Town Not Gown

We moved to Cambridge just over two months ago. Both myself and M had our reasons, not least among them being that it forced us to leave jobs neither of us could stomach anymore.

Cambridge is a place I know and I don't know. It was where I did my A-Levels and so it's the site of many formative experiences. When I was younger it was also a place that I would sometimes come to for the day with my parents. On some occasions, we would spend half a day or more in the Grafton Centre (pictured above). I'm sure I'm not alone in having parents (or even grandparents) who were in the habit of doing this (my Gran is always up for checking out a new branch of TK Maxx) and it usually left me feeling profoundly bored. Bribery with a CD or a magazine would help. The other members of the band are here too, so before the move I had been making the trip almost every Sunday from Peckham, frequently dealing with weekend delays, replacement bus services etc. So the main sites were already familiar, as was the Mill Road/Romsey area - the 'quartier populaire' as the French might call it - where we now live.

But I still feel very much an outsider (typical conversation: "Where's x?" "Just along from y" "Ah ok, where's y?" and so on) and that probably goes triple for M. One way in was to attend one of the famed walking tours conducted by Allan Bringham, which intrigued me as it was around the Grafton Centre a site which was, as I mentioned, one I associate with the boredom of a Saturday spent shopping. Around the Grafton is an area known as the Kite, simply because the original developments (which in the early 19th century were on the very fringe of town) formed a kite shape. The link there details some of the struggle over the fate of the area, and Bringham pointed out the way in which the victors appropriate and deploy the symbols of the defeated - the Grafton centre's logo is comprised of 'kites'.

One thing that emerged from the tour was the origins of Town v Gown animosity in Cambridge. This tension between students and locals is familiar to many towns, of course, but in Cambridge (as it possibly is in Oxford too) it is rooted in the great power that was wielded by the colleges, which not only owned a great deal of land but also had their own police force and had the power to lock up 'loose women' in the University jail. Then you can factor in the exploitation that occurred in conjunction with the population explosion in the early 19th century, the most obvious being the culture of undergrads paying regular visits to prostitutes in Barnwell, or simply availing themselves of their maids (many of whom would be young teenagers). Unlike the undergrads, the prostitutes might then have to face the prospect of being 'saved' ie effectively imprisoned in the Cambridge Female Refuge that stood just behind the site of the Grafton centre today.