Through an engaging presentation of historical records and captivating photographs, local historian Eleanor Whitehead will provide a fascinating glimpse into the social history of the era. The talk will highlight Chivers and Sons’ technical achievements, including ground-breaking quality control measures, Europe’s first large-scale canning operations in the 1890s, the development of vegetable canning in the 1930s, and their support for fruit cold storage research during the 1920s. Additionally, Eleanor will shed light on the company’s pre-World War II collaboration with ‘Birds Eye’ on Frosted Food work.
This talk takes place at Ross Street Community Centre which is fully accessible. Doors open at 7pm and the talk starts at 7:30pm. Tea and bscuits provided. Admission £3.
Note as audience numbers are unpredictable we urge people to arrive early so as not to be turned away if we reach capacity.
Date Tuesday 9 June 2026 Time 7:30pm – 9pm Location Ross St Community Centre, Ross Street, Cambridge CB1 3UZ Admission £3
The Mill Road History Society invites you to bring an old toy or something related to childhood along to Ross Street Community Centre and to give us a short history of it and what it means to you. Members of the committee will be bringing some of their favourite objects but we welcome contributions from our members as well.
Don’t be shy, come along and join in. You are, of course, also welcome to just come and listen. Note we won’t be recording this event so whatever you tell us will just be for the evening’s audience.
This event takes place at Ross Street Community Centre, a fully accessible venue, and is open to all. Doors open at 7pm, the AGM starts at 7:30pm and the talk starts at 7:45pm. Admission £3 unless you plan to speaking in which case entrance is free.
If you are thinking of bringing an object then it would be helpful if you could email admin@millroadhistory.org.uk beforehand so we know numbers but feel free to just turn up.
Date Tuesday 12 May 2026 Time 7:30pm – 9pm Location Ross St Community Centre, Ross Street, Cambridge CB1 3UZ Admission £3
Philip Attwood tells us about life on Mill Road in the early 60s.
More info to come.
This talk takes place at Ross Street Community Centre which is fully accessible. Doors open at 7pm and the talk starts at 7:30pm. Tea and bscuits provided. Admission £3.
Note as audience numbers are unpredictable we urge people to arrive early so as not to be turned away if we reach capacity.
Date Tuesday 14 April 2026 Time 7:30pm – 9pm Location Ross St Community Centre, Ross Street, Cambridge CB1 3UZ Admission £3
Come join us for a hands-on community mapping event led by urban scholar Dr Zhuozhang Li of the Department of Architecture, working in collaboration with the Mill Road History Society. Zhuozhang is a member of the Community Design Research Lab and the Cambridge Room. Using creative participatory mapping, we’re exploring what Mill Road means to the people who live, work, and spend time here—and we invite you to join in.
Workshop During the workshop, you’ll fill out a short survey and help map out the spaces, activities, and social connections that shape everyday life on ‘your’ Mill Road. It’s a chance to share your perspective and see how it fits into the bigger picture. This builds on earlier data collected during the Mill Road Winter Fair and all contributions will be added to a large, evolving community map.
If you can’t make it to the workshop then you can fill out the survey beforehand, see the link below.
Talk After the workshop, Zhuozhang will give a talk about this creative mapping approach—how it helps uncover the stories, networks, and experiences that often go unseen. He’s interested in “knowledge co-production,” where local voices help shape how people and places co-create new ways of knowing and (re)imagining the city. The project also looks at how mapping can be a powerful, accessible tool for representation and social justice.
Our February talk will be given on Zoom by Honor Ridout on the subject of Stourbridge Fair.
The Stourbridge Fair, out on the Cambridge boundary, was the great event of the year for Cambridge folk and for others, over hundreds of years. Across the harvested fields this valuable market sprang up each September bringing people and goods from far and wide, with the exchange of thousands of pounds in cash and promises. The little community at Barnwell, opposite the old Priory gate, was a cente of hospitality for the travellers, as well as storage for the great booths that had to be put up along the main streets of the Fair.
It was when I became Tourist Officer for Cambridge City Council that I applied my love of history to the city and its past both town and gown. I qualified as a tour guide and in later years also taught evening classes on Cambridge and other history subjects. I was particularly interested in finding out about the Stourbridge Fair, mentioned in all the histories but without much detail. When the friends of the Leper Chapel decided to celebrate the Fair each September, I joined in, to give short talks about it.
This talk takes place on Zoom. Details will be sent to our Mailing List the day before the talk.
Date Tuesday 10 Feburary 2026 Time 7:30pm – 9pm Location Zoom Cost Free
Come and find out about the local people who lived in Mill Road – stories of the mill, murder, wartime bombs and a German spy. Discover Cambridge’s first public library, bath house, workhouse and much more. After the arrival of the railway, this street was a place where you could get everything, from birth to death. Learn how to uncover the hidden marks previous inhabitants left behind – and perhaps share some memories of your own.
Start: 10.30am at the junction of Mortimer Road and Mill Road.
The tour, which lasts approx. 90 mins, is led by Green Badge Guides, Sophie Smiley and Veronica Speirs. The route is accessible to all.
Price £15 per adult, children under 16 free. Places are limited. Please pay by bank transfer in advance or cash on the day. Book via: sophie.smiley@gmail.com
In this illustrated talk, Tony Kirby will explore how both city and county have been mapped over the centuries, from the very generalised maps of the early Middle Ages , the productions of private surveyors from Tudor times onwards and through the 19c Ordnance Survey to the maps we take for granted today, whether Google or Satnav, who the map makers were, why the maps were produced and what they can (and can’t) tell us about the county’s history.
Until his retirement, Tony Kirby was Co-ordinator of Strategic & Curriculum Planning at Anglia Ruskin University, having previously been Principal Lecturer in History at what was, when he first started work there in 1970, ‘The Tech’. He was Co-President of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society 2022-24, and is a former Chair of the Cambridgeshire Records Society, Secretary of the Cambridgeshire Association for Local History and the Cambridgeshire County Advisory Group on Archives and Local Studies.
He was a lead compiler for the Historic Towns Trust Historical Map of Cambridge (2024) and for the current series of early 20c 25” OS maps of Cambridgeshire being published by Alan Godfrey Maps.
Alexander Watford and James Richardson: detail from Map shewing the Roads and boundaries of Parishes for the distance of Eight Miles around the University of Cambridge (1827)
Courtesy of Cambridge Antiquarian Society
This talk takes place on Zoom. Details will be sent to our Mailing List the day before the talk.
Date Tuesday 13 January 2026 Time 7:30pm – 9pm Location Zoom Cost Free
Note this talk replaces the previously advertised talk from Claire Martinsen that will now take place later in the year.
Brookfield House Inn, 416 Mill Road by Starr & Rignall, Cambridge 1915
Mark Tinkler takes us on a virtual PowerPoint-aided journey down the length of Mill Road, pausing at each of its 9 pubs (past and present) for brief and refreshing tales of scandal, intrigue, danger and daring-do.
How many of Mill Road’s nine pubs can you name? Here are nine clues: the reason for Mill Road’s name, the Admiral, an 1851 glasshouse, the Swimmer, Chariots of Fire, Brookfield Tavern, the Nine Steps, Kitty Dunphy’s – and finally – Caine – Master Po’s favourite pupil.
Mark is from Cambridge and his family have been in city/Chesterton since at least the end of the 18th century. His family were very much ‘town’ not ‘gown’ and worked mostly as labourers and brickmakers. Several of them ran pubs in the city including the “White Horse” (Chesterton), “The Eagle” (City Road), the “Fox and Hounds” (Trumpington Street) and the “Fat Pig” (Norfolk Street). Since retiring from a life in opera and music education, he researches Cambridge pubs with a view to publishing a book on the subject. He contributes to the ‘Lost Pubs’ series in ALE (local CAMRA magazine); gives tours about the publicans buried in the Mill Road Cemetery; and runs the “Cambridge Pub History Group” on Facebook and writes the website “innsofcambridge.com”.
This talk takes place at Ross Street Community Centre which is fully accessible. Doors open at 7pm and the talk starts at 7:30pm. Tea and bscuits provided. Admission £3.
Note as audience numbers are unpredictable we urge people to arrive early so as not to be turned away if we reach capacity.
Date Tuesday 11 November 2025 Time 7:30pm – 9pm Location Ross St Community Centre, Ross Street, Cambridge CB1 3UZ Admission £3
You can watch the recording of the talk on our YouTube channel or here.
This talk explores an unexpected pattern to the naming of buildings and streets near Cromwell Road, in Romsey Town.
Julian Jacobs studied History at Oxford, with a particular focus on the 17th Century. So this talk unites his love of history with his love of the Romsey community in which he has lived since 1982. Before retirement, Julian served as the Department Administrator at the Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge.
We will also be including short contributions on the derivations of other street names in the Mill Road area. If you would like to speak for upto 5 minutes about your street then please email us.
Date Tuesday 14 October 2025 Time 7:30pm – 9pm Location Ross St Community Centre, Ross Street, Cambridge CB1 3UZ Admission £3
For Open Cambridge 2025 we gave a talk that combined newly filmed drone footage of Mill Road, our collection of historical photos from sources such as the Cambridgeshire Collection, and the stories and voices of the residents of the area that we’ve collected since the start of the Mill Road History Project in 2013.
This was a live talk where we told you some of our favourite tales of Mill Road’s buildings using old photos and new drone shots to place them in context and hear some stories straight from the horse’s mouth using excerpts from our library of interviews with long-term residents.
Our thanks to Matthew Power (The Willcox Collective) and Gordon Davies (Cambridge Museum of Technology) for enabling the drone footage.
Date Tuesday 9 September 2025 Time 7:30pm – 9pm Location Ross St Community Centre, Ross Street, Cambridge CB1 3UZ Admission Free
Sources and References
As mentioned in the talk here is information about the sources used and where to go to find more about each location visited.
The history of the Liberal Club is part of the history of Sturton Town Hall / The Kinema which you can read on its Capturing Cambridge page and in the building report written by Simon Middleton and Allan Brigham.
The recording of the talk can be viewed on our YouTube channel or here.
Asa bonus you can view a short trailer we made for the talk below. This features drone footage and archive interview snippets that weren’t in the talk.
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