Who do You Think You Are - on the wrong side of the street By L.J. Trafford

Last Christmas I brought my Mum one of those ancestry DNA kits with the hope that it would reveal hitherto unknown mysteries about her/my lineage and thus provide me with a ready-made topic for a History Girls post.
Two months later when the results pinged into her inbox it is fair to say my Mum was a tad disappointed with her report.


Her DNA report revealed that her ancestors came from Cambridgeshire, a county in the East Anglian region of England. Cambridgeshire, East Anglia is also where my Mum currently resides and has done her whole life. Perhaps this adherence to staying put is an inherited trait because according to her DNA report her family had spent the last 350 years in Cambridgeshire, East Anglia. Britain once had an empire that covered an area of 13.7 million square miles and the UK itself is 94,000 square miles, my Mum’s ancestors hadn’t dangled so much as an ankle outside of Cambridgeshire since Charles II was King.


But never mind, I can work with the material given.

Kettle’s Yard

In squeezing a History Girls article out of my Cambridgeshire DNA I decided to take a closer look at the background of my maternal Nanna, I knew that she had grown up in a rough area of Cambridge and I figured that gave me an increased chance of pulling a sexy story out of the bag. Perhaps.


My Nanna was born in 1911 in Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge. Her family, the Lowes had moved into number 2 Kettle’s Yard sometime between the census of 1871 and the census of 1881. In 1881 John Lowe, my great-great grandfather is listed as working a coal porter, my great-great grandmother Emma Lowe is apparently working as a washerwoman whilst somehow looking after her six children; Kate 13, Alice 9, Amelia 7, Emily 5, Ernest 2 and my great-grandmother Harriet Lowe, who was only 2 months old.

When the Lowes lived in Kettle’s Yard it ‘was dank place where twenty-six tiny cottages squeezed into a place suitable for none’.1’

Kettle’s Yard did not have the greatest of reputations, as my Nanna had told me herself when she was alive. She didn’t tell her school friends where she lived, she didn’t want them to know she came from Kettle’s Yard.

But how rough was Kettle’s Yard really during the years that the Lowe family lived there? Armed with an online subscription to the archives of the Cambridge Evening and The Cambridge Weekly newspapers I set off to find out.

Foul of mouth

Typing Kettle’s Yard into the search bar of the local newspaper archives retrieved a number of stories about obscene language. In November 1855 James Rutter was sentenced to seven days in prison for using ‘obscene and profane language’ in Kettle’s Yard. The newspaper report makes mention that it was a Sunday, this may or may not be relevant to the rather harsh punishment dished out to Rutter


In 1899, Frederick Clarke, a labourer and resident of Kettle’s Yard who pleaded not guilty to using obscene language fared better than James Rutter had 45 years before. Clarke was only fined half a crown after being found guilty, perhaps people's sensibilities had changed toward foul language. Or perhaps, not because there are enough newspaper reports of people up before the Magistrate for using obscene language. Between the years 1890-99 there are 677 newspaper reports that mention the phrase ‘obscene language’ versus only 150 between 1850-59.


In 1893 Mr EH Douty a reputable surgeon was strolling down Kings Parade in Cambridge at half past eleven at night when he passed two men using ‘bad language in a very loud voice”. Douty listened for a further two minutes to this awful language before whistling for a constable. As the two men were lead away they‘used language worse than ever.’ I bet they did, straight at Mr EH Douty the reputable surgeon and sneak. Douty was praised by the bench for his actions. One of the men, Walter Pilsworth of Kettle’s Yard pleaded guilty and was fined.


Then there is this glorious story. Annie Woodrough a resident of Kettle’s Yard in 1889 is facing charges after she bumped into an acquaintance at ‘about a quarter past seven near the old post office. Defendant made use of a very abusive expression and offered to fight her on the Piece for 10s. Witness was also insulted by her about ten o’clock” Whilst some have got away with mere fines for using obscene language, Annie gets 14 days imprisonment. Chiefly because she is a repeat offender, it is revealed that this is the 3rd time Annie has been up before the magistrate for using obscene language and the 7th time in total she has been before the magistrate that year. Which is all the more impressive when you note the date of the article, 11th February 1889. In less than two months Annie has managed to get herself arrested, charged and brought before a magistrate 7 times. That’s more than once a week


This reads as extremely tough justice for what are essentially only words but there is a sense of fairness in the system in that both the defendant and the claimant are allowed to bring forward witnesses to back up their version of events. In the case of Annie Woodrough her witness caves in under pressure and the sheer number of other people who had all seen Annie effing and blinding her way through the streets of Cambridge’ Woodrough denied the charge saying that she had not been out of her house until some time after the time when she was accused of having misconducted herself, and she called a witness, Annie Hammond, to prove that she had been in her house until after that time. Annie Hammond however when on her oath said that she had seen defendant in St Andrew’s Street at about seven o’clock.’


Two ladies from Kettle’s Yard, Ellen Blackwell and Hannah Haylock had their cases dismissed for using obscene language due to ‘the evidence being of a contradictory character.’


My great-great grandmother Emma Lowe, even appears as a witness in one such case in 1902. She is acting as a witness for the defendant, Mary Ann Wolfe who has been accused by Eliza Hall of having come to her house ‘about one o clock on the day in question. [] Witness had shut the door and the defendant tried to open it. She commenced swearing at witness and it was kept up until 10 o clock at night’

You have to admire Mary Ann Wolfes fortitude for keeping up the torrent of obscene language for nine whole hours. This was the sort of behaviour that attracts attention and Eliza Hall had no difficulty finding witnesses to back up her story.

Enter my great-great grandmother Emma. ‘Emma Lowe, wife of John Lowe [] gave evidence for the defendant. The complainant, she said, abused the defendant, who did no use bad language.’ Which is not much of a defence because it confirms Eliza Hall’s story that there was an altercation between the two, there are very few altercations that don’t involve some bad language. Otherwise, it’s not an altercation, it’s two people having a chat.

Mary Anne Wolfe then piped up that Eliza Hall had only brought the case through spite because she, Mary would not deal with her. The response to this new claim in the case was this. ‘The Chairman said the defendant had been before the court something like 10 times. She appeared to be a very violent woman having no control over herself. She would be bound over in two sums of £5 each to keep the peace for 6 months.’

‘This is cruel treatment,’ said Mary.

It’s not terribly cruel treatment, being bound over meant that Mary merely had to stick to some conditions, presumably not swearing at people for 9 hours, else she be charged £10. £10 was a lot of money in 1902, it was not far short of the annual wage of a scully maid or hall boy, admittedly the lowest rung of domestic servant.


Let’s take a moment to contemplate that my great-great grandmother is hanging around with someone described by an official as ‘a very violent woman’ and a habitual criminal.

Drunk as a Insert animal of choice.

What I didn’t mention about Mary Anne Wolfe’s case was the location of Eliza Hall’s house, the house that she tried to shut Mary out of and which Mary subsequently stood outside and yelled obscenities for 9 whole hours. Eliza Hall was the wife of James Hall, publican of the Beehive Pub. The story makes a whole lot more sense once you realise alcohol was involved.

Alcohol was also a factor in the case of Annie Woodrough. ‘Supt. Turrall complained to the magistrate of the Rose and Tulip public-house. It had been a great nuisance for a long time[] People round the neighbourhood complained of obscene language being used about there and girls of bad character resorted to it to get out the way of proctors.’

Alcohol is a factor in many of the newspaper reports connected to Kettle’s Yard.
In 1891 Thomas Brown admitted he had ‘had a drop of beer and it had made him as giddy as a goose.’ Thomas’ giddiness manifested itself as gazing about in a vacant manner and making peculiar signs with his hands. He’d also assaulted a small boy and was charged by PC Gates with being of unsound mind and wandering at large, as well as being drunk and disorderly.


In 1892 Groom, Daniel Davey was blaming drink for his actions on one December night ‘the prisoner in his defence said he was very sorry for what he had done. He had had too much to drink and did not know what he was doing.’ What he was doing was assaulting Jane Riley who had fled from Kettle’s Yard pursued by Davey who ‘struck the woman in the face, pulled her hair and threatened to kill her.’ Thankfully some passerby's intervened, and Davey was taken away. His stated remorse held no sway given that he’d been arrested for disorderly conduct many times previously. Davey was sentenced to two months hard labour.

Drink was surely behind this incident too, the ‘defendant came to him and snatched half a roll and some butter from him, and then picked up an old herring and threw it at his hat.’


It’s not surprising that there are so many reports of drunkenness around the Kettle’s Yard area for in the streets that surrounded Kettles Yard; Castle Street, Northampton Street, Bridge Street, Pound Hill and St Peter’s Street the 1911 census records there were 40 public houses. In the city of Cambridge in total there were 384 pubs for a population of 40,000 which is a pub for every 102 people and that’s before we factor out the under 10’s of that total population.

To put this in context in 2021 there were 84 pubs for a total population of around 145,000. Which is a pub for every 1726 members of the public, and a much longer queue for last order.

Kettle’s Yard – Asbo central?

It is clear from my brief study of local newspapers that Kettle’s Yard and people who lived in Kettle’s Yard were involved in a fair amount of what we would call anti-social behaviour. Altercations fuelled by easy access to alcohol from the trillion pubs of Cambridge which led to some pretty fruity language.

However, what I didn’t find was much in the way of what we might call serious crimes being committed. Horace Gidney aged 9 of Kettle’s Yard was one of a gang of boys accused of stealing pears, grapes and plums from the garden of Henry John Gray. Richard Todd of Kettle’s Yard was charged with keeping two dogs without a license but didn’t turn up for court to face the charges and thus earned himself an extra charge. Charles Hammond aged 14 of Kettle’s Yard was caught red handed stealing 21lbs of lead piping from a house, however nobody could ascertain who owned the house and thus the lead piping. Therefore, Charles Hammond and his gang were released from remand, although reminded by a court official ‘that they would be liable to be brought up and charged again if the difficulty was cleared up.’

There was one serious crime I could find, it was committed by 17 year old George John Wolfe of Kettle’s Yard, a sexual assault on a 9 year old girl. Wolfe firmly denied the charges claiming that the girl had made a mistake and called on two witness who attested he was elsewhere at the time. When Wolfe was put before a Grand Jury they threw out the bill.

Finally, I stumbled across one further crime committed by a resident of Kettle’s Yard. In 1883 ‘John Lowe, Kettle’s Yard [was] also summoned for disobeying orders to send their children to school.’


Yep, that’s my great grandfather.





Notes


1 The Spinning House’ p125 Caroline Biggs.

Lectures, Courses and Ken Burns by Imogen Robertson

Fake news, data scamming, trolls…. there are times when it seems the internet or those who control it are trying to nudge us off a cliff. We are distracted and confused, clicking away at our screens to chase away the monsters real, imagined or dressed up as personality quizzes. 

Obviously you fine people have chosen to read something sensible, so that’s ok, enjoy your time on The History Girls, but once you’re through reading our years of musings, where should you go next?

I’m a great fan of podcasts, and have recommended a few of my favourites here in the past, recently though I’ve come across a trove of content which is making me particularly happy. Waiting for you out there in the ether is an astonishing collection of lectures recorded as they were given to hordes of eager undergraduates at Yale, Oxford, Cambridge and dozens of other institutes of higher education. The sound quality is often a bit poor, sometimes the links to the handouts are broken, you might only have an audio version when someone is obviously pointing at a slide, but I'm not complaining. For the first time in history you can listen in to the great educators of your time without having to leave your room. For example, Dale B. Martin’s Introduction to New Testament History and Literature is available via Open Yale Courses and has made me very irritating at dinner parties, it also offers  interesting ways to think about the context and use of scripture in the first century and now. I listened to his lectures while playing Candy Crush on my phone for the whole 21st century undergraduate experience. 

Some tempting things from Coursera

Yale offers lecture series on economics, chemistry, geology, astronomy and more as well as history, so go enjoy and become wise while the world around us grows ever less so. Also, go look sooner rather than later. Many of the Yale courses are being moved over to Coursera. For many that will probably be a good thing. Coursera is slick and the content is broken down into shorter sections, supported with quizzes and peer-marked assessments. You can even pay for a certificate if you choose to do so. I tend to scramble away from sites which invite me to ‘introduce yourself to your fellow learners’ though, so I’ll be listening to the echoing halls and coughing undergrads for as long as I have that option.  

I have seen those adverts in LRB and Literary Review for The Great Courses for years, and am the sort of person who goes - yes, yes I think I would like to own a series of thirty lectures on how to play chess - luckily I’ve always just been a bit too poor to actually buy them. Now via Amazon video, I’ve signed up for their ‘signature collection’, which will probably cost me just as much in the long run but they take the money in small, relatively pain free bites so I hardly notice it. The ones I’ve watched so far all look like they were shot in 1985. Lecturers deliver a paragraph to camera one, then inhale, turn and deliver the next to camera two, then back to camera one again. Sometimes there are pictures, which is nice, even if the borders look my grandmother’s Red Room wallpaper. However that doesn’t matter too much if you are playing Candy Crush, so I just listen to the talking. History of Food has some valuable insights, Reading Biblical Literature is a personal take, but a honestly presented one and a sensitive literary reading, and I’m looking forward to the Cathedrals one. 

Or if you are a Netflix person and haven’t watched all of the Ken Burns work available, then do so, now. We’ll be here when you get back in a week or two. His histories of Jazz, The American Civil War, Prohibition, The Roosevelts and The West are beautifully produced - I put down my phone quite often - and offer a fascinating, intimate, illuminating and often harrowing history of the United States. I feel absorbing hours of his work has helped me understand where we are now with more empathy, and more subtlety than I would ever otherwise have done. Which is, after all, the larger point of history, don’t you think?

www.imogenrobertson.com

The David Parr House. by Adèle Geras

In November, 2106, I was invited by my old school friend, Carolyn Ferguson, who's an expert on historical textiles and quilting in particular, to join a small party of friends who were going to look around the David Parr House  (http://davidparrhouse.org)  We were shown round by Tamsin Wimhurst, who was previously education officer at the Museum of Cambridge. She is in large part responsible for bringing this amazing place to the attention of the proper authorities. Thanks to her, her committee and others like Sheila Crane (who lived in Gwydir Street and knew David Parr's granddaughter, Elsie Palmer) the house has received a grant from the National Lottery which will ensure its restoration as a place of enormous fascination for students of 19th century art and craft. 

 The photos accompanying this piece are of the postcards I bought on that day and they do not do the house justice. There was a very good piece  about it by Michael Hall, which appeared  in Country Life magazine of January 4th, 2017  and that may well be on the Country Life website, but (and I'm not sure how they did it) the photographs are very light and saturated with colour. This was not my impression of the house, when I saw it last year on a dreary, damp day, quite unlike what Cambridge days usually  are: bright and light and blowy.

To sum up in brief, David Parr was a painter/workman for the painting and decorating firm of Frederick Leach, which did a lot of work in the city and indeed all over the country. 

Parr began working in the firm when he was no more than a boy. He moved into 186 Gwydir Street in 1887. In the 1920s, after the death of his wife, his granddaughter, Elsie Palmer, moved into the house to look after him and stayed there till 2012, when she moved into an old people's home. 

This above is Elsie's bedroom, which was once the dining room. She turned out to be the perfect person to live in the house,  because throughout her long life, she was careful to preserve the   work her grandfather had created in the property.

What  he did was cover almost every single surface with most beautiful patterns,  painted by hand and often by candlelight. These were the William Morris-style designs that he'd been painting on the walls and ceilings of college chapels, big houses and other grand edifices during the working day. 186 Gwydir Street is tiny: a standard two- bedroom terrace. The house is very near Cambridge Station and Elsie's husband worked on the Railway. His coat is still hanging in the house, and looks as warm as it ever was: thick, navy blue wool.

When we visited,  we sat in the front parlour (the first picture, above).  There were six of us in the room and it was a bit of a squash. It was also very dark indeed. We peered at the beautiful painting on the walls and ceiling, and I was ...there is no other word for it....gobsmacked. When I tried to compute the hours that David Parr must have put in, I felt quite exhausted. Fortunately for us, and for future visitors to the house who'll be able to come and look around it when it's restored and made safe for visitors, David Parr was a tidy and organised person who kept a record of everything, so that you can read how long it took him to paint particular bits of each room. He listed paints and materials and his tool box is still there, for anyone to see.  It's clear from some of the decorations that he'd picked up bits and pieces from the sites he worked on during the day and brought them home to add a bit of luxury to the rooms.  The window, below, might have been made by others in Frederick Leach's firm.

Another touching and fascinating thing about the house is the layer of 1950s décor that speaks of Elsie and her husband's life in 186, Gwydir Street. She preserved her grandfather's work brilliantly, only covering up bits of it and not ripping out a single thing. If you look closely, the top three pictures show family photographs in frames on the wall or on the mantelpiece. There are also pictures in frames hanging on  the painted walls, which Elsie and her husband must have been fond of. 

The little parlour we sat in while we listened to Tamsin Wimhurst telling us David Parr's story was dark and shadowy. The blinds were down in order to preserve the colours of the paint but even so it was clear to us that the painted walls are most beautiful. They will be even lovelier when they're cleaned up, and restored to their original glory. I can't wait to visit this place again. It's truly magical. The traces left by David Parr and Elsie Palmer bring us very close to knowing and understanding this fascinating bit of the past.  I have every intention of revisiting this place in a novel one of these days....

THE AMERICAN CEMETERY in CAMBRIDGE by Adèle Geras

Back in 1962, when I was 18 years old, I was madly in love with an undergraduate at Pembroke College, Cambridge. On a couple of occasions, we went to the Eagle pub and the tales of young American airmen, stationed round Cambridge during World War 2, made a huge impression on me. Their names are there, and the pub nowadays makes a big deal, quite rightly, of the historical connection.

In 2010, when we moved to Cambridge after many years in Manchester, the American Cemetery was high on the list of places that my husband and I wanted to visit. His last illness and his death meant that he never saw this place, but the other day our friends Bob Borsley and Ewa Jaworska took me there and I wanted to write about it on this blog as a kind of tribute, both to those who are buried there and also as a kind of stand-in for my husband, Norman Geras, who would definitely have written about the visit on his blog, normblog  if he could have done.

The sun was shining on the day we were there. There are nearly 4000 individual markers,  each with a name, a rank and home state cut into the stone. The date of each death is there, but the dates of birth have been omitted. Most of the dead were in their twenties. 

On a long wall that stretches for yards, the names of the missing are inscribed. These are the people whose bodies were never recovered. 



There is a very interesting and well-organised exhibition in the visitors' centre, and I'm sure Cambridge schools visit it regularly. Around the Centre, a small area of the garden has been left to grow wild. The man we spoke to behind the desk told us that the gardeners in charge of the rest of the cemetery were a bit sniffy about this exception to the apple - pie order which prevails in the rest of this place 

Because that's the overriding impression. The lawns are beautiful: mown to absolute perfection. Every single memorial, every one that we saw, looks as though it went up yesterday: gleaming stone in a pristine state of shining whiteness. Not one single piece of litter, not one bird dropping, not one cigarette stub mars the landscape. We saw a man travelling between the graves on a motorised mower, but it must take many people all their time to keep the cemetery in this remarkable state.



It seemed to me that this clean and tidy and beautiful way of remembering the fallen was a loud and vigorous "ya boo sucks" to Death; a contrast to the blood and dirt and darkness of war. The tidiness of the cemetery is a counterbalance to the chaos of those years and it's clear that today's custodians feel a duty to maintain this and that's admirable. It's very hard to walk round without tears coming into your eyes. It's also worth remembering, alongside thinking about the dead, that many wars are still being waged. Sacrifices are still being made, and there are still freedoms that are worth fighting for.  This post goes up on the 10th  anniversary of the July 7th, 2005 terrorist atrocity in London and our thoughts should also be with those who died  that day and  those who mourn them. 

Women Making Waves: The Newton Women’s Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race, 2015, by Clare Mulley

Sporting history will be made this month when for the first time, on 11 April 2015, women will row in the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race on the same terms, and on the same waters, as men.

Although held intermittently since 1927, until recently the women’s race has been seen as the rather feeble younger sister of the famous men’s race. However this year the two women’s teams will follow the same tough 4.2 mile (6.8km) course on the Tideway - the powerfully tidal stretch of the Thames in London - from Putney to Mortlake, rather than the separate 1.25 mile (2km) stretch of the calm waters of Henley to which they have previously been relegated.

Newnham College Cambridge crew, 1919
(courtesy of theboatraces.org) 

What has made this possible is not, of course, a sudden increase in female interest, fitness, strength or ability. Despite romantic images of ladies lolling their fingers in rivers as they are rowed upstream by strapping young men, women have in fact always enjoyed an active role on the water. The subject of my first biography, Eglantyne Jebb, the future founder of the charity Save the Children, was passionate about rowing on the Isis when she was a student at Oxford's Lady Margaret Hall in the 1890s, and she was a woman who regularly played hockey and fencing, and rode horses and bicycles - on one occasion with such vigour that she was cautioned by the police.

Eglantyne was too early to participate in competitive rowing, as female Oxbridge rowing crews only started to compete against each other in 1927, provoking endless abuse from male and female spectators along with claims that the race was unfeminine and bad for female health. The first race between the Oxford University Boat Club and Newnham College, Cambridge, was held on the Isis. Since the two crews were not permitted on the river at the same time, they had to be judged separately on 'time and style’. Inevitably objections were still raised and, according to The Times, ‘large and hostile crowds gathered on the towpath’.

Miss Pomphrett, 1937 OUWBC cox with the Francombe Cup
(courtesy of theboatraces.org) 

It was only in 1935 that the race became a direct contest over a half mile (1000 yard) stretch of the Isis, the Camb or, just once, on the Tideway at Barnes. Betty Francombe, who had progressed from stoker to coach of the Oxford women's team, donated the cup, which is still being presented.

The 1942 Cambridge crew
(courtesy of theboatraces.org)

In the mid-1950s however, drama struck when the Oxford crew went over a weir during training the day before the race and, as a result, were banned from the river. Funding evaporated overnight, the women's boat clubs almost sank from sight, and no more women's races would be held for almost ten years.

It was two Oxford engineering students who revived the women's races, still in the face of open hostility, in the early 1960s. At first the crews had to fight even to take part in the inter-college ‘bumps’ races but, supported by a college Canon who enthusiastically coached the team he called the ‘Perspiring Persephones’ or ‘Swetty Bettys’, they had an impressive run of success. Despite being branded, ‘a ghastly sight’, and even ‘an anatomical impossibility’, the race now became an annual fixture, moving to the Thames at Henley in the 1970s.

Rowing has recently been gaining enormous popularity as a sport among women, and British rowers are world class. At the 2012 Olympics, Britain topped the medal table for female rowing with four golds, and an impressive nine medals overall. Nevertheless the press still managed to send mixed messages. Britain's most successful rower, Katherine Grainger, who claimed gold after three consecutive silvers, was reported as having finally shaken off the nickname, ‘the bridesmaid of rowing’, and more coverage focused on her dreams of being introduced to David Beckham now that she had won gold. At the time she had been a world champion since 2000, and held a law degree, a master’s in medical law, and was working on a doctorate on the science of homicide which she has now achieved.

Cath Bishop (L), Katherine Grainger (R)
winning silver at the Athens Olympic Games 2004
(courtesy of theboatraces.org) 

While British women were leading the world at the Olympics, there was still little support for the sport at home however. The women’s Oxford and Cambridge teams have faced persistent lack of media interest, funding, and access to professional facilities. Until recently, the female crew even had to pay their own train fares to the rowing lake, while the men were driven in branded mini-buses. Now however, the women have won the support and sponsorship of a London based company. Shocked to discover that they had not had any commercial sponsorship previously, Helen Morrissey, the female CEO of Newton Investment Management, felt that simply putting the company’s name on the women’s shirts was not enough; she wanted to ‘influence the evolution of the event’, and has lent her support to campaigns for more recognition and investment in female rowing.

Hopefully 2015 will prove to be a turning point. ‘It means a huge amount to have the boat races coming together on the Tideway’, rowing World Champion Cath Bishop, now chair of the Cambridge University Women’s Boat Club, says. For her, the two crews, their sponsors and supporters, this is about putting the female rowers on ‘the same stage as the men’, and finally bringing parity and equality to the boat race. I think Eglantyne Jebb, Betty Francombe, and the other female rowing pioneers would have been delighted.

The Men and Women's Blue Boats weigh-in together on 19 March 2015.
The Cambridge mens crew and women's crew topped the scales.
(courtesy of theboatraces.org) 

The cherry on the cake is that this year the BBC will be covering the women’s boat race live, as part of the same flagship national sporting event as the men’s race, to be broadcast to 200 countries worldwide. Commentator Clare Baldwin has also decided to cover the women's race rather than the Grand National, scheduled for the same day, in the hopes that the equal billing being given to the female crews will have a 'ripple effect all across society, business and sport'.

‘I’m really hopeful that when people see the women rowing across that same course, on the same day, with the same buzz and excitement around them,’ sponsor Helena Morrissey says, ‘it will make people stop and think…’ History is being made on the Thames in two weeks time, and whether you back Oxford or Cambridge, I hope you will support this watershed moment.

c. Clare Mulley

www.claremulley.com

@ClareMulley

With thanks to Lucy Ward

NOT AN EVER-ROLLING STREAM AT ALL by Adèle Geras

This is the corner of Benet Street and Trumpington Street in Cambridge. This picture shows the scale of the clock set into the wall there. It was named The Chronophage by its inventor, John C. Taylor, and it shows better than anything I can think of the inexorable eating away of every second of our lives. The face of the clock is huge, and under it there's an enormous gold pendulum which swings to and fro in a most hynotic manner.

Chronophage means Eater of Time and Taylor definitely wanted his creature, crouched on top of the golden dial, to be a kind of monster. The clock face has slits in it and a LED display lights up to show us the time. It's apparently only accurate once every five minutes but who cares? We have accurate timepieces on our own wrists to get us to our appointments early. This is something else. It's a piece of public art much more than a clock you can refer to...indeed I've never quite worked out how to read the actual time from it. I just stare, whenever I'm there, at the deliciously horrible Chronophage and think what a very good image of the passage of time she is. I say 'she' because the monster is, apparently, known to the students of Corpus Christi as 'Rosalind' though why is not recorded. Perhaps it's in honour of Rosalind Franklin who did so much work with Crick and Watson on the discovery of the Double Helix, DNA and so forth.

The Corpus Christi clock is a very short stone's throw from the Eagle pub in Benet Street. This is where Crick, Watson and the team came to celebrate after their DNA discoveries. It's also the pub frequented by US airmen during the Second World War and their names are visible, scratched into glass. On a less world-historical note, this is where I came with my then boyfriend in 1962 and at the time I thought The Eagle was very close to heaven. The Chronophage has only been in place since 2008, but all those seconds from the times I've mentioned have disappeared into its maw. Writing: putting things down on paper or on the internet, together with painting, sculpture, and photography, and the study of History, too: these are some of the ways we have of defeating the Chronophage.

I'm not tall enough to get a good close-up of the creature, but this is the best I can offer. If you put Chronophage into Google you will find all kinds of other sites to give you lots more scientific information and better photos than I can provide. I wanted to write about it here because it exemplifies for me not only a memento mori but also a very nice symbol of endless renewal. That scary locust-like thing devours every second that there is, but look: the seconds go round and round and never stop and there are always more of them to keep Her Chronophaginess well-fed and us hopeful. Every second is followed by another. Forever. That's comforting. And the clock face and dial shine with an almost supernatural lustre.