111 (61-62) King Street

History of 111 King Street

1851 unnumbered

Joseph Cooke, 35, upholsterer

1861 (61-62)

Joseph Cooke, 48, upholsterer, b Cottenham

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1871

(61) Ladies’ Association Home for Young Servants.

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1881

(62) Carpenter

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1901

(61) Murdoch

For more than eighty years a Servants’ Training Home in King Street provided accommodation and practical instruction for young women preparing for domestic service. By 1901 over 400 girls had passed through the institution, which also offered refuge to many “strange and friendless girls” arriving in Cambridge without local support. In October 1901 its work was transferred to a new Diocesan Lodge for the Girls’ Friendly Society on Hills Road. The new premises offered recreation rooms and classrooms where girls received instruction in nursing, home hygiene, needlework, musical drill, singing and even astronomy, together with accommodation for boarders and visitors. The move reflected changing ideas about the welfare, education and protection of young working women at the beginning of the twentieth century, while bringing to an end one of King Street’s longest-established charitable institutions.

Source: Mike Petty Archive, Cambridge King Street Scrapbook 1897–1990, summarising

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1913 (111-115) H Rooke & Sons, builders

1962 H Rooke & Sons Ltd, builders