Welcome to Capturing Cambridge!

Capturing Cambridge is putting local history on the map in  Cambridgeshire.

Discover and explore stories of local people and places and share some of your own too.

Scroll down to find out about the project, how to navigate the website and how you can get involved.

The Capturing Cambridge website was first devised as part of the Mill Road History Project, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, 2013-16. The work of documenting the history of the Mill Road area continues at the Mill Road History Society which is part of our growing network of local and community history societies and groups (see LINKS).

Since 2016, Capturing Cambridge has been managed and run by the Museum of Cambridge (formerly the Folk Museum). We receive no funding from the City Council or University to run the site. We rely solely on donations from generous individuals, plus hundreds of hours of volunteer time, to keep the site up and running. Please consider donating to the Museum to support the ongoing development of Capturing Cambridge. You can do that by going to our website and donating online, sending a cheque to Museum of Cambridge 2/3 Castle Street CB3 0AQ, or popping by and using our ‘tap to donate’ device. Your support means we can continue to run Capturing Cambridge for generations to come.

Contributors to the site often have a particular interest in their own locality, family or social history.  Some are volunteers at the Museum who research and write stories associated with objects, documents and images in the collections.

If you have stories, photos or documents you would like to contribute, please contact us at the Museum at capturingcambridge@museumofcambridge.org.uk or via the CONTACT form on this website.

Using this site

You can explore the website in various ways – by using the map, the project areas, street and information tiles or the search box.

Using the MAP:
• zoom in and out by clicking on the + and – buttons at the bottom right of the map
• hover over a coloured dot to see the title of the article, click on the dot to see the featured image, click on the image to go to the full article
• to close the pop-up image, click anywhere outside it.

Using the Project area and street TILES:
• click PROJECTS in the main menu to see the Project area tiles
• click a project area tile to see the street and information tiles for that area
• click a street or information tile to see the articles and information for that street
• click a street or information tile to read the article.

Using the SEARCH box:
• click the magnifying-glass icon at the lower left of the home screen
• you will see a search box and a tag cloud of key topics
• click on one of the topic boxes in the tag cloud to see all articles on the site relating to that topic
• type any word or name in to the search box and click ‘Go’ to search the entire site.

How to get involved

At the end of every article there are reminders of how you can:

FIND OUT MORE by clicking on the further information links to documents, images and audio clips in our online ARCHIVE and via external weblinks,

SHARE the information with others via social media or email and

CONTRIBUTE to the stories on the site yourself.

Remember you can use the CONTACT form to tell us who you are and what you are interested in or if you have more information or a correction to a report that’s already been published on the site or just because you may want to help in some other way.

You can also reach us through our Facebook page and Twitter  account or by email at capturingcambridge@museumofcambridge.org.uk.

Enjoy discovering and sharing stories of Cambridgeshire people and places with Capturing Cambridge at the Museum of Cambridge.

Your City.  Your Museum.  Your Stories.

Dear Visitor,

Thank you for exploring historical Cambridgeshire! We hope you enjoy your visit and, if you do,  would consider making a donation today.

Capturing Cambridge makes accessible thousands of photos and memories of Cambridge and its surrounding villages and towns. It is run by the Museum of Cambridge which, though 90 years old, is one of the most poorly publicly funded local history museums in the UK. It receives no core funding from local or central government nor from the University of Cambridge.

As a result, we are facing a crisis; we have no financial cushion – unlike many other museums in Cambridge – and are facing the need to drastically cut back our operations which could affect our ability to continue to run and develop this groundbreaking local history website.

If Capturing Cambridge matters to you, then the survival of the Museum of the Cambridge should matter as well. If you won’t support the preservation of your heritage, no-one else will! Your support is critical.

If you love Capturing Cambridge, and you are able to, we’d appreciate your support.

Every donation makes a world of difference.

Thank you,
Roger Lilley, Chair of Trustees
Museum of Cambridge