13 Fitzwilliam Street

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Charles Kingsley

History of 13 Fitzwilliam Street

WW wrote in2024:

[William Bushby Wilkins] wrote a letter to the Director of the National Gallery from [this] address in February 1856 offering some of his father’s drawings of the building. He died in April 1857 at Farnsfield in Notts. In 1856 he was clearing up his mother’s estate; she had died the year before in their house in Lensfield Road, which was demolished in the 1920s …. W.B. Wilkins died young, seems to have dabbled in architecture, then went into the church. His sister, Alicia, married Rev William Kingsley, Fellow of Sidney Sussex, friend and executor of Turner and friend of Ruskin.

According to A B Gray, Cambridge Revisited (1921) Charles Kingsley lived in this house for a time. He writes that in May 1860 Kingsley was offered the professorship of Modern History and lived in Cambridge for a part of each year. In 1869 he resigned the professorship and in August was appointed a canon of Chester.

1913 (13)

Cambridge Home for Nurses

Miss Marson matron

1962 (13 & 14)

Addenbrooke’s Hospital Servants Hostel

In 2024 Deborah Smith sent us these reminiscences of when she was a student nurse:

I arrived in Cambridge in March 1973 as a student nurse at Addenbrookes. I daresay everyone who has been a student in Cambridge thinks it was at its most Cambridge-y when they were there, but in the seventies it really was unlike anywhere else. People used to go to Peterborough to do their shopping … need I say more? Not many cars, loads of bikes (black ones with wicker baskets on the front), funny old shops and department stores.

So, what do I remember of Cambridge getting on for 52 years ago? It seems incredible to think that 52 years before that the 1st world war had only been over for 3 years. Fifty two years is a long time.

We lived in the nurses’ home at the back of the old hospital for the first six months. The old hospital was very much up and running then – the medical and surgical wards moved up to the new site about a year later. The wards were nightingale style, and the ward sisters were terrifying. We wore purple and white pin-striped dresses with stiffly starched aprons and collars, and silly paper caps, and belts which denoted where we were in our training. In my case, not very far.

We used to go to the college discos, Peterhouse mainly as it was opposite the hospital. Two of my nursing friends swore that they were at their most alluring when smelling slightly of a disinfectant we used for bed pans. Didn’t work for me. I think it was John’s disco where they always had a machine blowing bubbles. If things got a bit slow the DJ would put on Brown Sugar, Tumbling Dice or Layla.

We used to go to the Whim, on the corner of Trinity St and Green St. It was a cafe staffed largely by Australian girls on a year out. We also used to go to Shades, a wine bar on the corner of King’s Parade and Bene’t St. I remember being in there when the university students had just had their results, and a girl said, ‘Oh, I deliquesce’. I haven’t heard that word ever again, but I think it means turn to liquid. I think she deliquesced because she’d got a first, not because she’d failed. She looked very happy (and drunk).

There were 5 department stores. Laurie and McConnell in Burleigh St closed in about 1975. It had a balcony which ran round the whole shop where they had their cafe. It became a Habitat. Nearby was the Co-op Department Store. A bit glum really. No style. Then there was Robert Sayle’s, which was the John Lewis shop. Still there but now part of a new arcade. Joshua Taylor was on the corner of Market St and and Sydney St. It was a bit upmarket for the likes of me, although it did have a nice coffee shop, called The Peacock, Closed many years ago of course. Eaden Lilley’s was my favourite, almost next door to Joshua Taylor but a bit closer to the market. Rumour had it that Grace Brothers in Are You being Served was based on it, but I’ve also heard that about a department store in Oxford. It had lifts controlled by elderly military men, who called out the floors. It had a very nice food hall at the back of the ground floor, up some steps. They also sold a brand of tights that I really liked, called Gypsy, that I was never able to find anywhere else. That’s gone as well of couse.

The library was a circular Carnegie one at the back of the Guildhall. They had a very odd way of filing library tickets, using addresses. They never knew whether ours were filed under Addenbrooke’s, nurses’ home, Trumpington St, Adrian Way … Anyway it re-opened in Lion Yard in, I think, 1975 and was computerised. Princess Anne opened Lion Yard.

My friend Jen and I used to go to the Red Cow behind the Guildhall and monopolise the juke box. For 50p you could have 10 choices. Not everyone was keen on our taste. I went to some good gigs at the Corn Exchange: Mink de Ville, the Feelgoods, the Ramones. St John Ambulance were on hand to deal with people who had passed out/overdone the dope. Not me, hated cannabis.

Petty Cury was being demolished in 1973, but Eros was still there. It was a Greek restaurant upstairs through a little door next door to Boots. It was well-known for being a) cheap and b) not very – how shall we say – hygienic. However, there was another place in King St called the Corner House that made Eros look like The Savoy. Potter Products on Burleigh St was even worse. The open-air loos were next to the kitchen. How did we survive? When we were pushing the punt out, we went to The Varsity, opposite Emma on St Andrew’s St, which was very respectable. There was a posh clothes shop next door, the name of which escapes me, where classy women’s dresses were draped artistically over twigs and things. Fascinating .

[Later Deborah moved to 14 Covent Garden, off Mill Road. See her reminiscences of Gwydir Street Bath House and of 14 Covent Garden.]

It wasn’t all fun. I totally screwed up my nursing career and left without qualifying. Too immature and idiotic. Bitter regrets, even though I’m now 70. Still, my memories of Cambridge remain with me and give me great joy.

One last thing. Jen and I were on a bus going up to Addenbrooke’s and the conductor (yes it was that long ago) was clearly a Cambridge undergrad on vacation. Jen said of him ‘he’s got so many plums in his mouth he can hardly talk’. THAT’S what Cambridge was like in 1973. Lovely…. Debby Smith

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