Newnham Walls (Newnham, Cambridge) Church Rate Walk/Newnham Walk/Summerfield.

Newnham Walls (Newnham, Cambridge)
Church Rate Walk/Newnham Walk/Summerfield
The Cambridge White, capped, brick walls.

Figure 1 Wall at Newnham Path

​There are several walls of the type above in this area. I have initially identified what seems to be 3 separate sections[1]. They are provisionally dated to the latter part of the 19th century and are constructed from Cambridge White bricks, (made near Ely or perhaps the Newmarket Road brickworks in Cambridge?) They are capped with an angled brick to allow rainwater runoff and finished with an oval capping brick. Given the similarity between these walls in this area, it would be nice to discover what they were bounding and from what date. How, if at all are they connected to one another?
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[1] It must be noted that this document is put together after only 2 or 3 brief site visits and that I have not explored any further than what you see here – I have not yet examined the walls in detail or been on the other side of them, so this document is intended to bring this initial exploration to light and provide ideas and inspiration for someone else to explore further should they so wish – or at least to make your next walk in this area a little more curious.

Figure 2 Location Map 1 © OpenStreetMap contributors

The walls are within the Old Newnham area, just west of Cambridge City Centre.
The location of the 3 sections of the similar wall is shown on the above map with red stars. 
1. Church Rate Walk wall. 
2. Summerfield wall. 
3. Newnham Walk wall.

Figure 3 Location Map 2 © OpenStreetMap contributors

The position of the 3 sections of the similar wall is shown on the above map with red lines.

1. Church Rate Walk wall, turning onto Newnham Path, faced by the terraced houses there. 
 
2. Summerfield wall marking the boundary between No.s 1 and 3 Summerfield and turning to form the back garden boundary of No. 3 Summerfield. 
 
3. Newnham Walk wall bounds the northern section of Newnham Walk Surgery and continues to curve around and join The Pightle house. It then continues on the other side of this house until it meets The Principal’s Lodge.

1. Church Rate Walk Section

Figure 4 Church Rate Walk looking south

​View south, down Church Rate Walk, with the capped wall on the right of the footpath, just beyond the white houses (the wall on the left of the footpath is a different design).

Figure 5 Wall at Church Rate Walk & Newnham Path

​On the left is the continuation south of Church Rate Walk, showing the capped wall running alongside. The capped turn, centre top of the picture, shows a well-executed and defined end to the section of wall here, where it turns west and continues at a lower height. It shows the termination in the northeast corner of whatever this wall was bounding. 
 
Being on a public footpath the wall is higher along the path on its eastern line, than on its north section where the path runs in front of the small terrace of houses in Newnham Path (which is a dead end) and where the path here is also lower down.

Figure 6 Wall at Newnham Path

Here you can see the view from Church Rate Walk looking down Newnham Path, towards the west, with the short terrace of houses on the right of the picture and the capped wall on the left.
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The wall, in the centre of the picture, adjoining the capped wall at a right angle, is a later addition of Cambridge White’s which provide screening for a bin area (once coal?).
 
It is worth noting the use of the wall for the growing of plants as this can provide a good deal of history to the use of the wall on this side. The patterns and variety of nails and holes can be plotted and can sometimes indicate different types of flowers or produce grown against the wall. 
 
The far boundary wall we will look momentarily, but first notice what looks like a couple of pale white bricks on our capped wall, roughly bottom centre left, in the photograph above. If we look at the next photograph, we will see that it is in fact a line of wood embedded into the wall.

Figure 7 Wood in the wall at Newnham Path

​In the photograph above you can see the wood more clearly. The question is why is it there? 
 
Was it a piece of wood that was placed in the wall after removing the face of some of the bricks to create an alcove for it to fit in? and if so, was this for wall planting/attaching or some other purpose? If you look closely at the photograph, you will see a thin, vertical strip of wire and an old nail within the wood supporting this.
 
Was the wood placed there at the construction of this wall – does it completely replace any bricks – with permission, we could look at the other side of this wall to see if it shows there too. Was it a sill of some kind? I cannot immediately see alterations present in the wall here to indicate that there was previously an opening above it. More time is needed to thoroughly survey the wall.

Figure 8 Wall in Newnham Path southwest corner

​Moving on to the back end of Newham Path, this northern section of the wall meets another brick wall, which is taller and made of Cambridge Whites but seems to cut across our wall, perhaps indicating a slightly later date for the taller wall. 
 
Did our wall once continue on beyond this wall? Did it always end here, or did it once turn south here and meet up with the capped wall at Summerfield?
 
We will now come out of Newnham Path and turn back onto Church Rate Walk to follow our wall south.

Figure 9 Church Rate Wall looking north

​Here we have turned out of Newnham Path and gone down Church Rate Walk, as far as our wall extended to, we have now turned around to look back north towards the houses on left. The lamppost you can see against the right-hand wall (not our capped wall) shows the rough point at which one would turn left and enter Newnham Path and follow the wall where it turns. 
 
Our capped wall runs along the left-hand side of the photograph above.
 
The most striking thing here is the arched doorway in the wall.

Figure 10 Doorway in wall Church Rate Walk

​Here we have, what appears to be, a doorway which was constructed at the time of the capped wall. There seems no change in the brickwork to suggest that this is a later addition. You can see that the stone arch at the top of the doorway has separated over time but still appears to be strongly attached to the wall on either side. This doorway gives us a clue. It leads from beyond the door onto the footpath. Whatever was behind it was bound by our capped wall and access to and from it could be had via this door.
 
We need to examine the actual wooden door further – is it contemporary with the wall or a replacement door? Again, with permission, it would be good to examine the other side. Measurements of the lintel and door would also be useful.

Figure 11 Doorway in Church Rate Walk on west side.

​Here we have a wider view of the door, and you can see where the capped wall ends and a later boundary wall begins. It does seem to be cut off here rather than having a nice end cap, indicating that perhaps it once continued southwards or turned here. 
 
Today the houses behind the wall running along the path at this point belong to Wordsworth Grove, which started being built around 1898. As each house was built and the land divided up behind the wall, each property had its own wall and gates built to be able to access their back gardens.
 
Make note of the line dividing the end of our capped wall and the lower wall in the photograph above, as we shall be looking at a wider view of this in the next photograph.

Figure 12 Change in wall, Church Rate Walk

​You can now see the later wall running south from the end of our capped wall, it is topped by straight-edged bricks and still constructed from Cambridge Whites. You may also notice that the bricks in the centre of the photograph are a more distinctive tone in colour than those on either side and you may also notice that there is another dividing line beyond our capped wall. This looks like where a doorway once opened and has at some point been bricked up.
 
We do not yet know if there was another doorway like we have already seen in our capped wall or perhaps a later door to serve as access to the Wordsworth Grove house beyond it, which after time was decided it was not needed. Or perhaps this was a point at which our wall turned a corner going west?
 
What we can see is that the bricks used for these later walls and blocked section are of a type similar to our wall….so this begs the question, were these bricks originally from our wall, when it once extended further, and have these bricks simply been reused as needed?

Figure 13 Other doorways in the wall, Church Rate Walk

​As we travel further down Church Rate Walk to the south and turn back to look up along where our capped wall joined a later wall, we find that there are other arched doorways built into these later walls. These doorways are a nod to the design of our original capped wall arched door but can be clearly seen as later constructions. 

2. Summerfield Section

Figure 14 Location of the east side of the Summerfield wall

​The capped wall at Summerfield begins a little way down the driveway between No.2 and No.3. It begins just after the back extent of the house at No. 3.
 
The house at No.3 dates from 1868 and was once called Nursery Cottage. Next door where No.2 and No.1 were built in c.1915 are on the site of the greenhouses of what used to be Newnham Nursery.
 
The capped wall continues north, along the east garden boundary of 3 Summerfield, then turns west along the back (northern) garden boundary wall of 3 Summerfield. It ends at the west garden boundary corner of No. 3, forming an L-shaped boundary wall for the garden here. See the photograph below.

Figure 15 The back of the Summerfield wall

​The question here is was it originally bounding the garden of no.3 or was it separating something on the other side?
 
The photograph above is taken from the bend in Wordsworth Grove looking southeast towards the back garden of 3 Summerfield. Our capped wall is the one which looks a lighter colour. The wall changes to a later style straight-edged brick-capped wall which defines the back gardens of the neighbouring houses in Summerfield which were built later.
 
Let’s have a closer look at the join shown above.

Figure 16 Join at the back of the Summerfield wall

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​We can see that the capped wall ends and then a later style Cambridge White brick wall adjoins it. We can’t see the end cap of the wall from the photograph, but I think it would be well worth clearing it to examine it. It may show some sign of having once turned, either north, enclosing land beyond the back garden of No.3 – possibly forming a wall that eventually joined with the section of wall in Church Rate Walk or turning south to fully enclose the back garden of No.3 – perhaps from the days when it was called Nursery Cottage and before the other houses were built in Summerfield.
 
If cleared, we may also be able to tell if it simply terminated at this point. I think we can gather this to some degree from the end of the wall where it begins between the houses of 2 & 3 Summerfield. Let me show you what I mean.

​If we look at the end of the wall, where it begins at Summerfield (Fig. 17) and compare it to the southern end of the wall in Church Rate Walk (Fig. 18) - where we can only really see the end caps - You will be able to notice a couple of things. 
 
Firstly, the end cap in Fig. 17, above where the next wall begins is fairly bright and although a little colour stained by plant material, the cap here is quite bright compared to the outward-facing cap that runs along the wall top. I believe that this could be because the capped wall here once continued, turned or had an end closing, and what we are seeing is a later removal of the wall at this point, which has left the un-weathered face of the capping stone. 
 
Compare this to the end cap of the Summerfield wall, which is consistent in its colour ageing. Secondly, on the Summerfield wall, you can see the lengthways bricks used in the brick bond to produce a nice finish – suggestive that the wall did originally commence at this point. In addition, there appear to be some remains of ironwork in the end cap of Fig. 18, which could be contemporary with the original wall and may be suggestive of some kind of gate. If investigated closer it may offer up another clue, particularly if it indicates which way a gate may have closed and opened, this may indicate which side the wall was intended to surround.

​This now leads to the possibility that the Church Rate wall continued to the south but to what extent, and did it join up with the wall in Summerfield?

3. Newnham Walk Section

Figure 19 Location of Newnham Walk wall

Figure 20 The Wall at Newnham Walk Surgery

​This capped wall section is not far from the two sections we have already looked at but does appear, at the moment, to be independent from them. It currently starts as a slight turn at the west side of the entrance to Wordsworth Grove, where it forms the north boundary wall for the Newnham Walk Surgery which was built c.1989.
 
The wall here turns onto Newnham Walk where it heads east towards Newnham College. You will see from the photograph above that it slightly rises in height as it goes along.

Figure 21 The wall on the south side of Newnham Walk

​As we follow the wall westwards down Newnham Walk, you will see how similar it is to our capped walls at Church Rate Walk and at Summerfield. The only real difference that I can see here is that this wall has regular buttress sections. It would be interesting to know if these occur on the side of walls hidden from our view at Summerfield and Church Rate Walk.

Figure 22 The start of the curved wall on Newnham Walk

​Further along, the wall ends and lowers before curving around to form the driveway wall of the large old house called The Pightle. The wall ends here with a buttress and the drop and curve that continue seem to be contemporary and in keeping with the construction of this wall. 

Figure 23 Doorway in the wall at The Pightle

Figure 24 The Pightle curved driveway wall

​After a gap to allow for an entrance gate into The Pightle garden, the wall continues to curve around to finish by joining directly against the east front wall of the house.

Figure 25 The Pightle, Newnham Walk

Figure 26 The west end of The Pightle wall, Newnham Walk

​The wall then continues from the front west side wall of the house and carries on down Newnham Walk before ending at the front wall join of The Principle’s Lodge (built c.1913, part of Newnham College).

What else can be discovered?

​Let’s return to our wall location map to remind ourselves of the position of the walls before adding in the historical information that I have found.

Figure 27 Wall location map

​1830 Baker’s map and the 1832 St Giles post enclosure map do not show any sign of our walls and would be too early a date for this type of wall. I have made an extensive search of various other records, from maps and plans to newspaper reports and aerial photographs. What is really needed now is a further search of the maps and plans of this patch of Newnham, held at the University Library Map Room and a search of St. John’s College Archives for the same – as they held much of the land here. But in the meantime, there are a few clues about the walls to be found on some of the items that I have discovered, which I will detail below.

Section 3 - Newnham Walk

Figure 28 The Pightle wall location

In 1864 the newspaper below tells us that a new house is being built for Professor Liveing at the back of Newnham. This house is The Pightle at No.3 on our map.
This gives us a clue that the wall at point 3 was constructed on this date or soon after.

Figure 29 Cambridge Independent Press Saturday 19th November 1864 – British Newspaper Archive.

​I wonder if any of the bricks mentioned were intended for The Pightle boundary wall!

​On the 1886 OS map below we can see The Pightle house with its curved drive on the right-hand side and we can see the extent of our wall running both east and west from the house. We can even see the gate opening on the curved drive in the same place as we can see it today, as shown in the photographs previously. 

Figure 30 OS Cambridge – Cambridgeshire XLVII.2.16 Surveyed 1886, Published 1888 – National Library of Scotland

​In addition, the map shows the buttresses of the wall. I have overlaid this map with a modern map and although not completely precise, it shows that The Pightle’s garden today is significantly reduced. On the east side, land was lost to the Wordsworth Road development and today the Newnham Walk Surgery is built over what looks like would have been the orchard, a viewing mound, a glasshouse and a pump. 
 
On the 1886 map above there were 11 buttresses on the east side wall. Although today modern maps do not depict the buttresses, from walking alongside the wall you will now only count 10. The surgery was constructed right up against the wall and may have had the later section lowered to what we see today. It is also when the 11th buttress is likely to have been moved and altered to create the slight turn into Wordsworth Road and the name sign for the surgery which was put in (see Fig.20) – all made from the bricks removed.

Figure 31 1886 surveyed OS map overlaid onto our location map of point 3.

On the west side of the house a good section of the wall is lost and what appears to be the southern turn of the wall is also gone, this would have taken place when The Principle’s Lodge was built c.1913.
 
Here is also a thought to consider; would buttresses on the outside wall be always on the outside of the property? If buttresses occur, would it indicate the owned land the wall bounds would be on the other side of them? 

I would think that it may not always be true, but it would be more aesthetic for the owner to have such supporting features on the outside of their walls rather than on the inside where they would have to see them. There may also be a practical reason for having the buttresses on the outside if, for example, the wall enclosed a garden, particularly a kitchen garden. This would be because such walls were used well for the growing of wall-trained plants and produce, so a flat stretch of wall would be desirous – see the example below.

Figure 32 Wall, growing trained plants

​We now have a pretty good idea of the date of construction and what the wall here at section 3 was doing. Let’s now have a look at our wall at section 2.

Section 2 - Summerfield

​​The first clue we have for the wall at point 2 is this conveyance dated 28th December 1867. Alfred Jones sells the land at Lot 5 to Robert Whyatt, who then has Nursery Cottage built on it, which is today No.3 Summerfield. Lots 1, 2, 3 and 4 become the glasshouses of Newnham Nursery run by James Sanders (which were later to become houses 1 & 2 Summerfield). 

Figure 33 1867 Conveyance Jones/Whyatt, Courtesy of T. Watts

​On the plan below you can see between the plots (Road 10 feet) and this today is the gap between the houses, shown earlier in Fig.14. We need to take a closer look at that red writing.

Figure 34 Note about sale to Sanders 1868

​The red writing is an addendum to state that J. Sanders has been sold a section of this roadway by Robert Whyatt in 1868. Now if you look at that small red line just above where the original ‘roadway’ drive was marked you will see that it is the very placement of our capped wall here – or at least marks the line of where it would start and later where it was built, it was built in a line, going further down to separate this ‘roadway’.
 
This then, gives us a date for the wall here to be no earlier than 1868. 
 
Given that the date of this document is originally dated December 1867, showing the plots being sold, it is not likely that much building work occurred on site until 1868 at least. 
 
By October 1868 a newspaper article tells us that J. Sanders has removed his nursery business from Trumpington Road Nursery to his new premises of Newnham Nursery, Newnham.

It is likely that Mr Whyatt also built his house next door to the nursery at about the same time in 1868. Both are seen on the 1870 Electoral Registers at this place. This defines a documentary date between 1868 and 1870 and dates, not only both property's construction but also the date of the likely construction of our wall at point 3.

Figure 35 Cambridge Independent Press – Saturday 3rd October 1868. British Newspaper Archives.

If we now turn to look at the next map available to us that depicts the wall here, we will see that it is the same OS map surveyed in 1886[2] that we have looked at to identify the wall at The Pightle. 

[2] These are the earliest general maps that we have which show this detail – before this, we have the St. Giles enclosure map of 1832 which is before the construction of the buildings and walls that we are examining.

Figure 36 OS Cambridge – Cambridgeshire XLVII.2.21 Surveyed 1886, Published 1888, National Library of Scotland

​The map above map shows us about 20 years later from the date of the sale of the plots at this site, and we can now clearly see the greenhouses of Newnham Nursery, run by Mr James Sanders. We can also see the gap between them and Robert Whyatt’s house, also to be seen is our capped wall line running between the properties at the length that it still does today. By the date of this map, there are further houses built to the west of Mr Whyatt’s house, the row is collectively named Summerfield, as it remains today.
 
We can see the back wall, that was shown in the photographs earlier (Fig. 15 & 16), we can also see that the back wall has buttresses on the inside – does this mean anything, did the wall have to look more presentable on the other side for some reason? Or perhaps it was because any buttresses couldn’t encroach on someone else's land, so if needed it was more practical to put them on the interior side rather than losing land by bringing in the garden to allow for buttresses on the outside. I think the latter makes more sense.
 
It does also seem like the same wall once turned and continued on the west side, back down to the house at No.3 where it also appears to turn in east, perhaps creating a small courtyard area to the back of Mr Whyatt’s house.
 
Given that the wall seems to surround Mr Whyatt’s house it may be reasonable to surmise that it was he that had the wall built and not Mr Sanders on the other side.

Figure 37 The 1886 surveyed OS map overlaid on our location map of point 2.

Section 1 - Church Rate Walk

​Finally, let’s look at our wall section shown in point 1. As you can see from the 1886 OS surveyed map below, our wall was present at this date, in the position and length that looks as we see it today. It shows that the wall had buttresses on the internal side here.

It appears that the wall was bounding a thin strip of land on the interior from the path and from the front of the houses in Newnham Path. This does mean that the buttresses are on the interior of the wall and again, here, the reasoning seems to be so as not to lose land (or encroach on someone else’s land) by placing the buttresses on the outside, in addition, the eastern aspect of the wall abuts a public footpath which is already limited in width and was no doubt still used by horses more frequently in the past.

Figure 38 OS Cambridge – Cambridgeshire XLVII.2.16 Surveyed 1886, Published 1888, National Library of Scotland and location map of wall 1.

​The thin strip of land which this wall encloses can be seen on this OS 1886 surveyed map below. Which I have duplicated beneath with the interior boundary marked in yellow (the wall is still shown in red). What becomes apparent very quickly is that this thin strip of land actually belongs to The Pightle. It is a kind of access strip leading from the east to The Pightle garden via Church Rate Walk – which is where our impressive stone-capped arched doorway would have led to.

Figure 39 1886 pub 1888 OS showing boundary garden wall of The Pightle

Figure 40 Modern google map satellite overlaid with 1886 surveyed OS

As a further point to note you can see from the overlaid plan above that the southern wall boundary, which would have been on your left-hand side if you were to go through the door into the garden in 1886, does not match the garden boundary of the house in Wordsworth Grove which now lays upon that land, which you can also make out from the plan below. This then gives us an explanation for that section of wall beyond our capped wall, that looks like a blocked doorway (Fig. 12). What it probably would have been is a simple filling in of the boundary gap once the land was divided up for Wordsworth Grove, rather than a blocked doorway.

Figure 41 1971 Land Registry Plan

Figure 42 1886 Surveyed OS Map

Figure 43 Wall at the northeast of Church Rate Walk

​A final note worth making is regarding the walls that we haven’t covered, which look like they also have buttresses as shown on the 1886 OS surveyed map. One of the walls lies to the east side of Church Rate Walk. Today this wall is topped by flat bricks but still looks to be of a late Victorian date. We would have to explore, with permission, the other side of this wall to see if it is the original wall shown on this map which had the internal buttresses.  
 
The next wall is that which once bound the house called Brookfield, in the top part of the map above. It may well have been a capped wall like we have been exploring, and looks to have been buttressed, but there is no longer a wall surrounding the front of side or on the east as shown. There still may be some clue of the original wall in places though, so this would be worth exploring to see if any could be found.

To finish our detective work for now, we can now look back at the 1886 surveyed OS map to have a better understanding of where and why sections of the capped wall were.

Figure 44 1886 OS map Published 1888

​We can also look at the 1901 revised OS map below to see the changes after Wordsworth Road had started development. Really though, our sections of the wall didn’t change much after this date – apart from the western end of the Pightle wall which was lost with the construction of The Principle’s Lodge, and at the east when adjustment was made during the Newnham Walk Surgery construction.

Figure 45 1901 OS Published 1903 XLVII.2

Suggestions for further research

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• To do a closer survey of these walls in the immediate area and Newnham as a whole and record where they are. Ascertain their true extent and date. 

 

• Carry out a closer examination of the walls for further clues of things like wall planting, old doorways, old graffiti, and other changes.

 

• Take measurements of the bricks and include them here, along with photographs of individual bricks – the same for the capping stones. Are the bricks at 1, 2 and 3 truly identical or do they have any difference in size and texture etc?

 

• Not all of the bricks are whites – some are redder and some black bricks etc.– I have taken the liberty of describing these walls as having been constructed from Cambridge Whites but really, this is a very loose categorisation, and it would be good to class the walls and their bricks correctly.

 

• Look at any documentary/map evidence from the University Library map room and St John’s College Archives – particularly for the piece of land at the back of Summerfield – any clue to owners/occupiers – I do not believe any buildings stood here but it would be good to know if this was part of The Pightle’s extensive land and gardens or perhaps a grazing field for horses used in the service of Sanders Newnham Nursery or even an extension of Newnham Nursery – perhaps it once spread out behind the houses of Summerfield?

 

• Look for metalwork and signs of gates having once been embedded at the ends of these walls to indicate use etc.

 

• Research exactly the type of brick – are they Cambridge Whites? from Ely, Burwell, or even Newmarket Road brickworks?

 

• Where else in Newnham are there these capped walls? – look at the flat capped walls too

 

• More of the brickwork – it appears to be a Flemish Bond throughout. It would be good to add more information about this.

 

​ All photographs copyright M Bullivant unless otherwise stated.
Michelle Bullivant July 2023

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