10 Trinity Street / 22 Green Street, (Whim Café)

History of 10 Trinity Street

Listed building

Mid / late C19. Venetian Gothic style. Grey gault brick. 2 storeys, 3 windows in pointed arch openings with drip-moulds over, sashes. Pointed arch door. Dentil eaves cornice, slate roof.

On this site was Spaldings Inn, from the name of its principal who was one of the first Fellows of Clare Hall.

In the 14th century the house was sold to the Prior of Ely and was used by by student monks.

Later it passed again into the hands of Clare Hall and from then on, this and the premises next door, generally known as Bordens’s Hostel, housed both Clare and Peterhouse members until 1539 when the property was sold to a Cambridge alderman who converted it to an inn called the White Swan.

10 Trinity Street c1875 (MoC255/71)

22 Green Street , demolished c1875 (MoC)

The previous building occupied by W Metcalfe were pulled down between 1874 and 1876. The current building was built in the early 1880s for firm of solicitors including two members of the famous Foster family.

It was then known as the Whim Café for many years.

See Green Street

1861

James Day White, 64, bootmaker and librarian, b London

C. 1877, with a corner tourelle, represents the Ruskinian Gothic fashion. (Pevsner) Pevsner identified this as no. 12 but in the 1913 city directory there is no no. 12.

Inscription 10 Trinity Street

Cambridge Inscriptions Explained by Nancy Gregory (2006)

The hourglass indicates that the subject matter of the inscription is Time:

PRAETERITUM CORRIGE

Correct the past

PRAESENS REGE

Control the present

FUTURUM CERNE

Perceive the future

The original form is a Latin hexameter:

CORRIGE PRAETERITUM, PRAESENS REGE, CERNE FUTURUM

and is part of a short epigram by the 16th century Bavarian jurist called Nicolaus Reusner.

1891

George Sturgeon, 62, caretaker & waiter, b Newmarket

Lydia, 44, b Hauxton

Alice, 15, pupil teacher, b Cambridge

Charlotte, 13, b Cambridge

Florence, 10, b Cambridge

Ada, niece, 19, servant, b London

1901

1911

1913

Guy Wentworth Stanley, solicitor, Hon. Sec. Society Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Solicitor to Cambs. Permanent Benefit Building Soceity.