By: Robin
Robin: When I was a kid that the school was overlooking the river. It was on the side of Elizabeth Way called the Brunswick and, and that was a lovely environment because there was no busy road going past it as there was later on. And it overlooks the river. And there were grass slopes going down, because it was built quite high. We called them The Flats and we practice cricket on The Flats in the slopes and yeah… And you could see the university boat crews buzzing up and down on different boats, because there was a Banham Boat Builders nearby and building cabin cruisers and things. And there was a motor race in manufacture, believe it or not quite close there. I think there were Lister Jags, yeah, because there was a local engineer called Lister and he had a racing team, I think may have been wrong, but they were Jaguars was but I think the bodies were made by Listers. And they would often come up and down the road. And that was quite exciting to see racing cars, you know, just, just toodling along really.
Pippa: And was that by the school?
Robin: Yeah, and by the school there was slopes leading on to Midsummer Common going down the slopes and people would – kids would – when there was snow – they’d take their toboggans and things there – anything flat they could slide down. It was great.
Pippa: And did you ever go sledging?
Robin: Oh yeah, yeah, regularly. Well, when we had snow and there was more snow when I was kid than there is now.
Pippa: And did you Dad make you a really nice posh sledge? I bet he did. Bet you weren’t on a tin were you?
Robin: No!
Pippa: Bet you had the Rolls Royce of like sledges!
Robin: It was pretty chunky, it was pretty heavy duty as I seem to remember. But it probably needed to be. Yeah.
Robin: We used to play, we used to play football on Jesus Green from the Brunswick School. And quite often that would be waterlogged, so we ended up on the common so you’d have to dodge the cowpats. And it was really sort of rough compared with Jesus Green and the ball wouldn’t glide.
Interviewed by Pippa Hale and Emma Bearman, May 2023
Read more about Brunswick School: https://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/history/teachers-were-strict-spanked-slipper-14287207
