Meeting reports 2020 to 2022

A talk by Helen Harwood. This talk coincided with a week-long period of snow and ice, which was so bad we had to cancel. Helen Harwood was able to come in January 2024 to give her talk.

A talk by Alan Osborne The Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company was fondly referred to by its hundreds of employees in the second half of the twentieth century as “The Scientific”. Before that it was called “Horace’s Shop”. Its founder was Horace Darwin, the ninth son of Charles Darwin, whose interest in science had led his father to convert what had been the family’s schoolroom into a customised workshop.

Michelle Bullivant, our talented local landscape archaeologist, gave us a very interesting talk at our July meeting to reveal the centuries of history relating to the site.

A talk by Jonathan Spain This talk concentrated on the horticultural, social and economic aspects of fruit growing during the 19th and 20th centuries. This could also be called the rise and decline of growing apples and pears, in particular.

A talk by Dr Maureen James

Pye had been the premier employer for many years in this region with over 7,000 employees in its heyday. Only a handful of the audience had worked for Pye, but everyone knew somebody who had.

David Jones, accountant turned local historian since his purchase of a pretty thatched cottage in Little Shelford, revealed the secret history of Royston and its connection with the Scottish King James VI who succeeded to the English throne on the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603.

Michelle Bullivant, a trained archaeologist, gave a most interesting illustrated talk taking as her starting point part of the entry about Cherry Hinton in the Domesday Book (1086) In addition to four slaves there were four mills! One pair of mill stones indicate one mill building but four pairs of mill stones do not necessarily mean that there were four mill buildings. Cherry Hinton might have had one large mill. …

This talk accompanied our 2021 AGM, and marked a return to in-person meetings after the long period of Covid-19 restrictions, albeit with a limit of 30 people in the Pavilion.

A talk by Mike Petty At one time there were three mills using the flow of water into the Mill Pool on the River Cam and this was also the end of the river navigable by commercial barges. As the colleges grew and also the population of the town increased, large amounts of coal and food were brought to Cambridge by travelling up the Cam from Kings Lynn. Mike illustrated a journey down the river from the Mill Pool with a series of photos and drawings of the bridges starting with Silver Street.

An excellent talk for the History Society by Max Field. The main cause of the pollution was the Kings Ditch which formed a semi-circle round the town and was filled with sewage and dead animals. There was no flow of water to flush the sewage into the river and on towards Ely. In the late 1500s, Cambridge was affected by the plague and other fatal infections. These were thought to be caused by ‘ bad air ’ resulting from the sewage contaminated water in the river and local ditches.

A talk by Tony Kirby about the development of Cambridge during the 19th Century looking at the growth in population, the spread of the town and university and some of the streets and buildings which were copiously illustrated.

A Zoom Talk by Dr Patricia Fara based on her book ‘A Lab of One’s Own’

A talk by Helen Ackroyd, who has been a volunteer room guide at Anglesey Abbey for over eleven years and was eager to share “those stories that you don’t know” about the place – and its owners – before it was taken over by the National Trust in 1966.