By: Robin
Robin: Oh, yes, the old cattle market or the cattle market when I was a kid, we used to go there. And they used to be all the sorts of animals you can imagine from cows, pigs, sheep, lambs, rabbits, poultry and it would be a lovely outing out just to walk around where the animals were.
And when you got fed up with looking at the animals, there used to be this huge area full of old agricultural vehicles. And some of them had been there for years and no one had bought them. So we used to jump on them – the tractors – and they used to be great fun. Yeah.
Pippa: What year was that? Was that when you a lad as well in the 50s?
Robin: Yeah, about ’55-6 something like that. Yeah.
Pippa: Did you ever get told off?
Robin: No. I think there was so old and no one wanted them and they were there for auction and it just got left there. And it was a very large area. And bank holidays, there’d be market stalls and where they’d be the cheap jack sellers sell in all sorts of things with crockery, blankets, sheets, the lot, clothes. Go to the bank holiday cattle market, August bank holiday and also the Whitsun one, it would be so crowded you could hardly walk around there’d be so many people there…
Pippa: That’s interesting isn’t it.
Robin: They talk about Piccadilly Circus, but in Cambridge you’d say ‘just like bank holiday at the cattle market.’ How busy.
Interviewed by Pippa Hale and Emma Bearman, May 2023
