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St Peter's Street early 20th Century showing the hardware store on the left.

Our next speaker on 23rd April will be Peter Marsh. Peter will be talking to us about the history of one of our biggest industries here in Duxford and that is Hexcel and its predecessor companies,

At the time of writing, we have just completed our meeting for March and what an exciting meeting that was. We had two speakers and both were delivered by our new committee members Robert Kinsey and Jim Earle.

The first talk was on a map that has been discovered by Robert assisted by another committee member Emma Parkhill. The map is of the village in 1830 and is the oldest detailed map in existence of our village. The map shows the owners of land and property in the village and in the fields surrounding the village and within its borders.

The map was commissioned following the enclosure act of 1830 and this demanded a map showing property boundaries. Prior to the enclosure of land there had been a system of strip farming and a great deal of common land. The act allowed the fencing off of land by the landowners and was very unpopular among the common people who lost the right to graze their animals on common land.

The act undoubtedly increased the productivity of the land, but in doing so abolished the rights of ordinary people. The society have ordered copies of the maps and members may view them om application.

We were then entertained by a presentation by Jim Earle from a book that he has previously written on Sir William Congreve the inventor of rockets in warfare at the time of Nelson. Congreve was passionate about the potential of rockets as a type of longer-range artillery to be used on the battlefields on land and at sea.

His invention met with limited success, but he can be considered as one of the fathers of today’s missiles and I am sure he would have wholeheartedly supported the drone technology in use today.

The discovery of the map gives us a lot of work to do researching the land owners and pinpointing the buildings that were here at that time, which ones that have disappeared. One mystery has already been cleared up and that is that the pub that burned down at the end of Elm’s Close was clearly marked as the Three Horseshoes.On a preliminary examination of the map, and more needs to be done, the Three Horseshoes is the only named pub. That could mean that we went from one pub to eleven in a little over a decade.

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Meetings are fun, we start with updates on what has been achieved during the past month and then we have a speaker to tell us about issues of historical interest to all of us. We have a break in the middle when people can mingle and chat and everyone enjoys it.

Even if you can't make all of the meetings you can still be a member and share in everything that is going on by tuning in to our website and participating in our WhatsApp group. WhatsApp allows all of our members to share memories and pictures and new discoveries. Just click the link below:

 Link to:

https://www.calh.org.uk

https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/cambs/vol6/pp201-220

https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/cambs/vol2/pp223-226

Farringdon Diaries. https://capturingcambridge.org/museum-of-cambridge/museum-exhibit-stories/the-farrington-diaries/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsVTJtA35sA

https://youtu.be/YsLF4_MqEBs

https://duxfordparishcouncil.gov.uk/duxford-history/

https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/cambs/vol6/pp201-220

http://www.facebook.com/stjohnsduxford

http://www.instagram.com/duxfordstjohns

http://www.twitter.com/duxfordstjohns