Behind the Scenes: Heritage Histories at Cambridge Corn Exchange

We are celebrating the heritage of 150 years at Cambridge Corn Exchange thanks to a grant from the National Heritage Lottery Fund with support from Cambridge BID. You may be wondering how we are going to discover the building’s history highlights. Well it all comes down to digging down into the depth of archival research. 

Archival research is a bit like being a detective. You sift through everything you can find and go through  

• a lot of not particularly interesting paperwork (business reports and receipts from the early 90s),  
• via interesting but irrelevant stories (the first Lady Mayor of Cambridge, Eva Hartree’s handbag was found in the Guildhall recently) 
• until you find the snippets you were looking for (we recently discovered Charles Rolls of Rolls-Royce road his first motorbike there). 

Cambridge Corn Exchange doesn’t have its own archive, so much of what needs to be done is to go to other collections such as the Cambridgeshire Collection at the central library and the Museum of Cambridge to see if they can fill in some of the blanks about our history. It also means getting your hands actually dirty as we discovered exploring the basement of the Parson’s Court office next to the venue. 

The project includes an exhibition that will be launched at the Cambridge Corn Exchange in February 2026.