Heritage

Wandering down Downing Place in Cambridge in the rain the other day, we came across this rather odd, small size bus garage, open to the public. Alternatively, a bit like one of those Victorian covered markets you still get up north.

Then out the back of it was the back of some kind of office building, graced with an equally odd circular & fancily glazed tower, the sort of tower which might have contained offices for senior officials, one on each floor, in the days when senior officials had offices, secretaries, private waste bins and so on. But not much of a view from all those windows, so did it just contain the ceremonial circular staircase, up which you had to plod in order to meet the great man who lived at the top? Have the stairs now been replaced with one of those open plan lifts that they like to put into shopping arcades?

Not many clues as to what the bus garage was for nor was there anyone fit to ask, although there was a municipal smell about the place. Checking with Professor Google, I find that it is the back entrance to the Grade 2 listed building now known as Hobson House (Mayor Hobson being the late 16th century carrier made good who invented open drains) and which used to be the Cambridge Police Station. So one presumes that the bus garage was the rather spacious accommodation needed for the rather grand police vehicles of the very early 20th century when the place was built. Did they need the height because of all the smoke & steam from the steam engines powering said vehicles?