We had a fire drill at work yesterday, so here's a picture of Cambridge's new fire engine leaving the station in St Andrew's Street in 1920.

Had lots of questions about people who travelled to New Zealand today. Did you know that Selwyn College here in Cambridge is named after the first Bishop of New Zealand? He was George Augustus Selwyn and he arrived at Auckland in May 1842.

I'm sharing local history at Cherry Hinton Library's community day till 4pm. Come along and have a look at the WI scrapbooks for 1958 and 1965 along with maps and photos of Cherry Hinton.

Turns out that @cambridgeppf.bsky.social was taking photos at Stourbridge Fair - thought this one looked quite fetching.

Just getting ready for Cherry Hinton Library's community day on Saturday - find out more on Eventbrite at www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cherry-hin... I'll be there 2-4pm with some maps and pictures of Cherry Hinton for a memory session. Here's the High Street in the 1900s

Started my @pharostutors.bsky.social course on Wills and Probate yesterday - well worth doing, very informative. Celebrated by ordering some more wills from Find a Will online - much easier now they're only £1.50 each.

It's the monthly #SaturdayLibrarian shift today. I'm running two tours of our store for Open Cambridge today - the first one went really well! Here's the old Cambridge Free Library donations paste in.

Wills and probate the topic for today - you can find out more about what wills are where in Cambridgeshire on the Familysearch wiki at www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Camb... and Familysearch have copies of the wills as well, available in all Cambridgeshire Libraries.

Had a good time at St Neots - lovely to see the finished market square and had more than 40 people at the talk in the library.

Looks like there's been a ram raid at the Perne Road Co-op this morning- police still there when I went past on the bus

Today's subject of choice was the Mill pond, so here's some photographs of it at various dates. Shame the mills themselves didn't survive.

Busy pricing books for our next local studies booksale, which will be on Saturday 11th October 1-4pm on the third floor of Cambridge Central Library. We'll have old and new books, maps and prints available - come and grab a bargain.

I'm at Stourbridge Fair today with Bessie till 4pm - still lots of time to come say hi

We've had lots of questions about scouting today, so here's the opening of Perne Road Scout Hut in 1957. The hut itself has just been demolished. What happened to the bust of Baden Powell built into the end wall I don't know.

I'm off to St Neots library next week on Wed 10th Sept at 10:30 to give them a talk on the history of gardening and smallholding in Cambridgeshire. You can find out more at www.library.live/calendar - do get booking, sounds like it'll be popular. Here's some allotments in Castle Camps in the 1950s.

Good to be back at work today - here's three different pubs, all called the Rose and Crown. Spent a fair bit of time figuring out which one was which and where they were located.

Headed over into Wales yesterday to Hay-on-Wye. Went round more bookshops then I've ever been round in a day!

Made it into Hereford itself today, visiting the chained library and the cathedral. Saw the public library too - lots of libraries today!

Over in Herefordshire for a few days and went round Goodrich Castle today - well worth a look. Weird to have such nice weather on a bank holiday.

Thought this was interesting - I didn't know Guy Pearce was born in Ely in Cambridgeshire. Cambridge gets John Maynard Keynes and Huntingdon gets Oliver Cromwell, neither of which are particularly surprising.

Seems weird planning library events for January 2026 already. We've got lots planned though - keep an eye on our Eventbrite page to see what's coming up shortly www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/cambridges...

Writing a new talk on homelessness in Cambridge. Here's Bene't Hostel, a hostel for young women which ran from 1 Droiser Road from 1943. By 1960 there were 11 women living there, with 2 of them resident for 10 years. The hostel closed down in November 1966 and was sold off to Cambridge University.

I'll be with Bessie the Book Bike again on Saturday 6th September at Stourbridge Fair, run by Cambridge Past Present and Future at the Leper Chapel on Newmarket Road. You can find out more about it at www.cambridgeppf.org/etn/stourbri... Here's some photos from 2023

Thought this was interesting - and is open access!

Spent far too much time this morning poking around with nested IF statements in Excel. Glad something I learnt doing chemical engineering at university has come in useful for something!

An excellent Cambridge story here from Buckinghamshire Archives. Why Bucks? Well you'll have to watch it to find out!

Once again it's the monthly #SaturdayLibrarian shift today. Busy practising for my talk at the Meet the Winners seminar on Tuesday with @librariesconnected.bsky.social - you can find out more and book a ticket at www.librariesconnected.org.uk/events/webin...

Today's theme was Nan Youngman - she was an artist who lived in the Paper Mills on Newmarket Road with her partner Betty Rea from 1945 through to 1965. Nan set up the Pictures for Schools scheme, selling original art to schools. You can find out more about her at emmawest.art.blog/2020/05/04/a...

Must remember that the zoomers at work will actually understand what I'm talking about when I refer to memes and I won't have to spend half an hour explaining what they mean. Well, mostly, most of my memes are basically as old as they are!

Don't forget that Open Cambridge bookings start from 10am on Monday. If you're really on the ball you might even be able to book to come look around the Cambridgeshire Collection store! The website is www.opencambridge.cam.ac.uk

It's nice to be back at work in Cambridge. To celebrate here's a lovely tourist shot of King's Parade from roughly the 1920s, showing King's College Chapel. The horse chestnut tree has certainly got bigger since then.

Back to Cherry Hinton Hall again for Music in the Parks today. Great listening to the Boxwood Chessmen.

Popped round to Cherry Hinton Hall for the Folk in the City event that's happening instead of Cambridge Folk Festival this year. Certainly worth a look and it's on till 8pm.

Great to finally be back from #DCDC25 What an interesting conference! Be a while till I want to walk up and down another hill though - great to be back in the flat fens of Cambridgeshire.

Still in Durham for #DCDC25 - have a bad selfie in front of the cathedral. Really interesting hearing about the work of the National HIV Story Trust this morning and looking forward to the conference dinner this evening.

Really enjoyed the first day of #DCDC25, particularly the keynote with Dig Where You Stand, the House of Dread and the Museum of Homelessness. What powerful stories. Great to see around The Story as well, County Durham's archive service.

Might have had an "interesting" journey to Durham, but I'm here now and looking forward to the #DCDC25 conference tomorrow. Do feel free to say hi anyone else who is going to be at the conference too

Most people know All Saints church in Cambridge. But did you know there used to be another All Saints church by the castle in medieval times? You can read more about it at www.aftertheplague.org/our-sites We've got no picture of the church itself, but here's Cambridge castle in 1818

First day of the summer holidays and it's chucking it down. Ah well, here's a summer fete in rather better weather in the village of Queen Adelaide in 1949.

New books in again today - the stock team are spoiling me. Not often I get a chance to buy a gay romance for my collection so that's nice to see.

Wooo, finally have internet at home again after Virgin came round and relaid the cable. Very happy bunny

Not every day you end up telling a bunch of Ukrainian teenagers about eels! Glad our library twinning sessions are going well. Here's a man making eel traps in the 1890s.

Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire parish registers have made it to Ancestry. In between enquiries today I'll be sure to be looking at my relatives. Available for free in all Cambridgeshire libraries www.ancestry.co.uk/cs/recent-co...

This is a really lovely thread about how to get better at writing alt text for images - do recommend a read.

Had a meeting at the @theul.bsky.social today - enjoyed seeing the Curious Cures exhibition while I was there

I'm the #SaturdayLibrarian today and it's certainly hot! Hopefully this picture will make it feel cooler. It's the River Cam frozen over in 1929.

Remembering how Round Church Street used to look, with Prziborsky's hairdressing shop in the middle of the road, before it was demolished to build the car park in Park Street. Certainly one of the more unusual views in Cambridge.

Fen Diagram A cartoon for the mathematically-minded lovers of flatlands, a particular Venn diagram in itself. www.worldofmoose.com/products/fen...

Dropped the bike off at Kingsway Cycles in City Road this morning and walked past this Dinky Door on my way back to work.

Looking forward to hearing more about Tudor Circus at the Mill Road History Society meeting at Ross Street Community Centre this evening