
11:00am-4:00pm on Sunday 15 September
Histon Road Cemetery, Histon Road, CB4 3LE
This event will showcase the importance and the beauty of Histon Road Cemetery. Listed Grade II* by Historic England (only Grade 1 is higher), it is the best surviving example of a Victorian "garden cemetery" designed by polymath and leading horticulturalist and garden designer of his day, John Claudius Loudon.
Visitors can follow the pleasing central route through the Cemetery from Histon Road or wander off the beaten track to discover war graves and our carefully managed wildflower meadow areas and wildlife pond.
As a Nonconformist cemetery, it holds the remains of those refused entry to university who turned their considerable talents elsewhere, and of young people from the Fens who came to the Big City to make their fortunes and sometimes did. Family networks recorded here include entrepreneurs, artists, social reformers, domestic servants, shopkeepers, tradesmen and missionaries.
We have stories of local figures whose names will be familiar to older residents and some whose names are known across the world - the family of the local woman after whom Alice Springs is named, a link to Captain Bligh of The Bounty, to a Chelsea Flower Show Gold Medallist, to the author of 'Time Bandits', to the turnkey of Cambridge prison. Family names on tombs and vaults - Thoday, Mitcham, Sturton - connect Cambridge past with Cambridge present, and the memorials to those killed in war remind us of the debt we owe.
We will have displays about the Cemetery, the ordinary and extraordinary people buried here and tours at 11.30 and 2pm (memorial histories) and 12.30 and 3pm (nature and wildlife). Come and discover more about us!