8 Ainsworth Street, Cambridge

8 Ainsworth Street

Number 8 is one of a terrace of three houses on the east side of Ainsworth Street.

1881 census

Edward A Ingrey, head, 22, baker, b. Bedfordshire
Mary A Ingrey, wife, 26, b. Stotfold, Norfolk
Ethel E Ingrey, daughter, 1, b. Cambridge

Edward Ambrose Ingrey and his wife Mary were to have two more children born in Cambridge, and they then moved to Bedford by 1884. Edward was declared bankrupt in 1887. In 1889 their eldest son William drowned when he fell into a river.

In 1900 Edward was tried at Shire Hall Court in Bedford for assaulting his daughter Florrie, then aged 15, a ‘pleasant little lass’ (Bedfordshire Mercury, 9 Feb 1900). He was sentenced to 15 months’ hard labour. He had been in trouble with the law on various occasions prior to this: obtaining potatoes under false pretences and obtaining credit by fraud, both in 1899.

He was back in court again in November 1901 to show cause as to why he wasn’t contributing towards maintenance of his son in the Reformatory. Edward agreed to give a shilling a week.

Mary Ingrey died in 1923, Edward in 1934.

1891 census

Alfred Parren, head, 27, dairyman & grocer, b. Earith, Huntingdonshire
Priscilla Parren, wife, 27, assisting her husband, b. Willingham, Cambridgeshire
Bertram W Parren, son, 1, b. Cambridge

Alfred Parren and Priscilla Harradine were married in 1886.

1901 census

Alfred Parren, head, 37, dairyman, b. Earith, Huntingdonshire
Priscilla Parren, wife, 37, b. Willingham, Cambridgeshire
Bertram Parren, son, 11, b. Cambridge

1911 census

Alfred Parren, head, 47, dairyman, b. Earith, Huntingdonshire
Priscilla Parren, wife, 47, b. Willingham, Cambridgeshire
Bertram Parren, son, 21, working in the business, b. Cambridge
William Hughes, visitor, married, 56, Baptist minister, b. Soham, Cambridgeshire

The Census records that they had originally had two children, but one had died.

In 1916 Bertram joined the Suffolk Regiment, Machine Gun Corps, giving his address as 8 Ainsworth Street. In 1917 he married Daisy Murkin and their address was in Willis Road.

1921 census

Alfred Parren, head, 57, dairyman, employer, at home, b. Earith, Huntingdonshire
Priscilla Parren, wife, 57, home duties, b. Earith Bridge, Cambridgeshire

1939 register

Bertram William Parren, b. 23 June 1889, dairyman
Daisy M Parren, b. 6 Oct 1893, unpaid domestic duties
Audrey M Parren, b. 20 Aug 1921, typist
Marjorie D Parren, b. 31 Mar 1924, at school

Alfred and Priscilla had moved to Marshall Road by 1939. Alfred Parren died in 1943. His probate record states that he is of 82 Ainsworth Street, but died on 22 April at 8 Ainsworth Street. Priscilla died in 1944.

Bertram Parren died in February 1953, his address given as 8 Ainsworth Street.

1962

Mrs D Parren

Sources: UK census records (1881 to 1921), General Register Office birth, marriage and death indexes (1837 onwards), the 1939 England and Wales Register, A Calendar of Prisoners Tried at The Assizes (England & Wales, Crime, Prisons & Punishment, 1770-1935), Cambridge Independent Press (24 December 1887), Bedford Record (28 December 1889), Bedfordshire Mercury (28 July 1899 & 18 August 1899) and the National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1858-1995

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Family memory of Parren’s shop & dairy at number 8 Ainsworth Street was printed in the series called “Down Your Street” by Sara Payne (Cam News item from 1986) in which Audrey Browne of 191 Perne Road remembers the shop and dairy business back to the time of her Grandfather and Grandmother, Alfred and Priscilla Parran and says:

“My grandparents kept pigs and cows and they made butter by the yard and delicious milk cheeses.  The milk sold in the dairy shop we bought from relatives who farmed out of town”, probably from Willingham or Earith, where the grandparents were from.  The granddaughter, Audrey, goes on to say:

“I remember as a child that there was an acre of ground behind the shop which was used as a smallholding. There was an orchard too’. Also, there was an alleyway from Stone Street to bring livestock across from Coldham’s Common & the allotments, and to bring horses and carts in and out for the milk deliveries. There was also a passage down the side of the shop leading to the dairy.  Audrey remembers the time that the young bullocks used to be herded from the cattle market the other side of the station down to the abattoir just beyond the dairy on Sleaford Street, and excited bullocks on the run would “dash down the passage and then get stuck so we had to open the gate into our back garden to turn them around and get them back out again.”

Alfred and Priscilla had a son called Bertram (known as Bert) born in 1889 who worked in the family business, delivering the milk locally until the outbreak of the First World War when he signed up for the Suffolk Regiment. When he returned alive from the war, he went back to the Parren dairy business working with his father, until Alfred retired in the 1930s.   The other vivid memory from Bert’s daughter, Audrey, is from the Second World War, when evacuees from Dunkirk came all of a sudden by train to be deposited on Parker’s Piece and then be found places to be billeted.

Audrey says, “Immediately after Dunkirk the surviving troops of the Cameronian regiment were billeted in Ainsworth Street.  They were just pushed anywhere.  One of the officers came up to my father and asked whether they could use his shop as a bureau de change so that his soldiers could change their French francs.   Whilst this was all going on, my Mother, dished out milk to the soldiers from a large china pail and then my sister and I helped with the washing up.”