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Adams Road Bird Sanctuary / Skating Rink / Ghost island

History of the Bird Sanctuary

Site of Adams Road Bird Sanctuary in 1885 before creation of lake.

Site of Adams Road Bird Santuary OS map 1901

M E Keynes wrote in A House By The River p.144: the Bird Sanctuary off Adams Road reminds of the famous long frost of 1895 when my father took me there to watch skaters, not birds, for this was long before bird-watching became a national sport. Adams Road was not yet in existence, and the path to the rink branched off a track leading from Grange Road to the Coton footpath. The pond stands in a field of about four acres belonging to St John’s. In 1894 the field had been let by the College for twenty-one years ….. ‘to dig out and excavate … for the purpose of using the demised premises as a skating pond.’ We children always called it …. the Trinity Skating Rink. … In 1935 the present bird sanctuary came into official existence on the site of the ‘skating rink.’ I say official because the birds had long since taken over officially and for some years it had been used as an ecological station by the Bird Club under the auspices of Mrs Brindley, a biologost like her husband, Mr H H Brindley, and a keen ecologist.

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