Meeting reports 2017

Richard Mortimer’s story started from a community dig in Oakington over a number of years. He set about looking for patterns in the landscape, and one thing came to stand out: To the north of a line, a large proportion of village and town names ends in -ham, while to the south the suffix -ton is much more in evidence. Both these suffixes mean basically ‘enclosure’ or ‘settlement’, so why the different distribution?

Christine Ruse gave us a very personal account of the last private owners of the Wandlebury estate, based on reminiscences of people who had had connections with the family as well as written records.home for injured troops, made all the more popular by the Grays hospitality.

Martyn Northfield’s family have lived for 500 years in villages in South Cambridgeshire, including Stapleford, and Essex. Martyn traced his family back through his father and also his mother who was called Twinn. Two families family living in the quiet villages of South Cambridgeshire and north Essex epitomises so much of English history over the generations.

Honor Ridout, a longstanding Cambridge Blue Badge guide, has researched the Fair for a number of years.  She is also a stalwart participant in the full-dress re-enactments of the Fair that now take place every September at the Leper Chapel (which is a little gem of Romanesque-style architecture).  Who better to tell us all that can be known of its history?  She did so for us with gusto and humour.

Talk by Richard Fletcher Anyone who has heard of Bletchley Park has also heard of Alan Turing and his work in solving the cyphers created by the Enigma machine but very recently the name Bill Tutte has come to the fore.