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Starting with the opening of the UK’s first science park in 1970, Cambridge has grown from the sleepy market town of 60 years ago into an internationally renowned centre of technical research and innovation at the centre of a metropolis that spreads for 20 miles (32km) from the city centre. Further investment of £3.5 billion is planned to turn the Cambridge-to-Oxford corridor into Europe’s Silicon Valley.
Throughout this expansion, however, members of the Cambridge Preservation Society, founded in 1928, have been vigilant in ensuring that historic sites and green spaces within this growing conurbation were not sacrificed to the dreams of the master planners. In 2009, they adopted a new name – Cambridge Past, Present & Future (abbreviated to CambridgePPF) – to signal that their focus had broadened from ‘preserving’ the past to representing people, communities, and the environment in future planning.
In their first 50 years, CambridgePFF restored the UK’s oldest surviving windmill (documented from 1636 at Bourn); prevented a ring road from being built across Grantchester Meadows; saved the Gog Magog Hills from development; and created a country park around the hillfort at Wandlebury. Its members also zealously mapped footpaths in the city’s hinterland that have since served as the basis for a network of off-road routes for walkers and cyclists, linking the centre to peripheral hubs.
More recently, the society has established the Green around Cambridge, after 50 years of campaigning. This aims to prevent nearby villages from merging with the city and protects the fingers of green space that reach right into the centre, notably the water meadows along the River Cam. They have purchased some 550 acres (220ha) of land, converting fields that were once intensively farmed into orchards and wildflower meadows where rare moths, bats, birds, and butterflies thrive.
Conflicts are rarely off the agenda, however – sometimes pitting one environmental benefit against another. Part of a large countryside reserve that the society owns in the village of Coton, 3 miles (5km) west of the city, is threatened by the construction of the 8.5-mile (13.7km) busway linking Cambridge to the new town of Cambourne. CambridgePPF has worked with residents to propose an alternative route, and they are now awaiting the outcome of a public inquiry. A favourable decision would be another good reason to celebrate as this most active of societies reaches its 100th anniversary.
Further information:https://cambridgeppf.org
Images: Christopher Catling
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