1 Shelly Terrace, Shelly Row

History of 1 Shelly Terrace

1901

Arthur W Searle, 47, baker and grocer, b Essex

1913

A W Searle, baker and confectioner

1945

In 2025 Pam Sharpe née Williams sent these reminiscences of VE Day:

I remember 1945 and VE Day (Victory in Europe Day). At that time I was 7 years old and living at Shelly Terrace, Cambridge with my mother Amy Williams, my brother Ron, who was two years younger than me, and my mother’s sister, Florence King.

We had been evacuated from North London to Cambridge  at the start of the Second World War. Now, to celebrate the end of the war, neighbours in the area united in a street party in Albion Row and all the children were to wear fancy dress. Helped by our neighbour, Joan, who lent me a little, velvet shoulder bag, which had been her Victorian grandmother’s, and wearing a long dress and carrying a large bunch of lavender, I went as a Victorian Lavender Lady. (They had, I was told, sold lavender around the streets of London in earlier times.) All the children paraded around to show their fancy dress and then happily joined their families at the trestle tables set out along the length of traffic free Albion Row, for tea. It was a very happy day.

The other vivid memory I have of those times in 1945 was of one early evening when I was at home with my brother Ron and our good friends Glenda and Hugh, when an older girl who lived somewhere in the area, knocked. “Come and see the lights“ she said. We did not know what she meant, but curious, all four of us joined her and a small group of other children  at the top of Castle Row where it joined Castle Street. We looked down the hill towards the historical centre of Cambridge with its college spires in the distance and it looked like fairyland, sparkling with light! Because of the war we had never seen street lights before! Very excited we marched  down Castle Hill in a group, loudly singing the popular song “When the lights go on again, all over the world”, until we got to the bottom of the hill when an old lady came out of her door and said to us “Stop that terrible noise and go home”. So we did!

1962

Mrs Amy E Williams