34, Baltic, Rock Road, Cambridge

History of 34 Rock Road

1911

(Baltic)

Mary Ann Wright, 58, single, lodging house keeper, born Norfolk

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Pam Nicholes’s parents, Douglas and Eleanor, married and moved to 34 Rock Road in 1926. Douglas worked in the family drapery business at 30 Mill Road which he carried on after his father’s death. They had two children, Pam, born 1928 and William ‘Bill’.

In 2017 Pam described her childhood and memories of  her school, St Margaret’s,  in Covent Garden.

In 1939 the Girls’ High School moved to Long Road and her father volunteered as a stretcher bearer.

After the war Pam trained to be an occupational therapist at Dorset House in Oxford. She spent the rest of her life working as an OT all over the world.

She came back to Cambridge when her mother was unwell and worked at Chesterton Hospital.

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In 2024 MB sent this note:

Pam Nicholes also trained as a primary school teacher and I was privileged to work alongside her for a number of years at Chalvey First School in Slough. She was greatly influenced in her approach to teaching by “Letterland,” a forward looking phonics programme which she used to great effect with her children who were mainly drawn from the Asian community living in that catchment. Pam had a great influence on my own approach to teaching career and personal life. Pam is a very creative woman and her love of, particularly, textile crafts, has worked its way into my soul. She is a good friend and always there with her boundless enthusiasm for life.  When her father developed dementia, Pam would commute from Cambridge to Slough but eventually gave up teaching in order to care for him full time. She did carry on working within schools on her own phonic scheme and running small craft groups for children in her own home.