Brian Goodliffe
This is the first part of a series of childhood memories of Trumpington in the 1940s and 1950s. For an introduction to the series, see Childhood Memories of Trumpington.
I was born in the Cambridgeshire village of Linton in May 1944, but in November 1946 my late father, Ron Goodliffe, got a job as a tractor driver on the Pemberton estate based in Trumpington, and we moved into a tied cottage in Swan’s Yard, a small row of terraced cottages that used to be off the east side of the High Street.
When I was aged four, we moved to 18 Grantchester Road, or Dated Cottages as it was then known, as it had the year 1654 on the front in big metal numbers. It also sported an ancient plaque of the Sun Fire-Insurance Company, depicting a smiling face with rays of the sun coming out of it. With the English Civil War still going on at the time, perhaps they thought it prudent to get the newly built property covered by insurance. I hope they weren’t too disappointed when they got the policy through, and read the small print that excluded ‘acts of war and civil unrest’. Off the back bedroom there was a narrow doorway to some stairs that took you up to an attic that I had as a playroom. An enormous wooden beam ran right across the middle of the attic floor, somewhat restricting the layout of my Hornby wind-up train set. There was also an opening skylight; and by balancing on the raised foot-rail of the old feather bedstead that was kept up there for the occasional guest, I could reach out onto the roof and gather interesting clumps of moss. I remember a lone lady American tourist taking a photograph of the house, with me in my wellingtons posed in front. A few weeks later she sent me a copy of the photo all the way from America. American photography must have been years ahead of ours; because instead of just a plain square photo, all four edges of the paper were scalloped.
In around 1954, we moved next-door-but-one into Park Cottage, 22 Grantchester Road; the left hand half of the row of old thatched cottages opposite the church. There were, and possibly still are, three front doors; but even by then it had long since been converted from presumably three into two dwellings. An elderly couple, Mr & Mrs Hislop, lived in the other half.
Continue with the next part of Brian Goodliffe’s childhood memories of Trumpington in the 1940s and 1950s.
Footnote: a newspaper cutting from the Cambridge News referred to the proposed demolition of cottages on Grantchester Road, Friday 19 July 1968. These included Park Cottage, 22 Grantchester Road. Fortunately, the demolition did not take place.