27 Wulfstan Way

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History of 27 Wulfstan Way

1962 (Kelly’s)

Walter S Edwards

In 2023 CE wrote:

My family moved to 27 Wulstan Way I believe in 1954 or early 1955, when the estate was first built. I know they were the first tenants. I was born the July 1955. I spent my entire childhood in that house until I started teaching in London in 1978, so I knew the area well. My parents retired to North Wales in the Mid 1980s, but my brother bought the house and lived there until 2006 until moving out to near Littleport. I can’t believe our humble council house in now worth over half a million! Such are Cambridge house prices,

I attended Queen Edith Infants then Juniors, they were separate but adjoining schools then. The infants was accessed through a path from Wulfstan Way, the junior school from Godwin Way.
My father was a carpenter and worked for many local builders such as Kerridges and Rattee and Kett. He also worked for Co-op funeral service making coffins, and was stage set builder at the Arts cinema. He was also dragged in to help dig the swimming pool at the junior school by the fearsome head Mr Harwood. I hated my Dad for that, as we were forced to swim in the unheated pool from the start of March! My Mum was a nurse at Old Addenbrookes.

I have so many memories. I recall us all being walked from the school to line up Hills Rd to wave little Union Jacks as the Queen drove past to open New Addenbrookes in 1962 I believe,

The Wulfstan Way shops were a big part of our lives. My memories are very similar to Pat Chapman’s on your site; I think she was maybe 3 or 4 years younger than me. In those days shopping was pretty much a daily experience (with fringes or freezers). Each day we would visit Cruickshank’s for meat ( loved the bacon slicer), the greengrocers etc. My hair was cut by Mr Hall. When I was old enough to visit the shops on my own I loved the penny sweet counter at the newsagent, for whom I then worked as a paper boy for, delivering the CEN each evening.

There were two main bus routes into town. The 105 from Mowbray Road into Drummer St, the “posh” town – Robert Sales etc. For us more often the 131 from Cherry Hinton Road to Mill Road and the Co-op in Burleigh Street, Weekly we would walk to the Rock Road library for books. Never knew then I was walking past the home of Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, although many years later I was attached to his mum’s class at Cherry Hinton Juniors at the start of my teacher training.

I could go on for ever…. the bollards put up to block Wulfstan Way as a through route following a fatal accident I witnessed from my sitting room window. The snow of 1963, playing up at the chalk pits (now the Caravan Club site I believe).

Along Cherry Hinton Rad, before it was all built on there was the Coe’s farm that had the most amazing little shop that opened every day and appeared to sell absolutely everything! “Nip down to Coe’s….” You could hardly fit 2 people in it, but they’d disappear in the back a return with whatever you wanted,

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