Street Directories
A key resource when researching the history of a building or street are the street directories. There were two main publishers, W.P. Spalding and Frederic Kelly, although a few other similar directories were also published by others. Spalding stopped published in 1939 and Kelly in 1975.
Physical copies of the Cambridgeshire directories can be consulted at:
- The Cambridgeshire Collection at the Central Library (a complete set of Spalding’s and a selection of Kelly’s)
- The University Library (a complete set of Spalding’s and Kelly’s from 1948-1975)
They also come up for sale on eBay regularly.
In around 2006 the Historical Directories project digitised 689 directories from across the country and made them available for free download as searchable PDFs from the University of Leicester. These files are more easily searched on Ancestry and Jstor for those with access/subscriptions to those sites.
Beyond that a small number of additional directories are available for free download and for sale on CD/download from online sellers.
In light of this a project was started in 2026 by the Mill Road History Society to digitise as many directories as possible and make them freely available to all. The list below includes links to all known directories, sorted by year, with direct links to the PDF in each case. Note the PDFs are between 50-80MB in size.
Check the Updates list below for new or revised uploads.
Updates
18 May 2026: page created with links to existing scans
19 May 2026: uploaded Spalding’s 1931-32, 1932-33 and Kelly’s 1948, 1967 from Mill Road History Society
20 May 2026: uploaded Kelly’s 1953
21 May 2026: uploaded Kelly’s 1933
27 May 2026: uploaded Kelly’s 1964
6 June 2026: uploaded Spalding’s 1935-36, 1939-40 and Kelly’s 1955, 1960, 1968
15 June 2026: uploaded Kelly’s 1974 and reorganised page
20 August 2026: uploaded many new Spalding’s and re-uploaded all with fixes and new project page, also added 1867 Mathiesons’
Other Directories
- 1830-1831 Pigot’s Directory of Cambridgeshire
- 1839 Robson’s Commercial Directory of Beds, Bucks, Cambridgeshire, Hunts, Norfolk and Suffolk
- 1851 History, Gazetteer and Directory of Cambridgeshire
- 1867 Mathiesons’ Cambridge Directory (including Ely and Newmarket) [partial]
