The Cambridge Evening News in June 1996 described how the Crouches had built their new home in 1978 on a rubbish tip. Gerrard Crouch designed four houses on a plot of former allotment land. However, 1978 was the year of the dustmen’s strike and the plot was allocated as a tip for local refuse for a month.
The house is built of bricks especially chosen from Sussex, mixed with others from London tips. Some of the bricks have bits of bottlem glass in them and no two bricks are the same. Their children expressed a desire to have unusual shaped bedrooms. Square shapes and flat ceilings were out for a start. There is a minstrels’ gallery, many windows are triangular and the bedrooms have sloping ceilings.
Sources: Cambridge News (Cambridgeshire Collection)
Do you have any information about the people or places in this article? If so, then please let us know using the Contact page or by emailing capturingcambridge@
This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0