As we know, the city was founded as a river crossing. It was the main way of communicating from the edge of the English Midlands, down to the coast, round and across to Europe.

Roads were muddy, unsurfaced and very difficult to travel on. From the Viking period, right up until the coming of the railway in 1845, the river was the main means of communication and transport. Roads were for luxury goods and people, but most goods went by water. It would have been cheaper to send goods and belongings to London by boat, even if they went through King's Lynn and then round to the Thames... this was much cheaper than going by road!

The bridge at Quayside was known as the Great Bridge and it was the main bridge in and out of Cambridge. It's hard to imagine Cambridge without any of the other bridges - without Victoria Avenue, without Elizabeth Way! If you were coming from Ely or other places in the East you might be able to cross on one of the ferries if you were on foot, but if you had a horse or a cart you had to come all the way along to the top of Castle Hill and down Bridge Street. The only other bridge was Silver Street - which was called Small Bridges. Slowly the colleges built their own bridges - but for public access they were the only ways in and out of Cambridge.

Cambridge moves!
Cambridge started on Castle Hill, moved down the river edge, then moved towards the Market Square, which for centuries was the centre of town. It was surrounded by fields, right up until the 19th century, with a few houses on the main roads - and places like Trumpington and Cherry Hinton and Barnwell were all little villages outside.

Then suddenly in 1845, the railway arrived. The colleges wouldn't let them put the railway in the town centre - the university was terrified about 'loose' women coming down from London and distracting the students from their studies! So they were forced to build it in the middle of nowhere, about a mile and a half from the town centre! The university also put restrictions on who could come in as they saw it as such a threat!

Suddenly there was a shift from the river, which for centuries was the main means of communication, it was usurped by the railway! Stagecoaches went out, trains came in and slowly between 1845 and the early 1900's the river was used less and less and it's now become more of a leisure and pleasure river! It used to be the commercial heart of the town, it would have been full of boats and it would have stank as it was full of sewage... now we punt along it!

As the railway arrived the town burst out of its medieval confines onto what had been fields and shot off towards the station. The railway station area became like a new town with Mill Road and all the houses that appeared along it. So once again Cambridge moved.

The future of Cambridge
Local tour guide Allan Brigham believes that Cambridge has always been moving, and that it's now moving towards the Science Park and the villages of Oakington and Waterbeach. Areas like Chesterton and Newnham used to be villages and now people think of them as part of the city. Allan believes that the city will continue to grow and swallow up the local villages... but he says it's up to local residents to have a say in how this growth and development is carried out:

"We need to do it well and replicate these green areas… people come here for work, but people who are born here need affordable housing. So we need to get it right - we can't blow it!"

"It's happening now… and we could get it right, we could get it wrong! Cambridge is now at the cutting edge of the European economy with Silicon Fen… so it's quite exciting. The problems associated with prosperity beat the problems associated with poverty!"