16 Hooper Street

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A house that evaded modernisation

16 Hooper Street is in Leeds Terrace, built in the 1870s. Like all the cottages in the terrace, it was built with an outdoor toilet but no bathroom. From the 1920s to the 1970s baths were available at the Bath House in Gwydir Street.

1881 census

George Gates, 45, railway engine driver, b. Cambridge
Harriet Gates, 47, b. Cambridge
Harriet S. Gates, 8, b. Cambridge

1891 census

Sampson Brown, 31, police constable, b. Balsham, Cambridgeshire
Emily Brown, 31, b. Balsham, Cambridgeshire
Sydney C Brown, 5, b. Cambridge
Albert E Brown, 4, b. Cambridge
Gertrude M Brown, 2, b. Cambridge

Sampson was a police constable, as was his brother Charles, who lived next door at no. 15. Sampson died in 1894 aged 36.

1901 census

John Clark, 33, carpenter, b. Soham, Cambridgeshire
Jane Clark, 32, b. Littleport, Cambridgeshire
Harold John Clark, 8, b. Cambridge
Leonard Alfred Giles Clark, 6, b. Cambridge
Ada Maud Clark, 2, b. Cambridge
Mildred Florence Clark, 1, b. Cambridge

John Clark had already lived in Hooper Street ten years earlier, before his marriage to Jane: in the 1891 census he was a lodger at no. 19. By 1911 the family – now with six children – had moved along the road to 110 Ainsworth Street, a larger house.

1911 census

Harry Frank Smith, 30, brewer’s labourer, b. Fowlmere, Cambridgeshire
Emily Ann Smith, 30, b. Haslingfield, Cambridgeshire
Dorothy May Smith, 4, b. Cambridge
Ethel Grace Smith, 2, b. Cambridge

1921 census

Frederick C K Ellis, head, 34, carpenter, Eaden Lilley, 23 Market St, b. Folksworth, Huntingdonshire
Blanche L Ellis, wife, 34, home duties, b. Cambridge
Ettie Marriott, boarder, 19, draper’s assistant, G A Heyworth, Burleigh St, b. March, Cambridgeshire

1939 England and Wales register

In 1939 the residents were salesman Reginald Wilkin, his wife Ellen and their young son. Reginald was born in Cambridge in 1905 and was still living at 16 Hooper Street when he died in 1999 aged 93.

2000

A bathroom was installed.

Sources

UK census records (1841 to 1921), General Register Office birth, marriage and death indexes (1837 onwards), and the 1939 England and Wales Register.

The original Victorian boot scraper at 16 Hooper Street

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