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

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.

 

 

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.

---

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.

1978

1978 02 23

Shopping Guide decided to investigate the cost of a cup of tea in Cambridge snack bars. Best value for money was The Whim in Trinity Street, where a pot of tea cost 15p and, with a jug of hot water and plenty of milk, you could get three cups for your money. Worst was the tea and coffee counter at the Arts Theatre Roof Garden, where you paid 15p for one cup. Thornhills in Regent Street was the best for choice, as you could have a cup for 8p or a pot for 18p, while at the Coffee Pot in Green Street you paid 20p for a pot that held four cups, if you had the thirst to match it. Joshua Taylor was the only department store with a coffee or tea shop, but it had a lunchtime minimum charge.

Credit: Mike Petty, Cambridge Green Street Scrapbook.