Map that’s a one stop shop for Cambridge history

Cambridge historian Tony Kirby is revealing the secrets of the past that lie under our feet with the publication of a new historic map of the city.

The Historic Towns Trust’s new map of Cambridge, which he compiled with Elizabeth Baigent, gives a comprehensive overview of the history and topography of the city, showing the many layers of occupation over the centuries, from the Roman period onwards.

It reveals how roads, the river, markets and famous fairs, religious houses and, from the 13th century, the university, created a complex web of activities, interests and settlers.

And it shows many of Cambridge’s landmarks that have since disappeared, including the castle and Roman settlements.

The new publication uses the Ordnance Survey map surveyed in 1925 as its base, and incorporates much new information from documentary and archaeological research since the first map was published in 1975.

Tony says: “This differs from a normal map because we've got all the archaeological and historical information overlaid on the street map from 1925. It covers a whole area from Castle down the side of the station, parts of Mill Road, past West Cambridge etc and the reason it's an old map is because it is much easier to plot vanished buildings onto an older map than it is onto a modern one.

“Somewhere like Lion Yard or The Grafton centre overlay a lot of old historic buildings, so is is very difficult to plot accurately where the buildings were in on the modern map, whereas on an older map, where you have got the property boundaries that lasted to the 1950s and 1960s. You can do it much more accurately.

“One of the things on the back of the map is a gazetteer with information about all the colleges, major buildings in the town, industries like the gasworks, for example, as well as schools, the railway, and what we know about Roman Cambridge. It’s really intended as a one-stop shop for anybody who is interested in Cambridge history.”

College and university buildings now dominate the townscape, but Cambridge also has a wide range of civic and public buildings and churches built for the town’s population.

Tony says: “The map itself was drawn by professional cartographers but we were helped by many people in the city, especially archaeologists, because what was up to date archaeology a couple of years ago has been superseded by other things that have been found due to the rate of development in Cambridge. Anytime there’s a dig before a new development they find something new.

“People who are opening the map will immediately see the colleges, which need no further explanation. But they will also see what lies under the colleges and particularly the monastic houses, the priories that were there and that the colleges replaced in the 16th century. In some cases they do still follow to a certain extent the plan of the monasteries.

“The one important site that is not there now but is shown on the top right of the map is Barnwell Priory, which was one of the biggest in East Anglia. There's hardly anything of it left - just the one rather miserable building, The Cellarer’s Checker on Priory Road. You could easily walk past it and miss it. it's not quite clear what it was. It may have been the kitchen.”

This is the remains of a 13th-century stone building that now belongs to Cambridge Antiquarian Society.

At 1:2500, the new map covers the area from Castle Hill and the beginning of the Huntingdon Road in the north to Newnham in the south-west and the railway station in the south-east. It shows the dense network of somewhat irregular streets in the city centre, surrounded by larger areas of mostly 19th-century development and an unusual amount of green space, public and private.

The Reformation had a major impact on the town, with the closure of friaries and nunneries and the foundation of new, explicitly Protestant colleges, sometimes on the same sites. There was then quite a long gap before the next wave of college foundations in the 19th century, including some catering to hitherto excluded constituencies such as nonconformists and women.

The date of the 1925 base map survey reveals a changing Cambridge, with Fen Causeway under construction and Burrells’ Walk covered in temporary housing, a few years before the establishment there of the new University Library. The gazetteer on the reverse of the sheet gives brief accounts of major buildings and features, including all the churches and colleges shown on the map.

The map shows everything from the location of former cinemas to the route of Hobson’s Conduit and the outline of the first Eastern General Hospital where the University Library is now.

The Cambridge map is number 16 in the Historic Towns Trust’s Town and City Historical Maps series. It is available from bookshops priced £10.

To find out more, visit: historictownstrust.uk