Kite Tour: discovering the hidden history of our neighbourhood
- Lyndsay Wright
- Oct 17
- 5 min read
It’s turning out to be a busy year for our local history tours. Later this month there’s a rare opportunity to visit the Historical Print Room at the University Library, where two of our own Riversiders will be our expert guides. But this week, we stayed closer to home — exploring the fascinating past of the “Kite” district.
A name born from protest
Our first revelation was that the area hasn’t always been known as the Kite. The name only emerged in the 1960s, when plans were afoot to demolish the district’s homes to make way for what became the Grafton Centre. The campaign to stop the redevelopment adopted the name because when you draw its boundaries — East Road, Parkside, Emmanuel Road and Newmarket Road — the shape resembles, quite literally, a kite.
The Theatre Royal and the Wilkins family
In medieval times, this area was open fields belonging to Barnwell Priory. The oldest surviving house in the area dates to around 1790, and is now part of the Buddhist Centre. Built by William Wilkins Snr, an architect and theatre manager, it included a theatre, but not the Regency one that is still secreted within the Buddhist centre. That was built by his son, William Wilkins Jnr, also an architect and a leader of the Greek Revival movement – his most famous works include Downing College and the National Gallery. He opened Cambridge’s Theatre Royal in 1815, and it became one of the foremost provincial theatres, hosting stars such as the Swedish Nightingale Jenny Lind, Ninette de Valois and W.B. Yeats.
It’s hard to imagine now, but the house and theatre once stood surrounded by fields, their distance from the city centre required because university regulations forbade theatrical performances within the colleges’ precincts. As we were to discover later in the tour, the University’s reach extended in far darker ways into local life.
The Causeway and the builders of the Kite
Continuing along Maids’ Causeway (originally Barnwell Causeway), we learned that its existence is thanks to Stephen Perse — yes, that Perse, of school fame — who, in 1615, left money for construction of a raised walkway across the surrounding boggy fields. It’s thought the route was named for the maids who used it on their way to work in the colleges.
In the late 18th century, the area was drained, and houses were then built, but the causeway remains, forming the pavement on the left-hand side as you head towards the city centre.
Here you will find some of the earliest houses in the Kite district in the form of large townhouses that face towards Midsummer Common, known as the Dolls Common area. These were developed between 1815 and 1826 by Charles Humphrey, who also constructed a manor house for himself and homes for his servants, of which more shortly. A banker, architect and reform-minded Mayor of Cambridge, Humphrey famously hosted a public dinner for 15,000 guests on Parker’s Piece to celebrate Queen Victoria’s coronation in 1838.
Parish marks and public squares
Heading towards New Square, we paused to solve a longstanding mystery: the numbers and letters on the wall at the corner of Fair Street. They’re parish boundary markers, not flood levels as many had believed, and “HTP” stands for Holy Trinity Parish.
New Square itself, now a green oasis, was a car park from the 1930s until the 1980s, when it was transformed during the Grafton Centre development. The surrounding houses, dating from the 1830s, were home to working-class families such as shopkeepers, labourers and a painter/glazier, according to 1880s records.
Orchard Street and the Garden of Eden
Few streets in Cambridge are as charming as Orchard Street, built by Humphrey for his servants. However, his philanthropy had its limits: there are no windows on the south side of the top floor as he didn’t want his servants overlooking his own manor house.
A fascinating discovery came courtesy of Sally’s eagle eyes: it would appear that Orchard Street used to have two additional houses that have disappeared, perhaps to make way for Clarendon Street. Next time you’re there to admire the wisteria on the end wall of 13 Orchard Street, look across the road to another similar-looking house…which turns out to be 16 Orchard Street. Even our knowledgeable guide, Mike, was unaware of this, but he’ll do some digging now!
Beyond 16 Orchard Street, we made our way into what used to be a huge market garden, which supplied fruit and vegetables to the colleges and was overlooked by Humphrey’s manor house. Known locally as the Garden of Eden, its history lives on in the street names: Eden Street, Paradise Street, Adam and Eve Street.
From The Free Press to Fitzroy
Passing The Free Press (the subject of another blog), we reached City Road and encountered a connection to two previous history tours, for it was here that F.R. Leach, the English master decorator, had his workshops. Little evidence remains of the facilities that provided the Gothic revival decoration for places such as Jesus College chapel, All Saints Church and the dining hall at Queens’ College.
By now we were entering Fitzroy territory, land owned by the Duke of Grafton, much of which was swept away for the construction of the Grafton Centre. Before that, Fitzroy Street continued into Upper Fitzroy Street, right through the heart of what is now the shopping mall.
Fitzroy Street and Burleigh Street, and the lanes in between, once hosted modest Victorian terraces, factories and small shops, including the first store of one William Heffer, who began selling postcards and stationery in 1876 before going on to establish the bookshops that still bear his name.
Two buildings from that era survive: Eden Chapel (now Gail’s Bakery), which was replaced by the new Eden Baptist Church at the other end of Fitzroy Street; and the 1904 building now occupied by Sports Direct), which was once one of the country’s most advanced department stores, complete with a rooftop bandstand. There is, however, a remnant of another building inside the Grafton Centre, one that easily goes unnoticed: what is now the frontage of the Entertainer/Early Learning Centre was originally part of the 1910 Coop building on Burleigh Street.
Daisy Hopkins and the Spinning House
Our tour’s finale was a sobering story from Gold Street, one of the roads lost to redevelopment. People living in the Kite area were distrusted by the University, who even resorted to sending spies to monitor the population. In 1891, a young woman named Daisy Hopkins (a resident of 21 Gold Street) was arrested in Tennis Court Road by a University Proctor for talking to an undergraduate — it was assumed she was soliciting, though it turned out the undergraduate was propositioning her.
Daisy was condemned by the Vice Chancellor and sent to the Spinning House, the University’s private women’s prison, where thousands of women from the Kite were imprisoned from the 1820s onwards under accusations of immorality. Her case became international news when her lawyer got her prosecution overturned and sued the Vice Chancellor for false arrest — a scandal that led to the closure of the Spinning House and the abolition of the University’s powers of arrest. Her story is told in a new book, The Spinning House by Caroline Biggs (one for the Book Club, perhaps?).
Reflections and pizza
It was a morning rich in stories — from reformers and architects to protestors and campaigners — revealing the textured, complex history of the Kite, and made more poignant by the current redevelopment of the Grafton Centre, four decades after it opened.
Naturally, we rounded off our explorations in the best way possible with lunch at Giovanni’s on Burleigh Street, where we digested our discoveries (and some excellent pizza).
