Soham Grammarians - 2015 Luncheon Talk Reflections on eight decades of looking back on Cambridgeshire history A talk to Soham Old Grammarians, 3rd October 2015 by Mike Petty MBE SG57 Mike Petty This is not the first time I’ve spoken from this stage to this august gathering. The first was something over 50 years ago – part of a surprise 6th Form Revue updating you on what the school was really like. Perhaps some of you were there. And that was not the first – that seems to have been in 1958 in King Melon and Princess Caraway – dressed up in a frock. At least this does not name other members of the cast. click here for cast list Looking back with rose-tinted (bloodshot) eyes I recall writing my memories of my first day at Soham Grammer School. I wrote of the view of that grand house as we approached form the bus. The essay came back covered in red ink corrections. Apparently it was a Grammar, not Grammer, school. But at least it showed somebody had read it However the real first memory is of walking through Conservatory – it would be demolished very soon after - and under that arched walkway to the dining hall. There RAT and Sid (then Mr Peter Taylor and Mr Sidney Saunders) read out the names of those allocated to 1S and 1T. Archer, Ashwood, Bashfield, Butcher … but no ‘Petty’. It taught me a valuable lesson. Later I was allocated to the practical side – woodwork (I made a tray, others made tables), Technical Drawing – I got two marks (out of 100) – ‘He did very little, but put his name on the paper neatly’. Finally, they realised that I had no ability in that regard. I was little better at ballroom dancing – we had lessons at Ely High School after school. Off we trooped in our uniforms and army boots – for we were the first of Soham’s Army Cadet Force. And once we had mastered the rifle and drill we went on an expedition behind the Iron Curtain, crossing the border when armed troops searched each carriage and guards on the track passed bullets through the window. It was a very long journey by ferry and train – no planes in those days - to Prague. And a very brave thing to do, for it included girls from Ely High School. On the way back we had a long overnight stop in Nuremberg – recorded by Michael Page; what he did not record is how we toured the night-time bars, looking for staff, when one of our number became seriously ill on the way back. He had to be left behind in the care of one of the teachers. Some things are perhaps better allowed to slip from the memory. [Dick Bozeat recollected this visit in his 2015 talk] [Staff in this group appear to be Peter Askem, Michael Ades, Lionel Hart and Dick Bozeat] After school I went to Cambridge – not the University. But the City Library at the back of the Guildhall. And I had used a library – the one here at Soham. Once they realised I could not plane I was switched to history and English; we studied Hamlet and in the school library there was a wonderful two-volume analysis – of which one volume was missing. But it was enough to scrape through. On the first week at Cambridge I arrived early and explored. I discovered a cupboard. It was piled from floor to ceiling with books. They had been collected for over a century but had never been sorted. As I searched the shelves I discovered Granddad’s book. He was a very clever man, he could catch every mole in a farmer’s field, but would not do so – because then he’d be out of work. But he had a book – a book that brought the past to life for him, a History of the Fens by James Wentworth Day. There was also a history of my village written by a former vicar that had been revised in the 1950s by the teacher who took me through primary school – and typed up by the Isle of Ely County Library, for in those days’ typewriters were state of the art. I borrowed a typewriter from an upstairs office (and forgot to return it). For a decade I worked through all those books, cataloguing and recording what each had to tell. And I shared it with people who had forgotten that the collection existed – it had disappeared from public view just after WWII. It was not just books – there were newspapers dating back to the 1700s. Hundreds of pictures – engravings. And postcards – including one that I found I also had at home. It dated from the time I’d visited an Auntie in Holbeach. I had looked at it and noticed it was out of date at the time I’d received it. Unknown to me I had been collecting Cambridgeshire material since 1949 – eight decades ago There were maps of the Fens before the Fens were drained with the islands on which Manea, Chatteris and Stretham stood. I attended a WEA class at Haddenham on the 'Drainage of the Fens.' That is a dangerous thing to do. I met my future, and present wife. And I also met the tutor, a don from Sidney Sussex College. He was a very good teacher – he appeared not to be aware of information about the Fens that I discovered as I plodded through those thousands of forgotten books. So we brought the class from Haddenham to Cambridge Library and spent an evening indexing newspapers. It started an idea and by 1974 we had recorded the news for every village in Cambridgeshire, 1770-1899. One important discovery was that Soham had been nearly obliterated in 1944 when that ammunition train exploded. One of the men who ran when he heard the blast was Walter Martin Lane1 of Ely. Like Bridges, Gimbert and Nightall he ran towards the scene with his camera to record unique shots of the devastation. Three years later in 1947 he did the same thing, this time to record the devastation of the 1947 floods around Haddenham when over 100 miles of fertile fenland disappeared under water. Homes had been swept away. I was around then – but I’d heard nothing about it. Now I’ve talked about it for over 40 years. The pictures had been displayed at the time to raise money – now I show them to raise awareness. Because Walter passed the pictures to the Cambridgeshire Collection for safe keeping. It made a good story for the Cambridge News and was picked up by BBC local tv who sent down a camera crew to interview him. We put the pictures on display at Cambridge Guildhall at an exhibition opened by the Mayor – who praised the City Librarian who’d arranged it – I’d caught him in those few minutes between his return from a liquid lunch and the red light going on above his office door to show he was in a Meeting and he found £30 to pay for the printing of photos. Other displays followed, increasing public awareness of just what was hidden in that back room. Plans had been drawn up for a new Cambridge Central Library. That library finally opened in 1975 – just after local government reorganisation had transferred responsibility for libraries from the City to the newly-enlarged County Council. When draft plans had been drawn up in 1963 there had been no mention of the words ‘Cambridgeshire Collection’. When the building finally opened in 1975 there was a suite of two rooms where for the first time people could see something of the range of material that belongs to us. It is was recognised as a major education resource - English Heritage funded a Homerton College video showing trainee teachers how to use libraries to discover material about their local heritage. It is a lesson that has been forgotten. There was a teaching area for class visits. Anglia Polytechnic University endorsed its value with the award of an Honorary Fellowship And the Open University launched their project to share some of the excellent dissertations compiled by their students on disk. For of course technology was advancing – Pye presented audio copying equipment and we acquired computers – the first from the Cambridge News. Indeed in the 1990s our readers had more access to technology than they do today. Computers supplemented the detailed catalogues and indexes that had – almost magically – appeared in the intervening decade – of books, illustrations, newspaper stories, even to actors appearing in Victorian playbills. Over the next 25 years some 1,000 people made use of it every month; some studying buses, some drainage, some poetry, some ghosts. Not just youngsters – one familiar face was the fondly-remembered RAT, pursuing his interest in his home village. We spread the word through talks, books and articles, broadcasts on the new BBC Radio Cambridgeshire, resulting in the award of the profession’s highest accolade. It was a very stimulating and rewarding period. But things change. When I left the library in 1996 I took as my leaving present a trip in a hot air balloon – it would remind me of all those ‘Management’ meetings. For ‘Management’ were planning changes I could not endorse, and neither could I stop. I do not need to talk more of the Cambridgeshire Collection for Chris Jakes has already entertained you with his own memories. He came straight out of Soham Grammar School to make that journey daily down the A10 – though he had to come from Prickwillow first! And he has gone on to receive the Dorothy McCulla award.