Cambridge Attractions The Cambridge and County Folk Museum

The Cambridge and Country Folk Museum provides a fascinating insight into how ordinary people lived in the 19^th and 20^th Centuries in Cambridge and the surrounding area.

The museum is housed in a building that dates from 1600, and which for 300 years was an inn or public house called the White Horse Inn. 

The Cambridge and County Folk Museum is an education centre as well as a museum.  It is a popular destination for school visits, and there is a modern extension that houses educational events and activities.

The museum is located on the edge of Cambridge city centre, so that a visit to the museum could easily be combined with sight-seeing around the historic University buildings.

Although the building is very old, it has been adapted to allow access for wheelchair-users.  There is a lift to allow access to the upper floors, and a toilet that has wheelchair access.  A narrow wheelchair is available for use, if desired.

Visitors are offered a brief printed guide to the museum, free of charge.  This is available in a range of languages that is broader than the usual selection, including for example Korean and Czech.

The building was known as the White Horse Inn for 300 years, and was run as a public house (or ‘pub’ to use the colloquial word) until the early 1930’s.

The rooms on the ground floor are little changed since the pub was closed.  If you are visiting England from another country, you may find it interesting to visit a modern pub (even one that looks old) so that you can see how pubs have changed over the past 80 years.

The first room of the museum was the bar of the White Horse Inn.  This was the room where people could buy drinks.  Instead of the open bar that is present in modern pubs, the area where beer was drawn and drinks poured was enclosed from floor to ceiling.  The structure around the serving area is somewhat reminiscent of a garden shed.  There was a small window, or hatch through which glasses could be passed back and forth.

There is a large open fireplace against one wall.  This would have been used for most of the household cooking in the 18^th and early 19^th centuries.  The fireplace has a wooden bench built into the wall, and curving around to face the fire.  It is easy to imagine a group of men there, happily sipping their beer, smoking pipes and warming their feet by the fire.

The next room is known as the Snug, a term still in use in many part of England today, usually to denote a small sitting room.  The Snug in the White Horse Inn was used by the family who kept the inn and their guests.

Some visitors, especially those from abroad, may be surprised at the small scale of the room.  In this case the name ‘snug’ was certainly very appropriate.

There is a display of domestic ornaments and also a collection of cleaning equipment and products for keeping the place free of pests, such as mice and bedbugs.

If you think that life is hard in the 21^st Century, take a look at the kitchen equipment on display here and try to imagine your daily life without modern domestic appliances.

Dishwashers were certainly unheard of – and hot water was not available on top either.  In fact, when this building was first used as an Inn there was no such thing as tap water.

For several decades dishwashing was done in a shallow stone sink.  There is now a single tap above the sink to provide cold water, but originally all water would have been hauled in from the pump in the yard outside.  Note the wooden dish draining rack, which might now be considered as “country chic”. 

Bear in mind that this kitchen would have been used for more than the usual amount of domestic cooking, laundry and dishwashing because the building provided food and lodging to guests.

Behind the kitchen a flight of stairs leads to the guest room where the wealthier guest stayed.  One interesting architectural detail is a small, shallow closed to one side of the fire place.  This was designed in the 18^th century to accommodate the powdering of wigs, which were very popular at that time.  The closet is fitted with a shelf to hold a wig stand and a small window so that powder might disperse out the window.

Beyond the guest room there is a large room.  In the days of the White Horse Inn dining parties were entertained in this room.

 Sometimes this room is used for temporary exhibitions, and for summer 2010 there is a special ‘Cambridge in the 1960s exhibition’.

 This room is usually displays information about the University and the Town of Cambridge in the 19^th and 20^th centuries.

One room on the upper floor is devoted to the Fens.  The Fens is an area in Cambridgeshire that for centuries was populated very sparsely because the land was so wet and marshy that it was barely habitable.  In the 1800s the land was drained by the digging of drainage ditches and the installation of wind pumps, so that the land could be brought into agricultural use.  Over the centuries, the area developed its own way of life.  The objects on display illustrate both work and entertainment in the Fens.

The phrase “Aunt Sally” is still often used in English speech.  For example, someone might say “I’ll put up this idea as an Aunt Sally and see what people think.”

In the Fens (and probably other part of England) Aunt Sally was a game brought out at fetes and fairs.  The Aunt Sally would have clay pipes sticking out from the sides (Look at the photo: you can just about make out the holes where the pipes can be inserted.  A person wanting to play the game would pay a fee (probably a fraction of a penny), for which they would be furnished with 6 wooden sticks.  The player would then throw the sticks at the Aunt Sally with the object of breaking the clay pipes.

A room of the Cambridge and County Folk Museum is devoted to arts and artisans.  Cambridge has always been a centre for the fine, decorative and applied arts.   This room contains many beautiful examples of items made by hand.

As you enter the room, be sure to take note of the hat-makers bench.  This holds some interesting hat forms that can be adjusted in size by insertion of pegs – at first glance these look a bit like typewriter keys (to someone old enough to remember a manual typewriter).

The final room on this floor is devoted to childhood and has a selection of toys to show how children played and learned before the period of television and the computer.

There is also a space where there used to be a secret room!  Nowadays we tend to think of secret rooms as something thrilling, but it is sobering to recall that often people hiding in these chambers were in fear of their life.

The museum is located at 2/3 Castle Street, Cambridge, CB3 0AQ.

Cambridge is a short train journey from London.

Driving from London to Cambridge is fairly easy (and short) but parking in Cambridge can be expensive.  Also, driving in central Cambridge is challenging for anybody not accustomed to huge numbers of cyclists, narrow streets and a one-way system.  However, Cambridge does have an excellent park and ride scheme.  The scheme enables visitors to park on the edge of the city and travel by bus into the city centre, avoiding the headache of driving in a city that was designed before cars were invented.