Gray R., Stubbings D. Cambridge Street-Names: Their Origins and Associations

Cambridge University Press, 2000. — 181 p.This book draws on the great wealth of associations of streetnames in Cambridge. It is not a dictionary but provides a series of entries on such topics as the Reformation, George IV and his wife, twentieth-century scientists, businessmen, Elizabethan times, medieval Cambridge, mayors, millers and builders. It includes hermits and coal merchants, field-marshals and laundresses, martyrs and bombers, unscrupulous politicians and the founder of a Christian community, Cromwell and Newton, an Anglo-Saxon queen, Stalin’s daughter and the discoverer of Uranus – all people who lived in or often visited Cambridge.
The ancient Stourbridge Fair is included, along with castles and boat-races, sewage pumps and the original Hobson of ‘Hobson’s Choice ’. Who was St Tibb? Where did Dick Turpin hide? Where was the medieval takeaway? Unlike earlier works, this is a history of everybody for everybody, not least for teachers, for whom the many references to other works will be helpful. The book also sheds light on such questions as which names are preferred, and how such choices may benefit the sociological study of Cambridge. The entries are spiced with anecdotes and epigrams, and a number of drawings by the architect and planner, Virén Sahai OBE, are included.Ronald Gray is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, having formerly been Vice-Master of the college and University Lecturer in German.Derek Stubbings writes and lectures on local history in Cambridge.