrated ballerina Lydia Lopokova. On a second visit, in 1921, Keynes fell in love with Lydia. She remained in London, was introduced to the Bloomsbury circle and danced in various productions. In August 1925 she and Keynes were married and their shared interest in the theatre remained an important part of Keynes’ life.

In the early thirties, Keynes’ interest in the arts focused on Cambridge, where he had discerned a lack of provision for the performing arts. He had all the resources and contacts needed to take action. He conceived the notion of a theatre that would accommodate drama, music, opera, dance and cinema, to be built on land belonging to King’s College. The Arts Theatre was opened in 1936:
‘Keynes was in every sense responsible – for the idea, for the execution, and for the finance.’ He had personal reasons too for the foundation. In a letter to the mayor, he said that the establishment of the theatre Trust, with the prospect of being of equal benefit to town and University, should also be a form of memorial to his parents, who had spent active and productive lives in the local community for over fifty years. (His mother was a Borough Councillor, mayor in 1932-3.)
Keynes was often at the theatre, not only for his own pleasure, but also because he was determined that the finances should not be endangered by a lack of attention to detail. Nothing was too trivial for him. ‘There was even an occasion when, by some mishap, the box-office clerk failed to appear and Keynes himself went into the box-office to issue tickets.’ From 1937 he and Lydia took a Cambridge flat at 17a St Edward’s Passage, looking across the churchyard to the theatre.
In November that year he suffered a very serious heart attack, and although he recovered and resumed a demanding life, lesser attacks followed.

At the outbreak of World War II Keynes returned to the Treasury. He was created a peer (Lord Keynes of Tilton) in 1942.
Despite the other demands made on him, he retained his strong commitment to the arts, as a force for good. He became Chairman of the Committee for the Encouragement of Music and Arts (CEMA) in 1942 and mapped out the national support for the arts, which then took long-term form as the Arts Council.

While still negotiating post-war financial agreements with America, he collapsed and died in 1946.

Agnes Smith Lewis (1843-1926 ) & Margaret Dunlop Gibson (1843-1920)

Twin sisters and intrepid Biblical scholars, they donated land for the building of Westminster College. The twins were born in Irvine, in Scotland and lived in Cambridge from 1888 until their deaths. It was in Cambridge that they became eminent scholars of ancient Biblical manuscripts in Greek, Hebrew, Arabic and Syriac. The plaque is located on the entrance gate to Westminster College on Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0AA.

(Portrait of Agnes Smith Lewis by James Peddie with permission of Westminster College)

Their mother died two weeks after they were born, and they were raised by their father, John Smith, a lawyer who firmly believed in education for his daughters. Their father died when the twins were only 23, leaving them independent – and independently wealthy. In 1868, Margaret and Agnes embarked on a year-long trip to Egypt – the first of a total of nine visits they were to make to the country – going up the Nile, and on via Jaffa to Jerusalem.

After their return, in 1883, Margaret married James Young Gibson, essayist and translator; but she was widowed after only three years of marriage. The sisters then moved to Cambridge, where Agnes married Samuel Savage Lewis, Fellow of Corpus Christi College and Parker Librarian, in 1887. The sisters wrote books and novels, and learned Arabic, Hebrew, and Syriac; and after the death of Samuel Savage Lewis in 1891, they devoted themselves to the study of Biblical manuscripts.

In 1892 they visited Egypt again, and at St Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai they famously discovered the Sinaitic palimpsest – the oldest known copy of the Gospels. In 1893 they returned to photograph, transcribe, and translate the manuscript, with three other Cambridge scholars, RL Bensly, Francis Burkitt, and James Rendel Harris.

(Portrait of Margaret Dunlop Gibson by James Peddie with permission of Westminster College)

Following this pioneering research, the sisters also found – on a visit to Cairo in 1896 – leaves from an early 11-12th century Hebrew manuscript of Ecclesiasticus (also called Sirach or Ben Sira). Using the leaves the sisters had found, Solomon Schechter discovered the lost Cairo Genizah – an area in a synagogue for storing worn-out books and papers – and in 1897 the sisters joined Schechter in working to collect the material found there. With the permission of the Chief Rabbi of Cairo, Schechter took it back to Cambridge, and it is now housed in the Genizah Research Unit at the University Library.

In recognition of their achievements, and at a time when Cambridge University did not award degrees to women, Mrs Lewis was awarded an honorary doctorate from Halle in 1899, and both sisters were given honorary doctorates by the University of St Andrew’s, Heidelberg, and Trinity College, Dublin.

The sisters were also committed to ensuring that learning was passed on, and the motto above the door in their home in Cambridge was ‘lampada tradam’ – ‘I will pass on the torch’. On their death, their manuscripts were given to Westminster College; and the material they brought back from the Genizah has recently been reunited with Solomon Schechter’s collection at the University Library, for study by the global community of scholars.

As Presbyterians, another expression of the sisters’ commitment to learning was their generosity to Westminster College, then the training college for the Presbyterian Church of England. In 1896 the College moved from London to its current site in Cambridge, onto land Mrs Lewis and Mrs Gibson purchased from St John’s College and gave to the Church. The sisters gave generously to the building appeal, laid the foundation stone for the College in 1897, and endowed the Lewis-Gibson scholarship, which still runs. Westminster College opened in 1899, and still trains people for ministry today.

A book about the sisters by Professor Janet Soskice was published in 2009 Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Found the Hidden Gospels.

You can view the remarkable travel photographs of the sisters on Cambridge University Library’s Digital Library website by clicking here.

A blue plaque to commemorate the twin sisters was unveiled by Professor Soskice at a ceremony at Westminster College on 1 June 2019. The plaque was kindly sponsored by Westminster College.

David Gregory Marshall (1873 – 1942)

He was a University caterer, a sportsman, and an early pioneer of motoring and flying. He was the founder of Marshall of Cambridge; the Head Office was situated in Jesus Lane from 1912 to 1939, and continued as a garage until 2000. Location: Jesus Lane, Cambridge, CB5 9BJ.

David Gregory Marshall was born in Cambridge in humble circumstances and had to make his own way in life. At the age of 14 in 1887, he began his apprenticeship in the kitchens of Trinity College, where his entrepreneurial spirit and business sense were quickly recognised. This led at the beginning of the century, to his being appointed as Steward and Manager of the University Pitt Club, where he was given the responsibility of recovering the Club’s poor financial position. Sir Walter Morley Fletcher, the President, wrote in his History of the University Pitt Club that ‘Mr D G Marshall’s services to the Club were very remarkable. It was he who instituted the system of catering on a wide and profitable scale and, during his stewardship; the Club acquired a large and elaborate kitchen. Until he came to the office, the accounts showed a regular deficit but, after one term of his management, profits appeared. “Napoleon of the Pitt” as he came to be called, laid the foundations of his present prosperous garage and aerodrome business by providing private cars, which members might hire. One of these, with a smart chauffeur, was regularly seen waiting outside the Club in Jesus Lane.’

In 1906, David Marshall visited Paris for the first time and was amazed at the advanced state of motoring compared with England. He made up his mind that he must somehow get into the motoring business as soon as possible, and he established a chauffeur drive business in a stable in Brunswick Gardens in 1909, where he garaged his two Metallurgique saloon cars, and in 1910 extended to a garage in King Street before the addition of a Cottin-Desgouttes landaulette and a touring car, all providing transport for the wealthy dons and undergraduates. In 1912 the business moved to a new garage and showroom in Jesus Lane, on the site of the old Crown Inn and livery stables.

David Marshall was enthused by aviation and his first direct contact with it was in 1912 when his mechanics assisted in repairs to an Army airship ‘The Beta’ which had made a forced landing in Jesus College grounds, immediately behind the garage. During the 1914 – 1918 War, the Jesus Lane garage was used for servicing and repairing vehicles required for the war effort, including Rolls-Royce armoured cars and also the ambulances used for collecting the seriously wounded soldiers from the railway station and taking them to the First Eastern General Hospital, a hutted hospital (on the site of the present University Library) and the largest in the country. During this time the Company changed its name to Marshall’s Garage.

David Marshall, over military age at 42, was determined to join the forces. He was on good terms with some Quaker members of the Pitt Club and he was able to go to France for several months in a voluntary capacity with a catering unit, wearing a uniformed officer’s ranking with responsibility for building up the Catering Units immediately behind the front lines. He was awarded the Mons medal for this service. Returning from France, he was appointed to organise the catering at the Woolwich Arsenal, where he provided over 50,000 meals, day and night, for munitions workers. It was during the course of this work, for which he was awarded the MBE that Marshall was asked by the Ministry of Food to advise on canteen problems at the Austin factory at Longbridge Birmingham. This inspired him, after the war, to seek an Austin dealership and in 1920 he obtained the first dealership in Cambridgeshire.

Marshall was known in local circles both for his business integrity (he reinsured customers at his own expense when the company he had first used went bankrupt) and for his keen participation in all forms of sport. He had a particular enthusiasm for riding and imported Arab horses from Egypt. He was also keen on horse racing, and his horses had some success.

His son Arthur joined him in the garage business in 1926. They also pursued their shared interest in aviation and opened a flying school in 1929. This was a popular venture, with both University and townsmen, and Marshall bought farmland (now the Whitehill Road estate) for an airfield.

Although Marshall had not long retired to Hove, the outbreak of World War II brought him back to Cambridge to play a part in the company’s support for the war effort. Pilots were trained for the RAF and aircraft repaired and modified. During the War the Company elementary-trained over 20,000 pilots and repaired or modified over 5,000 aircraft.

David Marshall died suddenly on 9 July 1942 whilst riding one of his Arab horses on Coldham’s Common near the airdrome.

Henry Morris (1889 – 1961)

He is known primarily as the pioneer of Communitiy Education, and in particular, the Cambridgeshire Village Colleges. As the Chief Education Officer for Cambridgeshire for over thirty years, his vision was to provide ‘Education from the cradle to the grave’. Location: 4 Silver St, Cambridge, CB3 9ET

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Morris_(education)

Richarda Morrow-Tait ‘Dikki’ (1923-1982)

Pilot and Adventurer. The first woman to fly around the world aboard ‘Thursdays child’ in 1949. Location of plaque: St Regis Flats, Clare College, Chesterton Road Cambridge CB4 1BZ (between 102-104 Chesterton Road).

Richarda Morrow-Tait by PA Images. Editorial and non-profit social media license

Richarda was inspired to fly whilst at school during the 1930s, which was known as the golden age of female aviators. She signed up with the Cambridge Aero Club after the Second World War. Two years later with only 85 hours flying experience she started her round the world flight, setting off from Cambridge Airport to her official start point at Croydon Airport. What was supposed to be a flight of six to eight weeks turned into an adventure of a year and a day ending on 19 August 1949. She used two aeroplanes named ‘Thursday’s Child’ and ‘Next Thursday’s Child’. At this pivotal time in Richarda’s life her home was in the St Regis flats, Chesterton Road, Cambridge. The flats have been replaced with student accommodation for Clare College, Cambridge, and the blue plaque for Richarda is installed on the outside of that building.

Richarda Morrow-Tait ‘Dikki’ was born on 22 November 1923 in Ickleton, Cambridgeshire. She was the youngest of three daughters born to Arthur Lionel Routh and Avery Caroline Routh (née Tetley). She was the granddaughter of Richarda Biddell (née Airy) and George Biddell Airy, 7th Astronomer Royal. Aged 10, she attended the Stephen Perse Cambridge (then the Perse School for Girls), which was founded as part of the 19th century movement to educate women, providing them with the opportunities to forge lives and careers for themselves.

In 1939 Richarda left school and earned qualifications at the Cambridge Secretarial Training School. She went on to work as a secretary for a civil engineer called Norman Morrow-Tait, who eventually became her husband. It was her husband who encouraged her to learn to fly at the Cambridge Aero Club after the Second World War as soon as the ban on civil aviation was lifted on 1 January 1946. She was one of three people to sign up at Cambridge Aero Club on the first day possible to do so, and the first person in the country to obtain her civil flying licence after the War. Her daughter, Anna, was born later the same year. She had already started to plan for her round the world flight.

On 18 August 1948, aged 24, Richarda left Cambridge Airport to fly to her official start point from Croydon Airport. Her navigator was Michael Townsend, a mature Geography student from Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, who had recently returned from war service with the RAF. The aeroplane was a Percival Proctor IV (G-AJMU) called ‘Thursday’s Child’ as Richarda was born on a Thursday, and she had ‘far to go’. The flight was eventful and included a minor crash at the first stop in France; a 9-weeks’ delay in India for new parts; a forced landing in Japan by British Mustangs; an escort from a US B-17 to the Aleutian islands; and then a major crash in Alaska in snowy conditions.

Richarda then spent four months fundraising for a new aeroplane including giving lectures, radio interviews, and singing in a nightclub. She also had to find a second navigator as her first navigator had to return to Cambridge to sit his final exams and graduate from University. Richarda’s second aeroplane was a BT-13 Vultee Valiant (NX-54084) called ‘Next Thursday’s Child’. Her second navigator was Jack Ellis, who had also served in the RAF and who remained with Richarda for three months, until her first navigator returned.

Richarda landed back at Croydon Airport on 19 August 1949 where she was greeted on arrival by the Press, and her husband and daughter, who handed her a bunch of gladioli. Her flight had taken one year and one day.

Following her return, Richarda wrote the story of her flight, but she did not go on to publish it in her lifetime due to the scandal caused by returning home pregnant by her first navigator – and her husband divorced her.

Richarda maintained her flying licence into the 1960s and lead a relatively quiet life after her round the world flight. She died, aged 59, on 17 December 1982 in Maldon, Essex.

After Richarda’s death the manuscript of her story was re-discovered by her second husband who went on to publish ‘Thursday’s Child: The Story of the First Flight Round the World by a Woman Pilot’, which was jointly edited by him together with Norman H. Ellison.

Richarda still holds the record for being the youngest woman with a navigator to fly around the world, and until 2022 retained the overall record for the youngest woman to fly around the world.

19 August 2024 was the 75th anniversary of the completion of the flight, and a blue plaque unveiling event took place on that date at Marshall of Cambridge, Cambridge Airport. At the event, a new variety of white miniature gladiolus named ‘Thursday’s Child’ after Dikki’s aeroplane were baptised.

Cambridge Past, Present & Future is very grateful to the many people and organisations who made this plaque and the event possible, in particular the support of Emma Easterbrook, Giles Townsend, Clare College, Cambridge Aero Club and Marshall of Cambridge.

Oonagh Langrishe-Vernon, Nick Langrishe, Polly Vacher, Emma Easterbrook, Jaqueline Tasioulas, Penny Heath, Terry Holloway

John Mortlock (1755 – 1816)

The house at 10 Peas Hill was once his home where he opened the first banking house in Cambridge. He was a draper, banker, MP, recorder and 13-times mayor, and was hence known as the ‘Master of the town of Cambridge’. He was called corrupt by his political oppenents, which led to his stance: ‘That which you call corruption I call influence’. Location: 10 Peas Hill, Cambridge, CB2 3QB

The very sleepy Cambridge of the 1770s was given a jolt when young John Mortlock, third of the name, jumped over the draper’s counter to enter local politics. His family was moderately prosperous and owned property south of the town at Pampisford. They had made no particular mark in Cambridge affairs and had not even become freemen. John Mortlock II owned a draper’s shop near the Rose Inn (that is, on the north side of the market) which his son inherited in 1775.

Cambridge was once described as having no history in the eighteenth century. Town and University both went about their business in a fairly lethargic manner and no great events shook them out of their complacency or required even the routine fulfilment of their functions. The Cambridge Corporation had few obligations. It managed certain properties round the town, some of them for charitable causes, and it organised the three annual fairs. It issued occasional directions relating to cleanliness and hygiene, but had no regular obligation to pave or light the town. Only a minority of Cambridge residents played a formal part in the running of the town. For that it was necessary to be a freeman, and only eldest sons and apprentices of freemen were automatically eligible. Any others had to pay. There were around 180 – 200 freemen, nearly half of whom lived elsewhere. The remaining 1,000 rate-paying householders in the town had no official voice.

In 1776 Mortlock married Elizabeth Harrison, only daughter of Stephen Harrison, a prosperous grocer (who had also had the good luck in 1763 to be a sharer in a large lottery win). Elizabeth was described by the Cambridge Chronicle as ‘an accomplished young lady with a large fortune’. With his own inheritance and his wife’s fortune at command, Mortlock decided he would make his mark in the town. He paid £40 to become a freeman (far more than a year’s income to labouring families) and two years later was elected a Common Councilman. About the same time he took the bold step of opening a bank – the first in Cambridge. This was a great amenity to businesses in the area, lessening the need to carry large sums of gold or to deal in credit through London businesses. The University opened an account and so did many individuals. Although Mortlock made many enemies in his later actions, no-one ever accused him of any improper action in his banking.

While the Corporation had few duties, its members did have political views and a vote in the election of the town’s two members of Parliament. National parties were keen to influence the vote and if possible to get their own nominees elected. Opinions in Cambridge in the 1770s divided sharply over national questions: the war of independence in America, and the very limited Parliamentary franchise and the scope it gave to corruption. When public meetings were held on these issues in 1780, Mortlock joined the radicals on the side of reform, and came in contact with the young Duke of Rutland. The Duke was looking to develop his influence in Cambridge, and the two young men recognised the opportunities offered by an association. Mortlock organised a breakaway club for aldermen in the Eagle inn (the traditional gathering place was the Rose) which was acknowledged to support the Duke’s party. From 1784 to 1788 he was one of Cambridge’s two Members of Parliament.

In 1782 Mortlock became an Alderman, and in 1785 was elected mayor. The mayoralty customarily passed around the aldermen so that most of them had one turn in office. Very rarely, one would get a second term in later years. At the end of Mortlock’s year his friend Alderman Francis was elected. The following year Mortlock was re-elected, and he was then mayor in alternate years until 1809, with first Francis and later his son John Cheetham Mortlock in the office in the other years.

‘I hear on all sides that Mortlock has made himself master of the town of Cambridge.’ Rutland’s agent commented in 1787. How did he do it? At this distance in time, it is impossible to say, but a glance at his portrait, now in the Mayor’s Parlour in the Guildhall, suggests personal good looks and charm may have contributed, allied to the influence and power of the Duke of Rutland and the hold Mortlock later had as banker to a large section of Cambridge society. As Mayor, he engineered the changes to Corporation by-laws and practice that enabled him to stay in power, and he used the corporation assets to reward his followers. Although his procedures were resented by some, and the Corporation’s assets stripped, he was personal liked by some who did not personally benefit from his procedures.

In 1794 poor harvests pushed up the price of wheat and bread and crowds of desperate people were threatening to raid the mills for flour. Mortlock spent a day on horseback in the throng, keeping matters calm and refusing to draft in constables or militia who might, by precipitate action, inflame the situation. He organised the distribution of flour and meat at ‘fair’ prices, to ever-growing crowds, showing considerable personal bravery in this volatile situation.

Mortlock kept a firm hold on the town for years and it wasn’t until the 1830s that national government passed laws to reform the administration of boroughs like Cambridge.
Mortlock died at his Cambridge home in May 1816, three days after his son was knighted by the Prince Regent. He was buried in St Edward’s church.

Notes

The bulk of the Mortlock portraits by Downman passed to Mrs Alice Mortlock, as well as a portrait of the Duchess of Rutland presented to John Mortlock III by the Duke, although the group portrait of the sisters together and a portrait of Sarah, Lady Lacon, went to the Lacons. The formal oils of John and his wife Elizabeth Mary Harrison went to Alice’s elder sister, Mary Blanche Lias, and were reproduced in Connoisseur magazine in December 1921 and December 1922. Reproductions of many of the others can be found in Connoisseur for July 1931.

New Hall

New Hall, a women’s college of Cambridge University, was founded here in Silver Street in 1954, with two tutors and sixteen students. In 1964 the College moved to its permanent home in Huntington Road. Location: Darwin College, Cambridge, CB3 9EU

Cambridge University made very slow progress in acknowledging the place of women in higher education and within its own work. Although two colleges for women, Newnham and Girton, were established by 1875, it was only by slow steps that women were allowed to attend University lectures, sit the exams, and teach within the University. Votes on admitting women to membership went against change. Finally, in 1947 the vote went the other way, and girls were no longer merely students of their respective colleges but also undergraduates of the University of Cambridge.

There was then some pressure to expand the number of places for women, and in 1952 the Third Foundation Association was launched, soon changed its name to the New Hall Association, and set about organising and fund-raising for a new women’s college. As the latter can be a long process, the Association decided to take immediate action to make a start, even though on a limited scale. By April 1953 an Accommodation Sub-committee was visiting a large number of houses, looking for one suitable to become the first home of New Hall. Rosemary Murray, who in due course became the first President of New Hall, and the first woman Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, says in her book, “The making of a College”:

“The Hermitage was a large house in Silver Street owned by St. John’s College and rented to Miss Craigoe who used it as a Guest House. It first came to the attention of the Committee in April 1953 but was turned down as being rather smaller than was desirable and probably needing considerable expense to be put in working order. The price being asked for the sale of the remainder of the lease was also high. However, by negotiating for not only the lease but also for the furniture and equipment, much of which was suitable for housing undergraduates, agreement was reached with Miss Craigoe, and in September 1953 the remainder of the lease (till 1958), together with almost the whole of the contents of the house, was acquired.”

The house had been given its name from the siting there of a medieval hermitage. It was the hermit’s responsibility to collect money from travellers to repair the causeway that led to the small bridges over the river. The later history of the house is mentioned in Gwen Raverat’s Period Piece.

In 1954 the first 16 students were admitted, with Miss Murray as Tutor and one Fellow. The students were selected from those who had narrowly missed admission to Girton or Newnham Colleges that year. The intake for the following year was admitted through an entrance examination unique amongst the Colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, in that it consisted of a single three hour paper, during which candidates wrote three essays in answer to questions designed to test “logical thought and power of expression”. 415 candidates competing for 15 places took the first paper. At this time there were ten times as many men as women undergraduates in the University, and the number of women was limited by statute.

For the first ten years the students and their Tutors lived in the borrowed buildings in Silver Street, while money was raised for the College’s own permanent buildings. By 1962, thanks to the generosity of members of the Darwin family who gave their family home, the Orchard, the College had its site. In 1965, New Hall was able to move to its permanent home on Castle Hill in strikingly modern buildings by Chamberlain, Powell, Bon (of the Barbican). In 1972 the College received its Royal Charter and became a full college of the University, while Rosemary Murray became its President. She was now eligible for election as Vice-Chancellor, and was elected at once, serving from 1975-77. In 1991 the College building was listed Grade II* by English Heritage, in the top 5% of English buildings, and at about the same time, under its second president, Dr Valerie Pearl, the College opened its Art Collection, the largest collection of works by women artists in the UK. In 1994, as a result of an Agreement with the Kaetsu Foundation of Tokyo, with which it has a continuing relationship, the College acquired fine new student accommodation and other facilities. In 2008 alumna Ros Edwards and her husband gave the college £30 million, and the name (‘temporary’ for over 50 years) was changed to Murray Edwards College.

Stephen Perse (1548 – 1615)

He was a fellow of Gonville and Caius, physician, financier, and philanthropist. His will included a bequest of land for the establishment of what was then described as a Free Grammar School which later become the Perse Schools. Location: Free School Lane, Cambridge, CB2 3QA

Stephen Perse came to Cambridge in 1565, aged 17, to study at Gonville and Caius College. He was to remain in Cambridge for the rest of his life, engaged in both University and town affairs. He was successful enough to be made a Fellow of the College in 1571, and continued to study there, obtaining the degree of MD in 1581. As was customary, he was ordained, in 1573.

Within his college and the University Perse undertook the usual offices, but particularly as college Bursar. It was in his affairs outside College that Perse attained his permanent memory and this Blue Plaque.

He lived in stirring times, with a growing population nationally and an expanding economy, which nevertheless was by-passing many poorer people. Cambridge experienced this situation too, with cheap new housing and subdivided older houses being created to house immigrants from the countryside looking to better their fortunes in town. It was difficult for many of them to gain a toehold, and there was much unease in both the corporation and the University about the situation.

Unusually for an academic, Perse was an engaged and astute man of business, involved in property dealing and money lending. Although neither sounds totally salubrious in a University setting, there was a need for both in the community, and Perse recognised this need. In the course of his dealings he enriched himself, but at his death was then able to leave much of his wealth to a number of good uses in the town, beside his bequests to his college.

His scheme to provide loans to young businessmen did not take off, but other plans did. He left some sums towards the maintenance of the new Hobson’s Brook and of Newmarket Road (both essential to health and prosperity) but his major plan was the founding of a Grammar School and Almshouses.

The school was to provide up to 100 free places for boys from Cambridge, Barnwell, Chesterton and Trumpington, and poor students were to have preference over rich. Successful pupils were to have preference in elections to Perse scholarships, and Perse Fellowships at Gonville and Caius.

The school hall with its fine hammerbeam roof was completed in 1628 and now houses the principal displays of the Whipple Museum.

Following moves in the nineteenth century, the School was established in Hills Road in 1888. The Girls’ School (now the Stephen Perse Foundation), in Panton Street, was founded in 1881. Both are successful Independent schools for pupils aged from 11 to 18, with departments for younger pupils.

The Perse Alms-houses were originally built alongside the school, on the corner with Pembroke Street. They were to house six needy local people and to provide them with £4 a year. The alms-houses were rebuilt in the nineteenth century at Newnham, and are still in use.

Stephen Perse was buried in Gonville and Caius College chapel, where his memorial may still be seen.

Enid Porter (1909 – 1984)

She was the curator of the Cambridge & County Folk museum from 1947 to 1976, and a leading authority on Cambridgeshire culture, history, customs, stories and beliefs, and a pioneer of oral history. She said of the museum: ‘It is the intimacy of it that I like, relating the objects to the role they played in people’s lives and the customs they have played a part in’. Location: 1 Northampton St, Cambridge, CB3 0AD

The Cambridge & County Folk Museum was set up in 1936 at a time when people were becoming aware that social history could be as interesting as the history of kings and queens, statesmen and generals. Social history that was deeply rooted in a locality with a distinctive environment and way of life, especially when that way of life was seen to be disappearing, had a special attraction. No doubt the motivation was often sentimental and romantic. Amateur collectors and enthusiasts held the field.

In Britain folklorists journeyed to the remoter fringes of the country, to Wales and the Western Highlands, to record the language and customs that were dying out through contact with the modern world. The first folk museums were mainly in the uplands. But the founders of the Cambridge & County Folk Museum recognised that even in villages within an hour’s train journey from London, even in a town as cosmopolitan as Cambridge itself, distinctive traditions of living still survived.

Cambridge memories and experiences were with Miss Porter from her earliest days. Although she was born and brought up in Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex, both her parents knew Cambridge very well. Her mother was from an old Cambridge family, and Enid paid visits to the family (‘numerous relations, who seemed to constitute half the population of Cambridge’) twice a year through her childhood, until she eventually came to live here herself. Her father, born in Bedford, had been a Non-collegiate student at Cambridge University. As such he would have lodged economically in the town, and he was one of the students who learnt the teacher’s craft by teaching in the Higher Grade School, Paradise Street, at the same time as studying for his degree. He would have learnt a lot about life in the poorer end of Cambridge at that time.

Her father became a teacher at Southend High School, and aimed for the same sort of career for his daughter. Enid took a Modern Languages degree at University College London, and after training, took a post at a girls’ boarding school. It was not her own choice. She would have preferred, she said, at that time, to be a librarian. But that perhaps was because she could not envisage the career in which she was to be so successful. As a child, on visits to Cambridge, she had liked to wander in antique shops, wondering where the objects had come from and who had used them.

She continued teaching through the war, and had a post at a training college, before her summer visit to Cambridge in 1947 brought to her notice an advertisement for a post at the Cambridge and County Folk Museum. Her family thought it would be ‘nice’ for her to be in Cambridge, but she must have seen immediately the fulfilment of her childhood imaginings. She began work that September, living in 3 Castle Hill, adjoining the four rooms in no.2 that constituted the Museum. She was to stay until her retirement in 1976.

The museum collections even when she started were substantial, and she added to them sagaciously throughout her tenure. She also undertook scholarly research into the context to which they belonged. Her research took every form, from trawling through publications, archives, diaries and newspapers, to the active recording of stories told by a number of elderly fenmen – a neglected repository of local story-telling that is as vivid as any in its imagery and turn of phrase. She would take down their words verbatim in a notebook or commit them to memory for writing up later. One of her principal sources both of fenland tales and folklore was W.H.Barrett. The stories he wrote down in longhand were carefully typed up by Enid Porter and published often with only the slightest emendations. Barrett drew on childhood memories of illiterate storytellers who carried tales originating in the eighteenth century and earlier. The humour of these stories was robust and allegiance to the sober truth was not regarded as a strict necessity.

For nearly thirty years she worked ceaselessly, caring for the Museum, cleaning it, expanding it and exploring the traditional life of Cambridge and the Fens, which its collection represented. She travelled around the Fens to meet people and take down their stories of fen life and fen traditions, as well as learning all she could of Cambridge history. She also gave many, many talks to local groups, which further encouraged people to volunteer their memories. The results were published in booklets and articles, very widely appreciated, culminating in her Cambridgeshire Customs and Folklore published in 1969. The previous year the Folklore Society had awarded her their prestigious Coote-Lake Medal in recognition of her work.

By 1961 the Museum had expanded into no.3 Castle Street and Miss Porter had been provided with a small house built in the courtyard of the Museum. Her work had increased not only the size of the collection but the number of visitors, up from 2,330 in 1947 to 7,000 in 1968, and she had to be in the Museum, to hand out tickets, alongside all her curatorial duties.

In 1975 she published Victorian Cambridge, drawn from the diaries of Josiah Chater that are held by the Museum. Like Customs this remains the definitive work in this area and is immensely valuable.

In 1972 she was awarded an Honorary MA by Cambridge University in recognition of her work, followed in 1981, after her retirement, by the same degree from the Open University. It was recorded that her work reflected the objective of the OU in ‘promoting the educational wellbeing of the community generally’ with a cheerful, humorous and lively personality.

During her lifetime she was for many the principal authority on Cambridge and Fenland history, and her work in the Museum and in her publications is still in use today.

Clara Dorothea Rackham (1875-1966)

Campaigner for adult and child education. A suffragist, magistrate and penal reformer. Founder of the Cambridge Cooperative Women’s Guild. A City and County Councillor. Plaque located at 9 Park Terrace Cambridge, where she lived.

Clara Rackham studied Classics at Newnham College Cambridge (1895-98). She married the scholar Harris Rackham, brother of the illustrator Arthur Rackham, in 1901. Clara believed strongly in co-operative ideals and founded the Cambridge Co-operative Women’s Guild in 1902. She chaired the Eastern Federation of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, led by Millicent Garrett Fawcett, and served on the national executive committee. One of a handful of women appointed as government factory inspectors during the First World War, she became a nationally respected authority on factory legislation and an early advocate of the 40-hour working week.

After the war Clara was elected as a Labour councillor for Romsey, a ward containing many railway workers’ families. Her name became synonymous with enlightened local government and she served as a city councillor for 28 years, a county councillor for 38, and as vice-chairman of Cambridge County Council from 1956-58. There was hardly a progressive cause, organisation or initiative in the city to which she did not give her time and support including the establishment of the first family planning clinic, the Rock Road Library, and the heated swimming pool on Parker’s Piece.

Clara was among Cambridge’s first women magistrates and a lifelong supporter of the Howard League for Penal Reform. She was chairman of the County Council Education Committee (1945-57) and fought innumerable battles to expand educational opportunities for adults in her roles as a governor of the Cambridgeshire College or Arts, Crafts and Technology and as chairman of the Eastern District of the Workers’ Educational Association. Clara greatly valued her own education at Newnham College and served on the college council from 1924-31 and on the governing body from 1920-40.

Loss of hearing eventually forced her to relinquish committee work but she remained a much-loved and easily recognisable figure in her final years, still cycling around Cambridge, taking an interest in her many friends, charities and voluntary organisations, and conversing happily with young and old alike.

Clara Rackham died peacefully in Langdon House residential home at the age of 90.

‘Anyone who studies the social reforms of the century in Cambridge will see how much they owe to Mrs Rackham's devoted and unstinting championship of the under-privileged. Her aim was to give them a better way of life. Her success is her memorial’.

From the Newnham College Roll, 1967

A commemorative blue plaque to Clara was erected in January 2019 on the gatepost outside 9 Park Terrace, Cambridge where she once lived.

We are grateful to Professor Mary Joannou for nominating Clara Rackham for a blue plaque, for helping to bring this to fruition and for this biography.

We could not have created Clara’s blue plaque without the financial donations from Paul Soper & Nyasha Gwatidzo, Greenwich Leisure (Parkers Piece pool), Anne Wright, Sarah Rackham, Viv Peto and Mary Joannnou to whom we are incredibly grateful.

We are also grateful to Newnham College for their help in organising a commemorative event for Clara at the college in November 2018 and to Emmanuel College for agreeing to the plaque being installed on one of their properties.

Gwen Raverat (1885 – 1957)

She was an artist, illustrator, wood engraver, and at the age of 62, started to write her classic childhood memoir ‘Period Piece: A Cambridge Childhood’. She was the granddaughter of the naturalist Charles Darwin, and was born and died here at Newham Grange, the Darwin family home, now part of Darwin College. Location: Darwin College, Cambridge, CB3 9EU

We owe the most charming and engaging account of Cambridge society to Gwen Raverat. In her Period Piece: a Cambridge childhood she describes affectionately her corner of Cambridge around 1900: life in Newnham Grange as the daughter of a noted academic, and the formalities and eccentricities of Cambridge society and of the Darwin family. Her father was George Darwin, second son of Charles Darwin, fellow of Trinity College, and Professor of Astronomy. Her mother Maud was from America.

George Darwin and his brothers belonged to the first generation of college fellows who were permitted to marry while retaining their fellowships, thus giving rise to a whole new section of Cambridge society: the academic family. George Darwin bought the house in Silver Street, which formerly belonged to the Beale family, proprietors of a corn and coal business on the river. He renamed it Newnham Grange and amongst other alterations added the distinctive bay windows to the front. His brothers Francis and Horace also settled in Cambridge, on the Huntingdon Road, and their families were part of the world described by Gwen Raverat.

She and her brothers and sister would play on the river outside their house, be taken on excursions up-river past the bathing places where boys bathed naked and women in rowing boats had to bury their eyes in their parasols. They rode early bicycles and tricycles, and saw the crossing sweepers who swept the roads so that gentlefolk could cross with clean shoes. They observed the formalities of Victorian society with the penetrating eyes of children, and that clear-eyed vision is set before us in Period Piece.

Gwen drew and painted from childhood, keeping a little sketchbook in her pocket, and studying any reproductions of artists that came her way. Rembrandt and Bewick (the engraver) enthralled her. After a conventional education she persuaded her family to let her go to London to study at the Slade School of Art. Here she developed her interest in woodcuts and wood-engraving, at the time, neglected art forms, and in a few years she became one of the founding members of the Society of Wood-Engravers.

Her circle of Cambridge friends included the Keyneses, Rupert Brooke and others with literary and artistic interests. In this group she met Jacques Raverat, also developing as an artist, whom she married in 1911. They worked, separately and together, on paintings and Gwen’s woodcuts. Their two daughters were both born in Newnham Grange.

Jacques’ illness (undiagnosed multiple sclerosis) became more severe, and they moved to the south of France, continuing to paint as much as they could. Gwen, with great fortitude, nursed her husband through the traumatic last stages of his illness to his death in 1925. Afterwards, she returned to England and from 1929 lived in Harlton, just six miles from Cambridge. From there she could resume her Cambridge connections, while continuing to work. Her reputation grew steadily as she exhibited work in Cambridge and London and produced illustrations and revues for Time and Tide.

She was commissioned to illustrate a variety of books, but also painted and undertook some scene painting for the ADC theatre. At the instigation of Geoffrey Keynes, her brother-in-law, she designed sets and costumes based on the work of William Blake for a ballet (ultimately called Job, a Masque for Dancing) for which her cousin Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote the music and Maynard Keynes financed London performances.

In the Second World War she worked briefly at the Cambridge Instrument Factory (founded by her uncle Horace) but then found greater use for her talents in drawing interpretations of coasts and landscapes for use by the Navy. In 1946 she returned to her childhood home. The old granary in whose empty lofts she had played as a child had been converted to flats, but her move was delayed by the reluctance of another Cambridge notable, Henry Morris (Education chief and founder of the Village Colleges, blue plaque on the Granary), to move out of this picturesque residence. Gwen finally moved in, next door to her brother Sir Charles, who had inherited the main house.

In 1950 – 51 she wrote Period Piece, recording the charm and eccentricities of the Darwin family and the conventions and customs of her youth, which even in 1950 seemed to belong to a lost world, wiped out by two world wars. The drawings that illustrate it, though seemingly very simple, capture and convey the mood she describes. Her book was an immediate success, has gone through many, many printings and is as popular as ever.

Although suffering the effects of a stroke in 1951, Gwen continued to paint, and was a familiar figure in the neighbourhood. She would sit out in the nearby commons; painting the scenes she had known since childhood. She died in 1957 and was buried beside her parents in the Trumpington Extension Cemetery.

Her brother Charles died in 1962, ending the Darwin family’s occupation of Newnham Grange. Not long afterwards, the bursars of three Cambridge colleges, sharing a train journey to London, came up with the idea of creating a new graduate college, and set about acquiring Newnham Grange to house it. Darwin College was formally incorporated in 1965.

Birthplace of the Reformation

Site of the White Horse Inn, also known as ‘Little Germany’, where Cambridge scholars debated the works of Martin Luther in the early sixteenth century. The Inn at Trumpington St was the birthplace of The English Reformation. Location: King’s Parade, Cambridge, CB2 1SJ

Cambridge has always been well supplied with drinking places, and although the University has preferred students to stay in their colleges to enjoy their alcohol, scholars have always found occasions to meet outside, in the town’s pubs. Back in the sixteenth century, the White Horse stood in Trumpington Street, with a narrow frontage, in the row of timber-framed houses and shops, but extending back down the narrow Plots Lane, facing the boundary wall of King’s College. The inn was a discrete distance from the hub of the University at Old Schools, and from the busier taverns around the market.

In 1517 in Germany the theologian Dr Martin Luther challenged certain teaching and doctrines of the Church: it did not take long for his radical ideas and writings to spread to other academics across Europe. In May 1521 the University authorities in Cambridge were instructed to confiscate and burn the reformer’s books as heretical. There was great danger in being seen to agree with Luther’s ideas, but nevertheless his works were still discussed. In the early 1520s a group of enthusiasts began to meet in the White Horse Inn, to turn over these ideas that were rocking the Continent. Despite the dangers, the White Horse group persisted, and the inn was nicknamed ‘Little Germany’ on their account.

Amongst the participants were Robert Barnes, the head of the Austin Friary (just up St Bene’t’s Street opposite), ‘little’ Thomas Bilney of Trinity Hall and Hugh Latimer of Clare College. Barnes had studied abroad at Louvain, where Erasmus and the continental reformers influenced him. There he became a Doctor of Divinity and returned to England in 1523 to become the Prior and Master of the Austin community here in Cambridge. Bilney had been converted to reformed views in 1519 as a result of studying the Latin New Testament of Erasmus. (Erasmus had lived and taught Greek for a while in Cambridge.) Bilney then converted the older Latimer in 1524. Contemporaries remarked on the humorous sight of the tiny Bilney and the tall lean Latimer pacing through Cambridge market together in earnest theological discussion.

Discussions in the White Horse transferred to sermons in St Edward’s church, across the road, where Latimer was in charge. (The church was and is a ‘peculiar’ – outside the authority of the Bishop.) On Christmas Eve 1525 Barnes exchanged pulpits with Latimer and preached at St. Edward’s, an attack on the Church hierarchy. A few years later Latimer preached the famous Sermon on the Cards, attacking Cardinal Wolsey and the failings of the Church. The little pulpit in St Edwards, with its beautiful linen fold panels, is reputed to have been used by Latimer at this time.

All three men eventually died for their faith (as did many other Cambridge alumni, on both sides of the religious divide): Bilney in 1531, Barnes in 1540 and Latimer in 1555.

As part of his final statement, Barnes exclaimed, “I trust in no good work that I ever did, but only in the death of Christ. I do not doubt but through Him to enter the kingdom of heaven.” His words were recorded and soon printed both in England and in Germany where Luther gave his own tribute to Barnes whom he described as, “This holy martyr, saint Robert.”

The Inn building survived until 1869 when it was finally demolished. The long-delayed buildings of King’s College arose on the other side of the lane, and in 1968 covered it completely with the Keynes Lecture Theatre.

Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (1852 – 1924)

He was a composer, organist, and conductor. In 1887 he was appointed professor of music at Cambridge University, and lived in Harvey Road from 1884 to 1893. Location: 10 Harvey Road, Cambridge, CB1 2ET

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Villiers_Stanford

Alan Turing (1912 – 1954)

He was a mathematician, computer pioneer and code breaker. Some of his best-known work was carried out during the Second World War, when he worked for the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park. Location: 58 Trumpington St, Cambridge, CB2 1RH

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing

Elsie Widdowson (1906 – 2000)

She was a pioneer nutrition scientist who developed and tested wartime rations with bread made in the bakery in the village of Barrington where she lived. Location of plaque: 55 High Street, Barrington (next to the village shop).

“You can, if you have to, live on a very simple diet”, Elsie Widdowson said, and said it often. She worked out that bread, green vegetables, and potatoes contained all the nutrients for healthy survival.

Elsie was one of the most outstanding scientists of the twentieth century. Indeed, the fact that she and a handful of her female contemporaries were so influential, significantly advanced the cause of women in science. She was born in Dulwich, London in 1906 and moved to Orchard House in Barrington, Cambridgeshire in 1938. She was a pioneer in nutrition science, adored by all who knew her and much admired by all who have valued her work.

Elsie gained her BSc and PhD at Imperial College, London, in chemistry. In a pivotal moment in 1933, Elsie met Robert McCance in the kitchens of Kings College Hospital, London and was brave enough to tell him that his values for the sugars in apples were too low.

This inauspicious start led to a scientific partnership that was to last until McCance’s death in 1993. Among many other things, it helped shape wartime rationing and the standard loaf, revealed the damage poor childhood nutrition does to adult health, contributed to our understanding of mineral metabolism, and provided the core values for almost every nutritional database in use in the world today.

What started as Elsie’s idea during a family outing to Box Hill, Surrey in 1934, culminated in the “bible” now known as McCance and Widdowson’s Composition of Foods. This is a resource, regularly updated, which no nutrition department or food company can be without and it is an achievement in which British science has led the way.

(Photo: Elsie in Barrington in 1990s. With kind permission of Dr Margaret Ashwell OBE).

The pair moved to the Department of Experimental Medicine in Cambridge in 1938. During the first months of the war in 1939, they felt they must do something to further the war effort. Keen to prove the adequacy of potentially drastic wartime rations, they and a number of their colleagues ate bread and very little else. Then, to test their fitness following this bleak regime, they went on a rigorous course of cycling and mountain climbing in the Lake District. These studies also led to important changes in the formulation of the wartime National wheatmeal loaf, and ultimately the standard white loaf, in particular their fortification with calcium. Elsie was one example of Britain’s wartime luck, like having other brainy people who found ways of breaking the enemy’s military codes.

Elsie was extremely proud to be awarded her Fellowship of the Royal Society in 1976, closely followed by her CBE in 1979. She became one of Britain’s most famous scientists when she was made a Companion of Honour in 1993. Living in her thatched cottage on the River Cam with her cats for company, growing fruit (including apples, of course) and vegetables, she remained scientifically productive until her death, at the age of 93, in 2000.

Reporters inevitably asked her for the secret of her long and energetic life. Was it to do with diet? She said she had simply inherited good genes from her parents. Her father had lived to 96 and her mother to 107. As for her diet, she ate butter and eggs, but also ate plenty of vegetables and fruit, and drank lots of water. And ate lots of bread, of course.

For more information:

Ashwell, M. ed., McCance and Widdowson: a scientific partnership of 60 years, 1933–1993 British Nutrition Foundation, 1993

Click on this link to hear Great Lives with Helen Sharman and Dr Margaret Ashwell: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b092mbm2

Children might enjoy watching Absolute Genius about Elsie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFsIHG_7Ir4

PHOTO L-R: Penny Heath (CambridgePPF Blue Plaque Committee), Dr Margaret Ashwell OBE (friend and biographer), Jill Jones (Chair of Barrington Society), Kate Wootton (resident of the house where the plaque will be placed).

Thank you

We are grateful to Dr Margaret Ashwell OBE RNutr FafN (Elsie’s friend, colleague and biographer) for nominating Elsie Widdowson for a blue plaque, for helping to bring this to fruition and for drafting her biography.

The Blue Plaque to Elsie Widdowson has been financed by the Nutrition Society, the British Dietetic Association, the British Nutrition Foundation, and the Royal Society.

The commemorative blue plaque to Elsie is placed on the wall of the house adjoining the shop in Barrington. This used to be the village bakery which made the bread for all of Elsie’s studies. We are grateful to the owners for allowing the plaque to be installed.

An unveiling event took place on 27 June 2021 in Barrington village to commemorate Elsie and her work. We are grateful to those who helped to organise and support this event including the Barrington Society, Miss Helen Fernandes for hospitality at Barrington Hall, M M Wealth Management Cambridge, Stuart Barker of Barker Brothers Butchers in Great Shelford, Bread Source from Norwich for providing samples of a National Loaf and Barrington Parish Council.

William Wilkins (1778 – 1839)

He was an architect. He designed Downing College and the stone screen at King’s College, known as the Wilkins’ screen. On the site stood his home, Lensfield, which he designed and built. Location: 44 Lensfield Road, Cambridge, CB2 1EH

William Wilkins Junior was one of the foremost architects of the purest phase of the Greek Revival, which was fashionable in Britain in the latter part of the C18 and first half of the C19. The style sought to reproduce Classical forms and was ideally suited to the period after the Battle of Waterloo when numerous monumental buildings were erected throughout the country. Although the Greek Revival was a relatively short-lived architectural trend, it left a legacy of sober, dignified buildings of which Wilkins’ Downing College is one of the nation’s best examples.

Wilkins was born in St Giles, Norwich on 31 August 1739. His father, also William, was, amongst other things, a self-taught architect who had initially followed his father’s trade of plasterer and worked with some of the leading architects of his generation. He also built and managed a string of theatres, of which the Cambridge theatre in Newmarket road was one.

In 1780, the Wilkins family moved to Cambridge so that his father could develop his business. They lived at first next to the Theatre and then at Newnham Cottage, on Queen’s Road. Wilkins senior was quick to teach his eldest son and in 1800 the younger William graduated after reading mathematics at Gonville and Caius College. In the following year he won a travelling scholarship, which gave him the opportunity to travel through Italy, Greece and Asia Minor. Such ‘Grand Tours’ were seen as an essential part of the architect’s training at the time and the influence on Wilkins’ later building designs was obvious.

Wilkins returned to Cambridge in the summer of 1803 having been elected a fellow of Gonville and Caius and he began work on his first serious publication Magna Graecia. In the following year he was appointed Master of the Perse School, a post that he held until 1806.

In March 1806, Wilkins beat James Wyatt in a competition to design a new Cambridge College, to be built with a bequest from Sir George Downing. Thomas Hope, a wealthy enthusiastic amateur architect produced a pamphlet urging the adoption of the Greek style for Downing. Wilkins, who seems to have been in regular contact with Hope, duly obliged and the College is amongst his most scholarly Classical designs and one of the first ‘campus-style’ educational buildings in the country. The Ionic Order he used was based on the Erechtheum in Athens and such faithful Classical reproductions would be a feature of many of his commissions from Haileybury College (1806) and Grange Park (1809) right up to his later commissions in the capital such as the St George’s Hospital (1827) and the University College (1827-8).

Wilkins had married in 1811 and consequently re-fashioned a large house named Lensfield on the edge of Cambridge’s historic centre. Perhaps not surprisingly he added a Greek Doric porch. Wilkins lived in the house until his death in 1839 though unfortunately the house was demolished in the 1950s to allow for the construction of the University’s Chemistry Faculty. The Blue Plaque to William Wilkins is attached close to the building’s north-west corner.

Wilkins’ father had leased Norwich Theatre and rebuilt the theatre in Colchester in 1810. In 1814, the year before his father’s death, Wilkins helped him rebuild the old wooden theatre in Barnwell in Cambridge. Whilst the new exterior was plain, the inside was lavish with tiers of stalls in a horseshoe pattern and a proscenium arch with images of Apollo and Minerva. When Wilkins Senior died in 1815, he left his son the management of the Theatre Royal in Norwich together with a controlling interest in the theatres at Yarmouth, Bury St Edmunds, Ipswich, Colchester and Cambridge.

Wilkins’ career flourished and he was responsible for a number of churches, country houses, public buildings and monuments from Cornwall to Scotland and Yarmouth to Dublin. Despite also having a house in London, he was very active in Cambridge. The buildings at Downing occupied him until at least 1820, and he also designed a new bridge at King’s College in 1818, New Court at Trinity from 1821-3 and New Court at Corpus Christi from 1823-7. Although the King’s College bridge adapted the Greek Ionic style used at Downing College, his later buildings were all Gothic. Like the majority of architects of his generation, Wilkins was less comfortable designing in the Gothic style and such buildings of this period are often repetitive and symmetrical, based on Classical precedents. Despite this, his highly picturesque screen and Porters’ Lodge at King’s College (built 1822-4) remains one of the most endearing and most photographed images of Cambridge.

In common with his contemporaries, Wilkins frequently had to attempt to win commissions through often ill-managed architectural competitions. His success in the competition for the design of the combined National Gallery and Royal Academy in London 1832 should have been the highpoint of his career. His design however, although executed in his favourite Greek revival style, was highly repetitive for such a large building and demonstrated that he was finding it hard to adapt to the freer and more ornamental Classical forms which the Victorian age would shortly demand.

By the 1830s the best years of his career were over and a new generation of architects was better suited to adapt to the changing architectural scene. Almost simultaneously his theatrical business collapsed and sickness caused by gout and a kidney disease left him weak.

Sixty-one years to the day after his birth, Wilkins died at Lensfield, surrounded by his family. He was buried in the Chapel of Corpus Christi College, his favourite of all his Cambridge buildings.

William Wilkins was perhaps the principal exponent of the Greek Revival during early C19 Britain. It is in his adopted hometown of Cambridge that his legacy can be best appreciated however. The dignified austerity of Downing College and the picturesque Gothic of the King’s College screen are two of the architectural gems in a city of riches. Both demonstrate an attention to scholarly detail befitting a university town and continue to enrich the lives of townsfolk and visitors alike.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 – 1951)

He was a philosopher, engineer, architect, and artist; he lived here at 76 Storey’s Way. ‘Do not agree with me in particular opinions but investigate the matter in the right way. To notice the interesting things … that serve as keys if you use them properly.’ Location: 76 Storey’s Way, Cambridge, CB3 0DX

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein

Sir Frank Whittle (1907 – 1996)

He was a jet propulsion pioneer, pursuing the development of his jet engine at the Cambridge University Department of Engineering. Location: Cambridge University Engineering Department, Trumpington St, Cambridge, CB2 1QA

Born in Coventry, the son of a factory foreman, at 16 Frank Whittle joined the RAF as an aircraft apprentice. His developing talents were recognised, and three years later he was selected for officer and pilot training. While training at Cranwell, he had the first germ of the idea of jet propulsion. He developed the concept sufficiently over the next few years to obtain a patent in 1932, but the Air Ministry was not interested in taking up the idea. Nevertheless, the RAF did think it worthwhile to send Flight Lieutenant Whittle to study Engineering at Cambridge as a mature student.

In 1934 he entered Peterhouse, but as he had married in 1930, lived with his family in Harston Road, Trumpington. He completed a three year Mechanical Science Tripos degree in only two years, gaining a first. In the Engineering Department he found more encouragement for the development of a jet engine, from his tutor and from Melvill Jones the Head of Aeronautical Engineering. He also met two former RAF officers, R.D. Williams and J.C.B. Tinling who were enthusiastic and with their cooperation formed a company called Power Jets, with the aim of taking his idea for the development of jet engines further. The RAF agreed to let Frank remain at Cambridge for a further post graduate year, to continue working on his idea.

Power Jets Ltd was set up in 1936 by Whittle and his colleagues in a factory in Rugby. There were many difficulties, including turbine blade failure, which was overcome by the development of a high nickel alloy by Mond Nickel, called Nimonic 60. Testing of the prototype engines (1937-41) was dominated by problems with combustion. Sir William Hawthorne, who was later to become the Head of the Engineering Department at Cambridge, helped to solve these. In 1939 the Air Ministry’s Director of Scientific Research finally acknowledged that Whittle’s ideas were feasible. Power Jets was awarded a contract to develop a flight engine, the W1. The first of Whittle’s test jet engines took to the skies on 15 May 1941, powering an aircraft that had been specifically designed for the purpose: the Gloster E28/39.

This aircraft was conceived and built in only 15 months. Take-off for the test flight, with pilot Gerry Sayer at the controls, took place at RAF Cranwell at 7.45pm, and lasted 17 min, having achieved speeds of over 500mph. The plane used can now be seen at the Science Museum, where it has been on display since 1946. A second aircraft powered using the same type of engine was demonstrated to Winston Churchill on 17 April, 1943.

After the war Power Jets was nationalised and responsibility for development of the jet engine was passed to Rolls Royce, Armstrong Siddeley and American manufacturers.
Frank Whittle was invalided out of the RAF in 1948 and in the same year knighted for his achievements.

He thought of his time at Cambridge with great affection and donated all of his papers to the Churchill Archives Centre shortly before he died in 1996.

The jet engine has gone on, not only to revolutionise air travel, but also to play an important part in gas turbines for the propulsion of ships. The principles of the jet engine are also used in the electricity generation industry. The Whittle Laboratory, on the West Cambridge site, was named after Sir Frank in 1972 and is dedicated to the study of the aerodynamics of turbines.

The Engineering Department has grown and flourished, and now has around 1100 undergraduates and 600 post-graduate students and researchers. In 2001 the Sir Arthur Marshall Institute for Aeronautics (SAMIA) was formed, as a result of a close collaboration between the University of Cambridge Engineering Department and Marshall Aerospace. Its aim is to maintain the University Department at the forefront of aerospace engineering, including safety, noise minimisation, the economy, the environment and technological advance. SAMIA is a virtual institute within the Engineering Department at Cambridge, headed by the Francis Mond Professor of Aeronautical Engineering.
Ian Whittle said: “My father said inventing the jet engine was easy. Making it work was the difficult bit!”

How to Nominate a Person or Event for a Blue Plaque

If you would like to nominate a person or an event, you will need to:

Tell us their name or details of the event.
Tell us the property or site on which the plaque should be placed, including the address and ideally also the name of the owner (this must be located in either the City of Cambridge or South Cambridgeshire District).
Tell us why you think that the person or the event made a significant impact on life in the local area, the UK or the world.
Tell us if you, or your group, would be willing to help raise funds for the plaque or organise an unveiling event.

Nominate Now

People to be commemorated should:

Have been dead for at least ten years.
Have lived in the area.
Be eminent through their profession or calling.
Have made a significant contribution to the life of the Cambridge area and its residents.
Merit recognition because of an outstanding or notorious act.
Have had a connection with the Cambridge area, beyond being only a university student.

Events to be commemorated should:

Have occurred at least ten years ago.
Be recognisable to the majority of the general public.
Have significance in the history of the Cambridge area, UK or world.

Please email your nomination here (there is no form to fill in, just tell us in your own words).

Who decides who should get a blue plaque?

The Cambridge & District Blue Plaque Scheme is run by local charity Cambridge Past Present & Future. A group of dedicated volunteers makes up our Blue Plaque Committee. They include local historians and representatives from Cambridge City and South Cambridgeshire councils. The committee considers requests for blue plaques and decides whether or not one should be put up.

One of the biggest challenges is finding a relevant building where the plaque is visible to the public and the property owner is willing to have the plaque.

There are several people that we would like to commemorate but we are unable to put the plaque on a relevant building.

We also have to raise around £1,200 for each plaque. This is easier if the person/event is connected in some way to an organisation or family that would be willing to contribute towards the cost of the plaque and a celebratory event. Or if the person or group nominating would be willing to help raise the funds for a plaque. If you are nominating a plaque, please tell us if you or your group would be willing to help.

Donate or Get Involved

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Please help us to commemorate significant people or events and help to inform people about local history:

Donate to help to pay for blue plaques to be created, installed and celebrated on buildings in Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire

Volunteer your time. The Cambridge Blue Plaque Scheme is run by volunteers. We need help with administration, fundraising, organising events or, if you are a local historian or researcher. If you would like to help us then please email here

Carry out your own research and nominate a person or event for a blue plaque here

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Blue Plaques

Information about Blue Plaque People and Events

Stands the church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?

My subject is War, and the pity of War.
The Poetry is in the pity.

‘Anyone who studies the social reforms of the century in Cambridge will see how much they owe to Mrs Rackham's devoted and unstinting championship of the under-privileged. Her aim was to give them a better way of life. Her success is her memorial’.

How to Nominate a Person or Event for a Blue Plaque

Nominate Now

People to be commemorated should:

Events to be commemorated should:

Who decides who should get a blue plaque?

Donate or Get Involved

Donate Now

Donations:

Donate Now

Membership:

Join Us

Appeals:

Donate Now

Blue Plaques

Information about Blue Plaque People and Events

Stands the church clock at ten to three?And is there honey still for tea?

My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.

‘Anyone who studies the social reforms of the century in Cambridge will see how much they owe to Mrs Rackham's devoted and unstinting championship of the under-privileged. Her aim was to give them a better way of life. Her success is her memorial’.

How to Nominate a Person or Event for a Blue Plaque

Nominate Now

People to be commemorated should:

Events to be commemorated should:

Who decides who should get a blue plaque?

Donate or Get Involved

Donate Now

Donations:

Donate Now

Membership:

Join Us

Appeals:

Donate Now

Stands the church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?

My subject is War, and the pity of War.
The Poetry is in the pity.