Historyworks: Recent Episodes
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Fragility of Freedom SONG by Michael Rosen
When the sun’s beating down from a cloudless sky
and your head is burning in the heat
when you can hardly breathe cos the air is so hot
and the ground is burning your feet
you know you gotta do something
you know you gotta do it now
you know you gotta do something
you know you gotta find out how
When you hear them say you can’t pray that way
and there’s places that you can’t go
when you hear them say you can’t go that way
and there’s things that you mustn’t know
you know you gotta do something
you know you gotta do it now
you know you gotta do something
you know you gotta find out how
When you hear them say that you can’t move around
go back to from where you came
When they try to get you to not wanna care
you know it’s more of the same
you know you gotta do something
you know you gotta do it now
you know you gotta do something
you know you gotta find out how
when you hear them say you can’t be who you are
and you’ve got to be another way
When you hear them say you can’t look like you do
and you’re not allowed to stay
you know you gotta do something
you know you gotta do it now
you know you gotta do something
you know you gotta find out how
When they say you gotta hate them over there
just ‘cause they’re not like you
When you hear them say look after number one
you’re one of the special few
you know you gotta do something
you know you gotta do it now
you know you gotta do something
you know you gotta find out how
Fragility of Freedom SONG by Michael Rosen
When the sun’s beating down from a cloudless sky
and your head is burning in the heat
when you can hardly breathe cos the air is so hot
and the ground is burning your feet
you know you gotta do something
you know you gotta do it now
you know you gotta do something
you know you gotta find out how
When you hear them say you can’t pray that way
and there’s places that you can’t go
when you hear them say you can’t go that way
and there’s things that you mustn’t know
you know you gotta do something
you know you gotta do it now
you know you gotta do something
you know you gotta find out how
When you hear them say that you can’t move around
go back to from where you came
When they try to get you to not wanna care
you know it’s more of the same
you know you gotta do something
you know you gotta do it now
you know you gotta do something
you know you gotta find out how
when you hear them say you can’t be who you are
and you’ve got to be another way
When you hear them say you can’t look like you do
and you’re not allowed to stay
you know you gotta do something
you know you gotta do it now
you know you gotta do something
you know you gotta find out how
When they say you gotta hate them over there
just ‘cause they’re not like you
When you hear them say look after number one
you’re one of the special few
you know you gotta do something
you know you gotta do it now
you know you gotta do something
you know you gotta find out how
Story-telling using your own WW2 family history for demonstrating the theme on Fragility of Freedom to be used by a DRAMA group to perform at HMD which can be rehearsed using our recording of your words
FRAGILITY OF FREEDOM DRAMA by Michael Rosen
Scene one
Home at Michael Rosen’s house
1950s
Father (Harold)
Mother (Connie)
Brian (older)
Michael (younger)
Eating meal
Narrator
Pinner in north-west London
It’s the 1950s
This is the Rosen family: father Harold, mother, Connie, two sons, Brian and Michael
Michael: I love raisins.
Brian: We noticed. Leave some for me.
Connie: Who’s going to clear the table?
Harold: (looks up from paper): You know I had two uncles living in France before the war. They weren’t there at the end.
Brian: What happened to them?
Harold: I don’t know. They died in the camps I suppose. There’s no way of finding out.
Connie: Don’t look like that. There’s nothing we can do about it. It’s happened and that’s it.
Michael: What camps? What do you mean?
Connie: Another time, Harold.
Michael (to Brian) (whispering) What camps?
Brian: Later.
Scene 2
Narrator:
50 years later:
Michael is on the phone with his second cousin Teddy in America:
Michael: Yes I can hear you. Say that again, who are the letters from?
Teddy: Two are from Stella Rosen…wait a minute…she’s our great-aunt. Your father and my father’s aunt.
And two are from Oscar and he’s our great-uncle, your father and my father’s uncle.
Michael: Okayyyy.
Teddy: Don’t you see? These are the last letters they ever wrote.
Michael: Where are they writing from?
Teddy: Stella is writing from Poland. Oscar is writing from France.
Michael: When?
Teddy: 1941.,
Michael: O my god…what are they saying.
Teddy: OK, Stella in Poland is pleading with my grandfather to take her son in. To the States. It’s his only hope of survival.
Michael: And Oscar in France?
Teddy: The net is closing in there too.
Michael: Is there an address on the letters?
Teddy: I’ll screenshot them and send them to you. I just had to tell you the moment I saw them.
Michael: Where have they been?
Teddy: Hidden in my mother’s brother’s files somewhere. They’ve only come to light since he died.
Scene 3
Michael:
So the Nazis wanted to create a new super race. A pure race. And to do that they thought they would wipe out all the Jews. Exterminate them. Millions of them. Millions of us.
And amongst all those millions, there was my father’s uncles and aunts in France and Poland. But how did they do it?
Narrator:
You’ll have to do some research.
Michael:
I will. I will.
Scene 4
(with computer)
Michael: (As he speaks these lines, Oscar and Rachel mime what he is relating)
So Oscar is married to Rachel. Hmm my father didn’t know that.
So in 1941 they’re in Niort, in north-west France, before the war they had been running a clock-menders shop but now all they can do is sell second-hand clothes. The govt has taken nearly all their savings and says that they’ve got to wear yellow stars with the word Jew on them. And they have to put a sign on their market stall saying ‘Jewish business’.
Now hang on…they disappear from Niort…they go on the run….they’re refugees….
how do they do it?
they must have begged for lifts and begged to stay in people’s houses…dangerous…one wrong move and they would have been arrested…
till they get hundreds of miles away to Nice.
Why Nice?
Narrator:
Nice South East France:
Angelo Donati, a philanthropist has a plan:
Donati: (to audience as if they are the Jews in Nice)
The Italian authorities promise you, we will not hand you over to the Nazis. In the meantime, I am getting hold of boats and we will get you away from Europe to north Africa, where you’ll be safe. I need just a few more days…
Narrator:
But Italy were at war with the allies. I know this is complicated! And the allies defeated Italy.
Donati:
I’ll send a telegram to General Eisenhower….’ don’t announce the armistice’. It’ll give me time to get the boats ready.
Eisenhower:
Today we announce that an armistice has been signed between Italy and allied forces. Italy has been defeated.
Michael:
Oh no. That means that the Nazis will invade Nice….
Narrator:
Exactly.
Nazi soldiers rounded up Jews in Nice, took them to the Hotel Excelsior…put them on trains to a special camp outside Paris called Drancy (‘Dron-see’).
Michael:
Then what?
Oscar:
They took us from that camp to a train called Convoy 62.
Rachel: They squeezed 1200 of us into cattle trucks, and deported us to Auschwitz extermination camp where we were killed.
Michael:
I haven’t saved you.
All I’ve done is find out what happened to you.
Why?
Why have I done this?
Because the Nazis idea was not only to exterminate us all but to wipe all memory of us from history.
And they nearly succeeded with you Oscar and Rachel.
But with a mix of luck and research, at least I’ve made sure that you’re not wiped from history…
Oscar:
What about my brother, Martin. Did you find out what happened to him?
Michael: Yes I did.
Rachel:
Did he live? Did he survive?
Michael:
No, they arrested him in the middle of the night in a village not all that far from where you were staying.
Oscar:
And?
Michael:
And he was deported on Convoy 68…
Rachel:
To?
Michael:
Auschwitz…
Michael turns to Harold
So, that’s what I found out…
Harold:
Yes yes yes.
Michael looks at him
You don’t really want to know do you?
Harold:
Not really.
I’m too old. It’s too hard for me to take, Mick.
I’m sorry.
THE END
Story-telling using your own WW2 family history for demonstrating the theme on Fragility of Freedom to be used by a DRAMA group to perform at HMD which can be rehearsed using our recording of your words
FRAGILITY OF FREEDOM DRAMA by Michael Rosen
Scene one
Home at Michael Rosen’s house
1950s
Father (Harold)
Mother (Connie)
Brian (older)
Michael (younger)
Eating meal
Narrator
Pinner in north-west London
It’s the 1950s
This is the Rosen family: father Harold, mother, Connie, two sons, Brian and Michael
Michael: I love raisins.
Brian: We noticed. Leave some for me.
Connie: Who’s going to clear the table?
Harold: (looks up from paper): You know I had two uncles living in France before the war. They weren’t there at the end.
Brian: What happened to them?
Harold: I don’t know. They died in the camps I suppose. There’s no way of finding out.
Connie: Don’t look like that. There’s nothing we can do about it. It’s happened and that’s it.
Michael: What camps? What do you mean?
Connie: Another time, Harold.
Michael (to Brian) (whispering) What camps?
Brian: Later.
Scene 2
Narrator:
50 years later:
Michael is on the phone with his second cousin Teddy in America:
Michael: Yes I can hear you. Say that again, who are the letters from?
Teddy: Two are from Stella Rosen…wait a minute…she’s our great-aunt. Your father and my father’s aunt.
And two are from Oscar and he’s our great-uncle, your father and my father’s uncle.
Michael: Okayyyy.
Teddy: Don’t you see? These are the last letters they ever wrote.
Michael: Where are they writing from?
Teddy: Stella is writing from Poland. Oscar is writing from France.
Michael: When?
Teddy: 1941.,
Michael: O my god…what are they saying.
Teddy: OK, Stella in Poland is pleading with my grandfather to take her son in. To the States. It’s his only hope of survival.
Michael: And Oscar in France?
Teddy: The net is closing in there too.
Michael: Is there an address on the letters?
Teddy: I’ll screenshot them and send them to you. I just had to tell you the moment I saw them.
Michael: Where have they been?
Teddy: Hidden in my mother’s brother’s files somewhere. They’ve only come to light since he died.
Scene 3
Michael:
So the Nazis wanted to create a new super race. A pure race. And to do that they thought they would wipe out all the Jews. Exterminate them. Millions of them. Millions of us.
And amongst all those millions, there was my father’s uncles and aunts in France and Poland. But how did they do it?
Narrator:
You’ll have to do some research.
Michael:
I will. I will.
Scene 4
(with computer)
Michael: (As he speaks these lines, Oscar and Rachel mime what he is relating)
So Oscar is married to Rachel. Hmm my father didn’t know that.
So in 1941 they’re in Niort, in north-west France, before the war they had been running a clock-menders shop but now all they can do is sell second-hand clothes. The govt has taken nearly all their savings and says that they’ve got to wear yellow stars with the word Jew on them. And they have to put a sign on their market stall saying ‘Jewish business’.
Now hang on…they disappear from Niort…they go on the run….they’re refugees….
how do they do it?
they must have begged for lifts and begged to stay in people’s houses…dangerous…one wrong move and they would have been arrested…
till they get hundreds of miles away to Nice.
Why Nice?
Narrator:
Nice South East France:
Angelo Donati, a philanthropist has a plan:
Donati: (to audience as if they are the Jews in Nice)
The Italian authorities promise you, we will not hand you over to the Nazis. In the meantime, I am getting hold of boats and we will get you away from Europe to north Africa, where you’ll be safe. I need just a few more days…
Narrator:
But Italy were at war with the allies. I know this is complicated! And the allies defeated Italy.
Donati:
I’ll send a telegram to General Eisenhower….’ don’t announce the armistice’. It’ll give me time to get the boats ready.
Eisenhower:
Today we announce that an armistice has been signed between Italy and allied forces. Italy has been defeated.
Michael:
Oh no. That means that the Nazis will invade Nice….
Narrator:
Exactly.
Nazi soldiers rounded up Jews in Nice, took them to the Hotel Excelsior…put them on trains to a special camp outside Paris called Drancy (‘Dron-see’).
Michael:
Then what?
Oscar:
They took us from that camp to a train called Convoy 62.
Rachel: They squeezed 1200 of us into cattle trucks, and deported us to Auschwitz extermination camp where we were killed.
Michael:
I haven’t saved you.
All I’ve done is find out what happened to you.
Why?
Why have I done this?
Because the Nazis idea was not only to exterminate us all but to wipe all memory of us from history.
And they nearly succeeded with you Oscar and Rachel.
But with a mix of luck and research, at least I’ve made sure that you’re not wiped from history…
Oscar:
What about my brother, Martin. Did you find out what happened to him?
Michael: Yes I did.
Rachel:
Did he live? Did he survive?
Michael:
No, they arrested him in the middle of the night in a village not all that far from where you were staying.
Oscar:
And?
Michael:
And he was deported on Convoy 68…
Rachel:
To?
Michael:
Auschwitz…
Michael turns to Harold
So, that’s what I found out…
Harold:
Yes yes yes.
Michael looks at him
You don’t really want to know do you?
Harold:
Not really.
I’m too old. It’s too hard for me to take, Mick.
I’m sorry.
THE END
FREEDOM by Michael Rosen
Freedom has no warning lights
when it slips away
it’s doesn’t flash red.
When they start saying you can’t
speak your mind
and you weren’t doing harm
that’s it again, slipping away
but it’s not flashing red
When they start to talk of how
some people are born bad
that’s freedom slipping away
but it’s not flashing red
When they say you’re the wrong kind of person
to go to school
that’s it, slipping away
but it’s not flashing red.
When they say that you can’t work here
you’ve got the wrong face
sure enough, that’s it, slipping away
and it’s not flashing red.
When they start locking people up
without giving them a fair hearing
there it goes, slipping away
but it’s not flashing red.
When people start disappearing
and they don’t come back
that really is it, slipping away
but it’s not flashing red.
freedom has no warning lights
when it slips away
it’s doesn’t flash red.
FREEDOM by Michael Rosen
Freedom has no warning lights
when it slips away
it’s doesn’t flash red.
When they start saying you can’t
speak your mind
and you weren’t doing harm
that’s it again, slipping away
but it’s not flashing red
When they start to talk of how
some people are born bad
that’s freedom slipping away
but it’s not flashing red
When they say you’re the wrong kind of person
to go to school
that’s it, slipping away
but it’s not flashing red.
When they say that you can’t work here
you’ve got the wrong face
sure enough, that’s it, slipping away
and it’s not flashing red.
When they start locking people up
without giving them a fair hearing
there it goes, slipping away
but it’s not flashing red.
When people start disappearing
and they don’t come back
that really is it, slipping away
but it’s not flashing red.
freedom has no warning lights
when it slips away
it’s doesn’t flash red.
My dream is to live in days without hate
to walk the street
to sit and eat
my dream is to live in days without hate
Where we live is now
it’s never too late
my dream is to live in days without lies
to feel like me
to watch TV
my dream is to live in days without lies
Where we live is now
hoping to be wise
my dream is to live in days without fear.
to be free to grow
to learn and know
my dream is to live in days without fear
Where we live is now
where we live is here
my dream is to live in days without terror
to dance and sing
to do my thing
my dream is to live in days without terror
Where we live is now
no room for error
My dream is to live in days without persecution
my dream is to live in days without persecution
Where we live is now
we have the solution
My dream is to live in days without hate
to walk the street
to sit and eat
my dream is to live in days without hate
Where we live is now
it’s never too late
my dream is to live in days without lies
to feel like me
to watch TV
my dream is to live in days without lies
Where we live is now
hoping to be wise
my dream is to live in days without fear.
to be free to grow
to learn and know
my dream is to live in days without fear
Where we live is now
where we live is here
my dream is to live in days without terror
to dance and sing
to do my thing
my dream is to live in days without terror
Where we live is now
no room for error
My dream is to live in days without persecution
my dream is to live in days without persecution
Where we live is now
we have the solution
We used to come from school to Sainte-Hermine. Coming into the village, on the right was the police station, (which has become 'Le Macis'). Opposite the police station - a large house where an old lady rented out furnished rooms (today the Bank Credit Agricole). One of her rooms was lived in by a very, very old gentleman - old to my eyes - more or less 8 years old. Every morning, he waited for us by the side of the road. We didn't ever miss saying ot him, 'Good morning, Mr Martin' and he would reply, 'Good morning, children. Always work hard at school'. And in the evening, he was there for us saying, 'Good evening, children. See you tomorrow maybe.' How I found him to be so nice with his white hair, his blue eyes and his gay smile when he saw us and so sad when we left! And then I was fascinated by this enormous yellow start sewn on to the black coat that he always wore. I didn't know anything at all about the significance of it.
And then one day, there was no M. Martin anymore, nor the next day or the days after that. I learned from one of my little friends that he had been arrested by the police.
Then I forgot about M. Martin. When you're 8 years old, someone arrested by the police can only be a thief or some other kind of bad person.
And then one day in March 1952, just when I had got a job at the town hall as a secretary, a letter came containing a judgement announcing the death of someone of the name Rozen Chil Mayer, known as Martin, whose last place of habitation was Sainte-Hermine.
And everything came back to me of a face and I got to know this terrible story.
The only crime committed by Mr Martin was that he was a Jew. He died because he was deported to Auschwitz. He was 54 years old. His death certificate contained the sentence: 'Died for France'. Later, in May 2001, a document came to the Town Hall, asking to add an official statement on his death 'Died 'in deportation' [as a consequence of being deported?]. It is important that Mr Martin's name is on war memorial in the village. It's very unusual that I came this way these days, on the way to Luçon, without lifting up my eyes to the window of his room (first on the left on the first floor), and it seems as if I can see him there smiling...so sadly.
Jeanne Baradeau
School child in Sainte-Hermine
Secretary in the Town Hall, 1951-1994.
We used to come from school to Sainte-Hermine. Coming into the village, on the right was the police station, (which has become 'Le Macis'). Opposite the police station - a large house where an old lady rented out furnished rooms (today the Bank Credit Agricole). One of her rooms was lived in by a very, very old gentleman - old to my eyes - more or less 8 years old. Every morning, he waited for us by the side of the road. We didn't ever miss saying ot him, 'Good morning, Mr Martin' and he would reply, 'Good morning, children. Always work hard at school'. And in the evening, he was there for us saying, 'Good evening, children. See you tomorrow maybe.' How I found him to be so nice with his white hair, his blue eyes and his gay smile when he saw us and so sad when we left! And then I was fascinated by this enormous yellow start sewn on to the black coat that he always wore. I didn't know anything at all about the significance of it.
And then one day, there was no M. Martin anymore, nor the next day or the days after that. I learned from one of my little friends that he had been arrested by the police.
Then I forgot about M. Martin. When you're 8 years old, someone arrested by the police can only be a thief or some other kind of bad person.
And then one day in March 1952, just when I had got a job at the town hall as a secretary, a letter came containing a judgement announcing the death of someone of the name Rozen Chil Mayer, known as Martin, whose last place of habitation was Sainte-Hermine.
And everything came back to me of a face and I got to know this terrible story.
The only crime committed by Mr Martin was that he was a Jew. He died because he was deported to Auschwitz. He was 54 years old. His death certificate contained the sentence: 'Died for France'. Later, in May 2001, a document came to the Town Hall, asking to add an official statement on his death 'Died 'in deportation' [as a consequence of being deported?]. It is important that Mr Martin's name is on war memorial in the village. It's very unusual that I came this way these days, on the way to Luçon, without lifting up my eyes to the window of his room (first on the left on the first floor), and it seems as if I can see him there smiling...so sadly.
Jeanne Baradeau
School child in Sainte-Hermine
Secretary in the Town Hall, 1951-1994.
We're All Here Together
We're all here together, so hear us say
Can't turn you back, can't turn you away
What we're saying, has to be true
We know you're us, and we are you
The road is long, and you've come far
Life's not easy, and times are hard
We're all here together, so hear us say
Can't turn you back, can't turn you away
People struggling to put food on the table
working as hard as they are able
Can't afford to put the heating on
End of the week and the money's gone
We're all here together, so hear us say
Can't turn you back, can't turn you away
Just because we're not the same
Doesn't mean that you're to blame
We know you've fled from a bloody war
Poor people don't make poor people poor.
We're all here together, so hear us say
Can't turn you back, can't turn you away
There are some who want to show you the door
Not letting you in doesn't give us more
If we turn on each other, we all fall
So let's stand together, one and all.
We're all here together, so hear us say
Stand together, and stand today
We're All Here Together
We're all here together, so hear us say
Can't turn you back, can't turn you away
What we're saying, has to be true
We know you're us, and we are you
The road is long, and you've come far
Life's not easy, and times are hard
We're all here together, so hear us say
Can't turn you back, can't turn you away
People struggling to put food on the table
working as hard as they are able
Can't afford to put the heating on
End of the week and the money's gone
We're all here together, so hear us say
Can't turn you back, can't turn you away
Just because we're not the same
Doesn't mean that you're to blame
We know you've fled from a bloody war
Poor people don't make poor people poor.
We're all here together, so hear us say
Can't turn you back, can't turn you away
There are some who want to show you the door
Not letting you in doesn't give us more
If we turn on each other, we all fall
So let's stand together, one and all.
We're all here together, so hear us say
Stand together, and stand today
NOTHING IS FOREVER
We lived in a house we called our home
We lived in a house by a lemon tree
We lived in a house where mum made bread
We lived in a house at the edge of the sea
Nothing is forever
a leaf falls from the tree
the sun comes up
waves cross the sea
We didn't ask for men with guns
We didn't ask to be chased away
We didn't ask for rain to never fall
All we asked was we want to stay
Nothing is forever
a leaf falls from the tree
the sun comes up
waves cross the sea
We ran from the place we called our home
We ran from the place where the bombs fell
we ran from the place where the land was dry
All we took was the stories we tell
Nothing is forever
a leaf falls from the tree
the sun comes up
waves cross the sea
Now we are here and we call it home
Now we are here learning how to cope
Now we are here and mum makes bread
Now we are here learning how to hope
Nothing is forever
a leaf falls from the tree
the sun comes up
waves cross the sea
PUT YOUR ARMS AROUND ME
I was ill in bed and falling fast
The night was long and I couldn't last
You found me - put your arms around me
I came through and now I'm here.
I was lost in grief, my loved one died
Couldn't go on, so sad inside
You found me - put your arms around me
I came through and now I'm here.
I was on the streets, I had no home
The night was long, I was all alone
You found me - put your arms around me
I came through and now I'm here.
I was under fire, I was in a war
I couldn't stand it anymore
You found me - put your arms around me
I came through and now I'm here.
I was on the road, I had to flee
I was longing to be free
You found me - put your arms around me
I came through and now I'm here.
I was mocked at work, treated like dirt
I was living full of hurt
You found me - put your arms around me
I came through and now I'm here.
We were lost in life, in a storm
it's down to you we feel warm
You found us - put your arms around us
We came through and now we're here.
Voices of Hope (new) by Michael Rosen
When you feel all alone
When your mind is full of fear
When the night is long and dark
You need someone to be near.
Hope is in the eyes of love
Hope is in the smiles we see
Hope is in the trees that grow
Hope is in the heart of me
When the slow sad times come
you need a place to go
When the slow bad times come
you need someone to know
Hope is in the eyes of love
Hope is in the smiles we see
Hope is in the trees that grow
Hope is in the heart of me
When the slow sad times come,
when you feel you cannot/can’t cope,
reach out and find us here
find (us) the voices of hope.
Hope is in the eyes of love
Hope is in the smiles we see
Hope is in the trees that grow
Hope is in the heart of me
Hope is in the eyes of love
Hope is in the smiles we see
Hope is in the trees that grow
Hope is in the heart of me
For years we knew nothing.
All we knew was
that they had disappeared.
We knew there were places
where they could have gone,
where they might have disappeared.
...
A ship in a bottle sails down the mantlepiece. A ship in a photo
brings Granma here. Ships they talk and talk about.
Ships far and near.
How did the ship
get in the bottle? Ships by night and by day.
Ships they talk and talk about. Why did Granma come to stay?
Who put the ship in the bottle?
Ships that they once knew.
Ships they talk and talk about.
Why didn’t Grandad come too?
When did the ship go in the bottle?
Ships sailing far and near.
Ships they talk and talk about.
Who else didn’t come here?
Who broke the ship in the bottle?
Can anyone tell me why? Ships they talk and talk about.
And why did the baby die?
For years I tried to find out what happened to my father’s uncles.
All I had were scraps, words, names,
floating in front of me like leaves
falling off trees: *Oscar,Martin,Metz, route de Thionville,
Dentist, clockmender…*
One day, my cousin in America wrote:
a distant relative had died. In his papers there were two letters from one of the uncles, Oscar,
and two letters from his sister in Poland, Stella,
all written during the war and asking for help. I pored over the letters
trying to give the words
a voice that I could hear.
Now that I had addresses,
the internet and books
and museums
were kinder, they gave me more and more.
Now I could make maps: where the uncles went,
where they ran to,
where they hid, where they were seized and taken to. Then, one day, another email
arrived from my cousin in America.
His father and step-mother had died
and he had just been in the house. “I noticed there was a closet,” he said.
“It was locked, so I opened it. I could see it was full of photos. There was a sealed up box
in there. On the box, it said, ‘Family Photos’. I cut it open and inside there were old black
and white photos with names on them:
Oscar and Martin. And many more. They’ve been there for years and years.
I’ll send them to you right now.” And he did. Now I could see Oscar and Martin. I could see their faces and what Oscar looked like in his First World War Army uniform.
There were more places, like Bielitz,
more names of brothers and sisters,
and photos of their father and mother. These were my great grandparents
in New York over a hundred years ago! Pictures I had never seen. Pictures my father had never seen… “But why,” I said to my cousin in America,
“was the closet locked? why were the photos in a sealed-up box?”
I had sat in that room with the closet
behind me and I had asked his father
about Oscar and Martin, what did he know? And all the time the photos were sitting
just a few feet away. And all he had been able to give me were
falling leaves.
Some of you know nothing.
From you there is nothing.
Some of you know something.
From you there is nothing.
Some of you know a lot.
From you there is nothing.
You can’t speak of it.
It is the unspeakable.
You can’t say it. It is the unsayable.
You can’t say what you know.
It is the unknowable.
He doesn't speak English, miss.
He comes from the Congo, miss.
I translate for you, miss.
He says that the bad men take his grandfather, miss.
He says that the bad men take his grandmother, miss.
He says that the bad men take his dad, miss.
He says that the bad men take his mum, miss.
He doesn't say how he got here, miss.
He can't say how he got here, miss.
....
***Everyone comes from somewhere.
Everyone has a past.
Everyone is somewhere first.
Everyone is somewhere last.***
Deep in the heart of buildings
scattered about online
packed away in boxes hiding in cupboards are fragments and hints
about your life and mine.
You catch a glimpse of your name,
you might suddenly see an address,
sometimes it’s typed, because your name was recorded by an official;
sometimes it’s writing that looks like
it was written by spiders.
***Everyone comes from somewhere.
Everyone has a past.
Everyone is somewhere first.
Everyone is somewhere last.***
These are the stones on a path
that tell a story of how people travel,
These are the stones on a path
that I found a story that I unravelled.
***Everyone comes from somewhere.
Everyone has a past.
Everyone is somewhere first.
Everyone is somewhere last.***
Some of you know nothing.
From you there is nothing.
Some of you know something.
From you there is nothing.
In the evening, after we’ve eaten,
Mum tells about the War. “Doodlebugs,” she says,
“were bombs that came flying over us –
rockets, they were, and they made a noise, but when the noise stopped you knew that it was about to drop.
They said you had to run for cover.
If you were out, they said, the best place to go was in the gutter,
lie down in the gutter. Once, when I had just come out
of White City Station, I heard one.
The noise stopped.
They said you had ten seconds to hide
so I ran towards the gutter counting to ten, and I lay down in the gutter and waited.
It landed just up the road from me.”
“You lay down in the gutter, Mum? Really?”
In the evening, after we’ve eaten Mum tells about the War. She says that they thought it wouldn’t be long
before Hitler would land in Britain but then she tells us about what happened in Russia. She says the Siege of Leningrad was so bad
and that people got so hungry they ate rats. She says that people crowded round the radio
because they knew that if Hitler won in Russia
nothing would stop him. “If he had come here,” she said,
“we wouldn’t be alive. You wouldn’t have been born,” she said to me. We listened to the reports of the
Battle of Stalingrad. “You see,” she said, “Hitler’s troops were lined up here…” And she started moving the plates and jugs and sauce bottle round the table.
“The Russians were here. There was a moment when we thought
it was all over and the Russians had lost
and it would be all over for us. But then, look—” she moved the jugs and plates again—
“they won! We couldn’t believe it.” She stops. She stares. They lost millions. Millions and millions of people died. In the evening, after we’ve eaten,
Mum tells about the War.
My father came to England
from another country. My father’s mother came to England
from another country but my father’s father
stayed behind.
So my dad had no dad here
and I never saw him at all.
One day in spring
some things arrived: a few old papers,
a few old photos
and – oh yes – a hulky bulky thick checked jacket
that belonged to the man I would have called “Grandad”.
The Man Who Stayed Behind.
But I kept that jacket
and I wore it and I wore it
and I wore it till it wore right through
at the back.
My dad was in Berlin in 1946
and his old friend David said that a friend of his was at the Berlin Natural History Museum.
David wondered if he was still there.
At the time Berlin was under a foot of snow,
the roads were covered with snow, there was scarcely anything going along them.
You could scarcely see where the roads went.
My dad says he walked for hours
through heaps of bomb rubble and snow
round huge craters in the ground under walls leaning over.
Snow everywhere. Till suddenly, he came face to face with
some enormous skeletons in the snow.
The old Berlin Natural History Museum
had been hit by a bomb. There were dinosaur skeletons standing there in the middle of nowhere.
Great bones and skulls
rising up out of the snow amongst heaps of broken brick
and broken glass.
“I’ll never forget the sight of those dinosaur skeletons,”
my dad said.
I’ve never forgotten them either –
though I never saw them.
Late at night, I’m groping through the internet, and I find that my father’s uncle Oscar
fought in the First World War in the Kaiserlich und Königlich*** Infantry Regiment 56.
It’s a Polish regiment who fight
alongside the German Army in the Austro-Hungarian Army. Another night, I find that my father’s uncle Martin
fought in the First World War, in the Deuxième Régiment Étranger.***It’s a French regiment who fought
against the Austro-Hungarian Army. After the First World War, they live near each other in France –
near enough for Martin to be best man at Oscar’s wedding. Fighting with the German Army
didn’t save Uncle Oscar. He was deported from France by
the German Security Police to Auschwitz, and never came back. Fighting with the French Army
didn’t save Uncle Martin. He was arrested by the French Police,
handed over to the German Security Police,
deported to Auschwitz, and never came back.
**KaiserlichundKöniglich*=Kings’Own
**DeuxièmeRégimentÉtranger*=SecondForeignRegiment
Once upon a time I was in a story
where I met an invisible thing who said that I could have one wish
and I said that my wish was that I could go back to the place and time
I miss the most and the invisible thing said that I could.
But: though I could go back to the place could never go back to that time.
Then I pleaded with the invisible thing
and said, "Please can it be both, the place and the time?"
And the invisible thing said,
Very well I could, but if I did go back to that place and time, I must promise not to speak to anyone
in that place. "What will happen if I do?" I said
and the invisible thing said that if I did, I would never get back to now.
I agreed and in a flash
I was there and then in that place and in that time: It was winter there were my friends, the ice on the pond was thick enough
to carry them sliding and shouting
all morning and we felt the ice with our fingers. Then it was spring: the birds in an orchard whistled
through the blossom and I brushed a branch with my fingers. Then it was a summer evening, just a gust of wind
raised dust in the alley where my friends kicked a ball I was in goal and the ball smacked my hand till it stung.
Then it was autumn and we lined up in rows in silence waiting for orders to walk in single file to class
and I touched the shoulders of the boy in front. But I didn’t speak to anyone. And then I was at a station waiting for my mother to come home
from work. the trains rolled in and out and when the woman in the kiosk
asked me if I wanted some sweets
I remembered not to answer her and another train pulled in, the doors
opened and I could see my mother
step down on to the platform and when she reached me, she put her arm round me and said, "There’s no need for you to wait for me here, you’ve got a key,
you can let yourself in why don’t you go home?"
And I shrugged and said, "I like waiting
here…" And she held my hand. And the invisible thing whispered
in my ear, "You’ve spoken."
"I know I have," I said.
"You’ll be here for ever and ever,"
it said. And I said, "But you’re just an invisible thing in a story.
I can decide what I’ll do. You can’t rule over me.” And the invisible thing laughed.
"You’re right. You’re totally right
and I am wrong. You will be able to get back."
I laughed too And I said, "And I will be able to come here again."
But the invisible thing spoke again: "You’re right about it all,
but for one thing."
"What’s that?" I said. "Yes, you can travel to and fro
between here and there,
between then and now just as you want.
But without me, when you go to the place and time
that you miss the most you won’t be able to touch anything.
Not a thing."
Every now and then
my father would say, “I had two French uncles. They were in France at the beginning of the war.
They weren’t there at the end.”
“What happened to them?” we’d say.
“Don’t know,” he’d say. “All I know is that they were there
at the beginning of the war, and they weren’t there at the end.”
There was a wedding,
and we were invited
and, when we got there,
there was a man
who they said was
my father's cousin.
This is Michael, they said –
same name as you, hah! And at one point in the
wedding, my aunt took
me to one side and said
that there was a time
during the war when
Michael was a boy, six,teen or seventeen no older than you are now,
she said, and his parents
said to him that it wasn’t going to be
safe where they were
in Poland. And so, my aunt said,
his parents put him on
a train and he never
saw them again. Like it always was,
at that time, when people told me things
like this, my aunt just
shrugged, looked sad
and said, I suppose
they died in the camps,
and I never knew what that meant – what were
these camps? Why were
people taken there? At the wedding,
I watched him. He must have been about
forty years old then. In my mind, I thought of him
being the same age as me, and I imagined
my parents saying to me one day:
Michael, go, don’t stay,
there are soldiers and police and they are
kicking us out of our
houses and flats – go, don’t stay.
So they come with me
to a station and we
wait for a train and all the time we are looking
out for soldiers and police, but it’s OK, so they
hug me and kiss me and I get on the train,
and stand in the corridor and wave to them
through the window, and I can see them close
together, waving, and then there’s a shout and a whistle
and the train starts to pull off
and they wave and they wave
and I wave and I wave till they’re gone. And that’s the last I ever see of them. I never see them again,
but wherever I go, and whoever
I’m with, I remember that picture
of them standing together,
waving me off, and for the rest of my life I can’t make any of it
make sense, that they did that
thing of making me safe and
there was nothing they could
do for themselves. And I think
again and again of what they
might have been thinking at
that moment, as they waved
and stood close to each other.
What did they think as they
lost everything? And later
they were herded together and taken to a camp, never knowing
what had happened, never knowing
why this was happening, never knowing
what happened to me, even at the very end as they were closing their eyes.
And though I smile and walk about
in the world, I carry this with me
wherever I am, whoever I’m with,
and no matter how many times I try to change it, no matter how many times I try to get them
to come with me on the train, or how many times I get them
to escape and find me in those freezing places where I ended up,
or how many times I imagine
that I meet them after the War
is over, and we hug and kiss and cry, it never happens.
It never happens. There is always nothing. Nothing but
nothing. But I walk about in the world
smiling and nodding. I even go
to weddings, and people smile at me, even this young man
with the same name as me, no older than I was then when
my parents put me on the train. And he’s looking at me
like he’s trying to read me
like a
book.
We say, "Never again."
But
when people with power are pointing
in one direction
when many minds are pointing
in that direction
when the guns and bombs are pointing
in that direction
too,
it can happen again.
It does happen again. It can be furious and chaotic.
It can be calm and orderly. It can start with laws. It can start without them.
The people who do it
can believe they are saving their country.
The people who do it
can believe that they are just getting
their own back.
That’s why it can happen again.
It does happen again. It has happened again.
Water slips through my hands,
falling and falling away.
It twists and turns and slides,
it can't stop or stay.
Pictures in my mind of you,
they slip and fall away. Twisting and turning and sliding,
till they are gone too.
There’s water in the river.
There’s water in the sea. I reach out to touch it.
The water touches me.
Water slips through my hands,
falling and falling away. It twists and turns and slides,
it can’t stop or stay.
I come from when houses were ruined,
the skies had stopped exploding, my father in Germany meeting the skeleton of a dinosaur in the snow in the wrecked Berlin Natural History Museum,
my mother holding on to my brother, having just lost a living, walking, just-talking toddler
to a never-ending cough, my parents who grew up when you could buy
a live chicken in Hessel Street, my father sharing his bedroom with his Uncle Sam
but never talking to him because one day Sam had grabbed the cap my father had bought
down Petticoat Lane, and turned it inside out.
“Who switched the light off, Father?” “Neither of us. We didn’t have lights.
We had a candle.” My mother having to bring flowers to school
for Harvest Festival but she had no garden,
so she walked down Globe Road looking for a flower to pick but there were none, and there were Mosley’s Men out too,
looking for Jews like them to give a beating to
for being Jews, and the uncles who never came back from camps in Poland, just vanished, gone,
but I was here, made from all this, all this,
it goes on, it hadn’t stopped, there was my father swearing in Yiddish: “Chaliera zolste nehmen.”
“Don’t say that, Harold!” my mum says to him.
And now I can say it too. And now I can say it too.
When they do war, they forget how to count.
They forget how to count,
and that’s how they do it.
They come,
they kill;
they kill,
they go.
No numbers.
No names. They disappear them.
They vanish them. That’s how they do it.
They come,
they kill;
they kill,
they go.
And it’s
“worth it”,
they say. “It’s worth it, believe us.” if you forget how to count.
If you forget the numbers.
If you forget the names. If you forget the faces.
When they do war, they forget how to count.
They forget how to count,
and that’s how they do it.
But we’re counting.
Watch us: we’re counting.
Listen. We’re counting. And we count.
Oscar and Rachel,
you escaped from where
they pinned a yellow star
on you.
You escaped from where
they took all you had. You escaped from where
they made you put a sign
on your market stall,
saying “Jewish business”. Oscar and Rachel,
you heard it was safe in the great resort of Nice
on the other side of France,
because the Italians in Nice were refusing to send Jews like you
away on trains to the East, to a place no one was coming back from. So you both ran all the way there.
Oscar and Rachel,
in Nice, the Italians put you in a grand old hotel. You were waiting in that hotel,
thinking you were safe. Thinking you were about to get on board
and sail away, across the sea to North Africa,
and you would be safe till the war was over. Until you saw the Italians leave.
Until you saw one of the worst,
most violent Nazis of all march into Nice. Until his police found a few thousand of you
waiting in the hotel, and wrote your names down
and put you on a train to Paris,
and then on a train to the East where no one was coming back from.
Oscar and Rachel,
you were so close,
so near to the waves that would take you away,
so near to where the war couldn’t reach you. I sometimes think how
on holidays in France
when I was a boy, I might have met you,
Oscar and Rachel. And I would have listened to you telling stories
about your great escape across the sea.
I read an article
about the train
that took my great-uncle and my great-aunt
Jeschie and Rachel to Auschwitz:
Convoy 62.
The article said
that some of the prisoners on Convoy 62
escaped from the train
while it was in a tunnel
One of the prisoners was called
Oscar Handschuh and when he jumped from the train
he knocked himself out.
After a bit, he came round and headed off
into the countryside. He arrived at a farm and asked for help.
The people there were called Mariette and Marcel Médard.
They bandaged his head, gave him clothing
and food and hid him in an attic. That day, German soldiers came to the farm. They said they were looking for ten Jews
who had jumped from a train.
Marcel Médard said that there was no one
in the house.
A long while later, the war ended - and for many years the Handschuh family stayed
in touch with the Médard family.
Why?
Because Oscar Handschuh knew, and the Médard family knew that if Oscar Handschuh had been found by the
soldiers that day, he would have been killed, and the Médard family would have been killed.
All of them.
In the early hours of January 31, 1944,
four French policemen knocked on the door of Madame Bobières in the village of Sainte-Hermine in the Vendée.
Later the policeman in charge
wrote a report explaining
what happened next: “Martin Rozen opened the door.”
He was, the report said, “… born on 18 August 1890
at Krosniewice in Poland. Jeweller, son of Jonas and Rachel,
naturalised French, Jewish race.
1 metre 62 brown eyes
oval face
straight nose
regular mouth dressed in yellow cotton trousers and grey cotton jacket wearing a Basque beret and low-heeled shoes.
Scar on his left cheek. He was taken to the Parish Hall at La Roche-sur-Yon.”
What they didn’t go on to say was that this was the first step on a journey
that would take Martin Rozen first to Drancy, the prison for Jews, and then to a station called Paris Bobigny,
where he would be put in a cattle truck
and sent to Auschwitz, where he was killed.
Though these facts are missing, t
he writing is very neat. In fact, everything seems to have been done properly.
I look at the names of the police
who knocked on the door
of my father's uncle
in the middle of the night
and arrested Martin.
Here they are: *Eugène Cabanetos,
Arnand Mazouin,
Georges Salomon, and their officer in charge, Pierre Le Papu.*
Is it their fault?
They were ordered to arrest him
by Gaston Jammet, the Sub-Prefect,
who was following the orders of Louis Bourgain, the Prefect.
Louis Bourgain was following
the orders of
Hermann Herold, the local German Commander
of the Security Police
He was following the orders
of:
René Bousquet, Secretary-General responsible
for the French Police, and Carl Oberg, Higher SS and Police Leader,
based in Paris, who was under the command of Adolf Eichmann (who was in charge of organising
the trains that transported Jews to the Concentration Camps),
who was under the command of
Heinrich Himmler, who was under the command of
Adolf Hitler, the Leader of Nazi Germany.
But why were
Hermann Heroldand Carl Oberg in France?
Because Nazi Germany invaded France
and “occupied” it.
Why did they do that?
Because Adolf Hitler figured out that he couldn’t expand Germany into
Eastern Europe until he had defeated
Western Europe.
But why did they round up millions of Jews from Germany and the countries they “occupied”,
and send them to Concentration Camps to be killed?
Because the Nazis believed that this was the right thing to do.
But how did people with such
monstrous ideas get into power?
Yes, good question.
How did they?
The guns stopped.
The bombs stopped.
The world was broken.
People were broken.
Millions of people had no home,
millions of people were far from home.
One of them was called Michael.
He was alone. No father, no mother.
Alone amongst millions.
What now? He had an address. He had a cousin in England.
So, one day, some time after the guns and bombs
had stopped, a woman called Sylvia was in her house
when the doorbell rang.
Out of all the family
out there, where the camps had been,
he was the only one who had survived. Now he was standing on the
doorstep. He was the only one
who had arrived.
And he stayed and stayed. And where he stayed
he made his home.
You can’t do something yesterday.
You can’t do something tomorrow.
You can only do something now. You can remember something from yesterday.
You can plan something for tomorrow. You can only do something now.
What you did yesterday can help you choose what to do now. What you did yesterday and what you do now
can help you plan what to do tomorrow. But you can only do something now.
We open the Holocaust Memorial 2020 civic event with the singing together of the Hebrew Lament with singers from Sing! Community Choir, the CAP singers from Cambridge Academic Partnership and Primary Singers from Fawcett Primary, Trumpington Meadows Primary, St Matthew's Primary, Milton Road Primary, and The Spinney.
It is a great honour to be here to today, to welcome you on behalf of Cambridge City Council to this event, which is our city’s 20th Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration. Here we pause to remember the 6 million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust, the millions of victims of Nazi persecution, and the victims of subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.
This is an opportunity for us to mourn, to remember, to reflect. To bear witness. To ensure the victims are never forgotten. This year’s theme is Stand Together, and it is a chance for us to consider the role we all play in standing alongside the persecuted and vow to take an active part to challenge oppression.
Today we will be helped to do this through some powerful speakers, and through the words and music of our performers, including so many talented young people. I know that they will guide you through a thought-provoking and moving journey, and I want to thank them all now.
As we begin our commemoration, and consider the theme, Stand Together, let us remember the words of Sir Nicholas Winton, who did an amazing rescue mission, against the odds, which mission successfully saved close to 700 children from Nazi-occupied Europe. “ Don’t be content in your life to do no wrong - be prepared every day to try and do some good”.
Michael Rosen, writer and broadcaster, professor and poet and former Children’s Laureate, is known to many of us as the author of famous poems such as ‘Bear Hunt’ and ‘Chocolate Cake’, but today he is continuing his work we’ve been doing in Cambridge schools, to share histories about his family’s experiences in the Holocaust. Michael, may I ask you to say a few words about remembering not to forget? MICHAEL – REMEMBERING NOT TO FORGET Today we are remembering the Holocaust. This was the terrible persecution and genocide that took place in the middle of the twentieth century. We remember this firstly because we want to pay our respects to the millions of people who were killed, and because we don’t want those living, breathing people to go unforgotten. We also remember them and the Holocaust as a whole because it is a warning. We let those terrible events speak to us that we must do all we can to stop ourselves and to stop powerful people from doing such things. I’ve composed a lyric which Helen asked me to write as a piece for primary schools to sing, to help youngsters imagine the enormity of a Genocide, by painting a picture, to be able to see one child refugee, imagine a persecuted minority living in fear of a knock at the door, a grandma who now has no home to return to: ‘A child wanders through the ruins, A family fears a knock at the door, A grandma looks for her old home, They know they did not start this war’ We asked the children, what ‘helping hand’ could we give to support a child, a family, a grandma, in this situation? Please may I introduce our song to you – performed by the KS2 primary choirs of St Matthews, Milton Road, The Spinney, Fawcett and Trumpington Meadows – with the musical composition by Bethany Kirby, - the song is called ‘We Are Better When We Stand Together’
WE ARE BETTER WHEN WE STAND TOGETHER by Michael Rosen
Verse 1 (solo / small group) A child wanders through the ruins A family fears a knock at the door A grandma looks for her old home They know they didn’t start this war Chorus We are better When we stand together When we stand together We are better Verse 1 (full choir) A child wanders through the ruins A family fears a knock at the door A grandma looks for her old home They know they didn’t start this war Chorus We are better When we stand together When we stand together We are better Verse 2 The child is ours, we must make it safe The family’s ours, we must hear their call The grandma’s ours, we must find a home We know we have to stand with all Chorus (2-part round; part 2 enters on ) We are better When we stand together When we stand together We are better We are better When we stand together When we stand together We are better We are better We are better
I’m Eva Clarke, and I was born at Mauthausen, a Nazi concentration camp, in Austria. My date of birth is 29th April 1945. Myself and my mother were almost the only survivors of my family. I never even met my own father, because he was killed at another Nazi death camp, at Auschwitz. In fact, 15 members of my family were killed in Auschwitz-Birkenau & one died in Terezin. Those murdered included three of my grandparents, I addition to my father, my uncles, my aunts and very tragically my 8 year old cousin, Peter. I should also have been killed as a baby too. If the Nazis had not run out of gas for the gas chambers on 28th April 1945 and if the American Army had not liberated Mauthausen just days later, neither myself nor my mother would have survived… It is an appalling tragedy that over 6 million Jews in Europe were killed by the Nazi regime, and this is such a big number you cannot imagine it. But I stand before you as a survivor. Perhaps you CAN imagine that I could have been the child wandering in the ruins in the picture Michael painted in his song. We were persecuted - and Nazis killed us - just because of our ethnicity - because we were Jewish. This is shocking isn’t it? I’ve been lucky to have a happy life because my mother fell in love with a kind man who became my stepfather. We emigrated to Cardiff in Wales, where I went happily to school, made friends, and myself fell in love and got married. I’ve been living in Cambridge ever since, and have my own family of children and grandchildren. Indeed my son and grandson Theo are here with us today! Now I invite Theo to come up on stage to stand by Michael and me with some of our young poets to be representing the next generation. Singer Mario will help you to light the symbolic six candles to pay tribute to the over six million Jews who perished during the Holocaust. May I invite the singers from primary, secondary and community choirs to hum the Hebrew lament whilst we light the candles…
EVA CLARKE INVITES THE LIGHTING OF THE 6 CANDLES, STARTING WITH HER GRANDSON CALLD THEO
Now I invite Theo to come up on stage to stand by Michael and me with some of our young poets to be representing the next generation. Singer Mario will help you to light the symbolic six candles to pay tribute to the over six million Jews who perished during the Holocaust. May I invite the singers from primary, secondary and community choirs to hum the Hebrew lament whilst we light the candles…
The Damaging War When the war damages me
I hope to find a home
When the war damages me
My life was demolished
When the war damages me
I feel alone and down
When the war damages me
I need help
When the war damages me
I search
When the war damages me
I don’t feel like myself
When the war damages me
My world flips upside down
When the war damages me
My sadness runs down my face
When the war damages me
I hug my teddy bear
When the war damages me
I think, I don’t deserve this
When the war damages me
I think, how did this start?
When the war damages me
I think, I’m only a child?
When the war damages me
I’m lost.
Remember When Remember when
The forest and fields were green and lush
Remember when
The troops marched in and destroyed it all
Remember when
We had cities standing before us
Remember when
All was obliterated
Remember when
We could parley freely
Remember when
We kept all thoughts to ourselves
Remember when
All religions were welcome
Remember when
Not all religions were respected
Remember when
Houses stood proudly lining the streets
Remember when
All was reduced to rubble
Remember when
Our world had liberty
Remember when
Freedom wasn’t valued
An Act of Kindness An act of kindness
When the war started
An act of kindness
When I had to wear the Star of David and you were still my friend
An act of kindness
When I lost my home and you stayed with me
An act of kindness
When I was crying and you comforted me
An act of kindness
When I lost my family and you hugged me tight
An act of kindness
When you were with me till the very end
DANIEL ZEICHNER – HMD SPEECH Thank you for inviting me once again to join you as we stand together here in Cambridge, a city of sanctuary, to mark HMD. I want to reflect very briefly on the past, on what is happening today, and what we can do for the future. In the room today are people who have direct experience of terrible events in the past, their own experience or close family or friends. Both I and my partner Budge have our own stories - her father a refugee from Poland, my father from Austria, both welcomed and then making their lives here in England. Against the background of dreadful times, but showing also the hope that can be taken from acts of kindness when refugees are made welcome. And particularly when that kindness is offered to children. Between 1938 and 1939, (10,000) ten thousand unaccompanied children came in to the UK , including (2,000) two thousand to Cambridgeshire, in an operation which has became rightly famous and celebrated known as the Kindertransport, the transport of children, a Scheme in which people here in Cambridge played a key part. When I was growing up, we all hoped that we would never see such horrors again. Sadly we have been disappointed, and it is particularly distressing that anti-semitism has re-emerged, and we must all be vigilant. We are also, sadly, in the midst of a refugee and migrant crisis. This scale of human movement has not been witnessed since World War 2. Millions of people are fleeing their homes so they can stay alive, the most fundamental of all human rights. We see genocide in Darfur, and fighting in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. But perhaps most distressing of all is that over half of the world’s refugees are children. We are living in a time when millions of children are being forced to leave their homes and to put their trust in the kindness of strangers. And so to what we can do now? We can try and emulate that generosity, that welcome, that people offered in the past. We have some great supporters in that task. Lord Alf Dubs has been making that case in the House of Lords this week. Alf was one of those children who came here through the Kindertransport, from what was then Czechoslovakia, a Jewish child whose life was in danger. This week, Parliament has been discussing ways of helping today’s unaccompanied children – (CUT sadly despite Alf’s impassioned pleas, and support of the House of Lords, the Government took a different view, and) but sadly because we have not yet come to Parliamentary agreement, we therefore will have to find another way to help today’s and tomorrow’s children. And we will! Many children here will be familiar with the stories of Paddington Bear. Paddington too had to leave his home, in Peru, and make a long journey to find a new family and new home in a strange country, arriving at Kings Cross at a station many of us know very well. Paddington’s story resonates as strongly today as it did when it captivated me as a child, when it was first published over 60 years ago - because it speaks to a generosity that is characteristic of all people when they feel secure and happy. They, we, want others to be happy too. And that’s why we stand together today. Because it is that generosity that makes us human.
STRONG TOGETHER, HAND IN HAND
Verse 1 There’s nothing very easy about speaking out There’s nothing very easy knowing how to shout But you see someone picked on for something that they are Nothing they can do: they were born that way Not saying that it’s easy to have your say It can often turn out that the only person's you You’re the only one who can say what’s true Bridge We want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Chorus (unison) Stand together, we stand Stand together, take a stand Strong together, we stand Strong together, hand in hand Chorus (harmony) Stand together, we stand Stand together, take a stand Strong together, we stand Strong together, hand in hand Verse 2 The earth is ours, it’s the only one we’ve got It’s warming up fast, don’t tell me it’s not There’s only one race, it’s the human race We’ve got to stand together or we’re going to lose it It’s the way to survive, so we’d better choose it No matter who’s in charge or who’s got the power They can’t take away what we know is ours Bridge We want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Chorus (harmony) x2 Stand together, we stand Stand together, take a stand Strong together, we stand Strong together, hand in hand Soprano small group (on repeat of chorus) We want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Outro Strong together We stand
Dear Oscar and Rachel
Oscar and Rachel, you escaped from where they pinned a yellow star on you. You escaped from where they took all you had. You escaped from where they made you put a sign on your market stall, saying “Jewish business”. Oscar and Rachel, You heard it was safe In the great resort of Nice On the other side of France, because the Italians in Nice were refusing to send Jews like you away on trains to the East, to a place no one was coming back from. So you both ran (I don’t know how) all the way there. Oscar and Rachel, in Nice, the Italians put you in a grand old hotel that no one was using because there were no tourists coming to Nice now that it was war. You were waiting in that hotel, thinking you were safe. Thinking you were about to get on board and sail away, across the sea to North Africa, and you would be safe till the war was over. Until you saw the Italians leave. Until you saw one of the worst, most violent Nazis of all march into Nice. Until his police found a few thousand of you waiting in the hotel, and wrote your names down and put you on a train to Paris, and then on a train to the East where no one was coming back from. Oscar and Rachel, you were so close, so near to the waves that would take you away, so near to where the war couldn’t reach you. I sometimes think how on holidays in France when I was a boy, I might have met you, Oscar and Rachel. And I would have listened to you telling stories about your great escape across the sea.
THE ABSENTEES by Michael Rosen, set to music by composer Kirsty Martin There are gaps there are blanks in the house of my life there's a face nothing more something gone from my life She was here he was there in the rooms of my life there's a place for them both in the words of my life. There are gaps there are blanks in the house of my life
Performed by CAP Drama Group, Cambridge Academic Partnership. Directed by Russell Burgess, Head of Create, and Natalie Evans, Teacher of Drama at Parkside Community College, Cambridge Academic Partnership.
A Knock on the door A Knock on the door
A click on the locks
A family lie on the floor
As still as rocks.
Death eyes its raid
The handle turns
It wields a blade
The families’ blood churns.
A plea for help
Echoes through the air
But no help
Is offered there.
And all around is silence
As wailing moonlight edges into the still home
The house is empty
A bare brick dome.
A plea for help
Echoes through the air
But no help
Is offered there.
The path is dry
The floor is cracked
As lugubrious notes
Echo through the sombre sky.
Why did this happen?
What was Hitler’s gain?
Why did all those lives?
Succumb to a world of pain?
Death cackled and turned,
It knelt in the graves
As the victims burned
In a flame of rage.
There was nothing to see
No bodies to weep
No blood to see
No food to reap.
A plea for help
Echoes through the air
But no help
Is offered there.
But history will never repeat
Wars will never re-occur
If we stand together
Strong together.
Jump, Ester! I am standing on the windowsill,
“Jump, Ester”, I’m thinking.
You do not have anything left
They are all gone
Three brothers and one sister
Granny.
And now also mamma and papa.
“Jump, Ester!”
I’m saying loudly.
No one cares
And you know it.
“Jump, Ester! Come on!”
It's a high building, there is no way to stay alive,
Just if superman will come, save my life
Like in the stories that papa told me.
Just superman and God,
But after all this
I do not believe there is a God.
He let my family go.
“Jump, Ester!”
All right, that's it
Goodbye everyone.
“Jump, Ester!”
Ready? Three…two…one…
“No!”, I heard mamma’s voice.
No, no it’s impossible.
Mamma is dead, I don't really hear her.
“You’re dreaming, Ester!”
It’s not mamma that’s calling me...
“Alte, it’s me!”
That voice in my head is so real.
The mamma in my head calls my real name
Only she knows.
“I was saved Alte, I was saved!”
Is it possible? Mamma is alive?
I turned around and….
She was there! She is there!
My mamma! She is saved!
People hurt people killed People hurt people killed
People always getting billed
Not respecting the world we have today
People making fun of being gay
Arresting Jews and black people for no reason
Not arresting whites for doing treason
Why are people being so mean
Making people see this horrible scene
Everyone always making so much drama
People wanna act like what they see in the cinema
Bombing towns and killing people
Saying nasty things and being so brutal
Factories just stop polluting smoke
Someday we will start to choke
Why do people make these terrorist attacks
Let’s just all relax
Just put down your gun and knife
And let’s all just live a good life
We still got a lot to live for
So let’s stop this war
It's like we want the world to end
Let’s try fix this and start to mend
Let’s just work together
And let’s be friends forever
Look Look.
Look at the little boy,
Crying in his sister’s arms
In failed comfort,
And she’s still too young herself.
Look.
Look at the family,
Cowering in the attic,
Just waiting to be discovered,
By that fateful knock on the door.
Look.
Look at the people,
Friends, families, strangers,
All crammed in,
On the long road to death.
Look.
Look at the soldiers,
Their guns held stiff by their sides,
They didn’t have a choice,
They are prisoners.
Look.
Look at the boy,
Look at the family,
Look at the people,
Look at the soldiers,
Look at yourself,
Think.
NOWHERE TO CALL HOME/TORN FROM HOME poem performed by the CAP Dance Troupe
What we’re going to tell you about won’t take
LONG
We weren’t doing anything you could say was
WRONG
This is all about being in the wrong kind of
PLACE
This is all about having the wrong kind of
FACE
This is all about being in the wrong kind of
LINE
This is all about being in the wrong kind of
TIME
‘cos we were
called out
turned out
pushed out
shoved out
nowhere to call home
we were all alone
neither here nor there
we were NOWHERE
This is all about being on the wrong kind of
SIDE
This is all about having nowhere to
HIDE
This is all about us not having enough to
EAT
This is all about us having nowhere but the
STREET
‘cos we were
called out
turned out
pushed out
shoved out
nowhere to call home
we were all alone
neither here nor there
we were NOWHERE
Dr Sejad Mekic, Imam of Cambridge Central Mosque
Today I live happily with my family in Cambridge, where I’m Imam of the new iconic Mosque on Mill Road. Listening and seeing today the school children’s powerful poems and songs, dramas and dances expressing empathy with victims of civil wars and genocides (where one group or several groups are being marked out and persecuted and murdered by another) takes me back to my childhood in early 1990s in a rather chilling way. When I was a child of school age there was a horrible war going on in my native land, Bosnia (a country in the middle of Europe). My family and I lived in central Bosnia, and not so close to the front line initially. A few months later, however, our family home was in no man's land, - that's between the enemy’s lines - so we had to leave home and migrate to a nearby town where we lived with some of our relatives until it was safe to return to our own house. When we were leaving our house I remember arguing with my mum that I wanted to take with me more of my personal belongings, but she made me realise that we couldn't take with us everything we liked. We were taking only what's necessary and didn't have much time to choose. I also remember, and very well so, that in the first few months of the war the enemy planes flying over our house, day after day, intentionally flying low beneath the clouds in order to frighten our whole neighbourhood with a terrifying noise and a lowness that made houses shake and gave you the feeling that this may be for a bombing raid and could be the last day or night of your life. This terrifying ordeal happened continually and regularly making us, especially children, frightened and feeling insecure in our own homes. This year we mark 25 years since the appalling massacre in Srebrenica, a town to the north east of Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia. In July 1995 over 8 thousand boys and men were brutally murdered in the town of Srebrenica. These innocent people, mostly civilians, lost their lives because they were Muslims. Srebrenica’s tragedy was not the killing of the military in battle-field, but rather targeting and executing a particular people in a systematic way, thus committing the crime of genocide. It is appalling to know that the Holocaust (1933 to 1945) and the Bosnian genocide (1991 to 1995) took place in modern times in Europe, in the centre of a civilized world. It is equally appalling to register, mark, isolate, humiliate, gather, transport and murder people anywhere on the globe just because they belong to a specific ethnic group, race or religion. The concept of racial ideology and hierarchy (when one race thinks it is superior and can destroy other races OR ethnic OR faith groups with the intention to eradicate them from their community) is a threat not only to the Jews of Europe, the Muslims of Bosnia and Kosova, Rwanda's Tutsis, Cambodia’s and Darfur’s citizens, but rather to the entire human race and a threat to world peace. What can we learn? Many historians point out that genocide is a gradual process, the seeds of which are sown when social, cultural and religious differences are not celebrated, but rather used as reasons to exclude or marginalise. We all need to be aware that discrimination is the first step towards persecution. I’m so impressed that the young people in Cambridge schools are being taught in such a dignified manner about previous genocides, - and most importantly of all – they, themselves, are sending us a very positive and caring message to our communities. What do we say, when we are asked how do we stop persecution, and abolish discrimination? In the words of the great Nelson Mandela: “No one is born hating another human because of the colour of his skin, or his background or religion. Rather people learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, then they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than hate”. And so it is with fortitude and love that we can stand together to hold out a helping hand to our neighbour, our friend, our community. Hence, we must be always ready to combat hatred and intolerance and stand alongside the persecuted.
Also, we must remember the victims and the atrocities committed during genocides. Because part of the process of genocide is to deny the act of genocide. This is unfortunately our experience in Bosnia, including Srebenicia. By remembering genocides we pay respect and honour those who died, and also challenge those who not only wished to eradicate their existence when they were living, but also dishonour their memory in death, by denying genocide ever happened. Indeed, without remembering we cannot hope to learn. Remembering the painful truths of the past is the key to our shared quest for a better future and a more tolerant world. Lessons from the Srebrenica genocide are indeed many and must go beyond ‘never again’. Srebrenica, like the Holocaust, Cambodia, Rwanda, and Darfur, reminds us of the great importance of building peace and stability, and a culture of reconciliation and tolerance. As we together mark Holocaust Memorial Day this peaceful afternoon in the historic city of Cambridge, I urge you to stand together, to respect one another, and to celebrate our differences!
Stand Strong, Stand Together When all hope is demolished.
And you feel like giving up.
Stand Strong, Stand Together!
When everything you do,
Fells like it’s not good enough,
And the walls feel like they’re tumbling down.
Stand Strong, Stand Together!
People shouting, children crying,
It’s too late to stop this now.
This is just a game of greed!
Stand Strong, Stand Together!
When will anyone learn that war never helps?
It comes at much too high of a cost.
What could we do to stop?
Stand Strong, Stand Together!
Difference Laughing, sneering, punching
painful kicking, violent insults,
Because they’re different.
Hard slaps, pushed, down to the ground
Because they’re different.
Pulls himself up crying, begging
for salvation, shoved back down again,
Because he’s different.
Teasing and scowling,
jeering and scoffing,
brutal insults
tear us apart
Because she’s different.
Crutches thrown aside
she stumbles and falls
down to the ground.
But not today –
Today,
We stand together
Because we are all different.
Inside Everybody watches you,
Some don’t empathise,
About your disability or skin,
You may be different, but that’s all right.
They come to kick dirt in your face,
Or to call you cruel names,
To tell you you’re a disgrace,
But what they tell you is never alright.
Because
Day night,
Black white
We are all the same.
Everybody watches you,
But they are one, not many.
They tell you to worry about who you are,
You may be different, but that’s alright.
The come to kick dirt in your face,
But keep dreaming, ‘cause you’re worth it,
It’s great to be different,
Individual and unique.
Dark light,
Low high,
Inside, everyone is the same.
Everybody watches you,
You try to hide inside of your fear.
You rise and fall everyday,
You may be different but that’s alright.
They come to kick dirt in your face,
To break your heat,
To tell you you’re a disgrace,
But what they tell you is never alright.
Day night,
Black white,
We are all the same.
Dark light,
Low high,
Inside we are all the same.
Real We see pictures and letters,
But it will never be real.
People tell stories,
But it will never be real.
You’ll see people who’ve been there,
But it will never be real.
You’ll see places ruined,
But it will never be real.
You’ve been to museums,
But it will never be real.
You’ve seen artefacts,
Now it feels real.
Verse 1 When there’s no road left and the land is dusty and dry; When there’s no way home and death falls from the sky; When the lightning strikes and floods rip through the town; When there’s nothing to eat and death comes creeping round; When sirens are louder than laughter
Bridge (x3) Who will speak for the fearful who will stand with the weak who will stand up to power and find the words to speak?
Chorus (x2) We will stand together We will stand together and be heard We will stand together Stand together, it’s our word
Verse 2 When there’s nothing on the shelf and people wait to grow old; When bullets cut through the air and bones freeze in the cold; When bombs rain down and thousands flee from the city; When eyes are closed in pain who will show any pity? When sirens are louder than laughter
Bridge (x3) Who will speak for the fearful who will stand with the weak who will stand up to power and find the words to speak?
Chorus (x2) We will stand together We will stand together and be heard We will stand together Stand together, it’s our word
Outro(x4) Altos: Who will speak Who will speak for the fearful? Who will stand Who will stand with the weak? Sops (half): We will stand together We will stand Basses: Stand up, stand up Tenors: Who will speak? Who will stand up? Sops (half): Our word, our world Our word, our world
NOTE - LONGER VERSION THAN THE EDITED FILM =
Our theme for this Holocaust Memorial Day 2020 is ‘Stand Together’ and as Mayor of Cambridge I welcome each and everyone of you – and encourage everyone today to reflect on this theme and take it up as a call to action! I’m so pleased to hear the words of the Choir Singers in their song today calling for the “end of Persecution, the end of Discrimination” because words are important to us as they tell people what we think, what we mean. In Nazi Germany there was widespread propaganda in the form of posters, news-reels and cinema that portrayed disabled people as “useless eaters” and people who had “lives unworthy of living”. The propaganda stressed the high cost of supporting disabled people and suggested it was not fair for society to pay for this. That it was a burden on society and the state. When the Nazi’s came to power in 1933 they first started a compulsory programme for people with disabilities involving sterilisation so that people with disabilities could not have children. Then in 1939 the Nazi’s started a secret action programme (called T4) where people with disabilities were either gassed or given a lethal injection. During the Holocaust, it is estimated that 300,000 people with disabilities were killed by the Nazi regime in the T4 action. This included both those with mental health problems and those with physical disabilities. They were all gassed. Just imagine the enormity of this tragedy! We remember and mourn their deaths on this Holocaust Memorial civic occasion…. We may think that here in the UK we would never do such a thing. But, I am regularly surprised about the way that people feel it is OK to talk negatively about people with disabilities. Disabled people are significantly more likely to be victims of crime than non-disabled people. People don’t just talk negatively about people with disabilities. Some people think it is OK to be violent. There are over one thousand people prosecuted every year for disability hate crimes, and the majority of these crimes are against children with disabilities. This violence against children is truly shocking! As a child, my experiences were challenging because I was born in a Magdalene Home in Cork in Ireland, which was an unsafe place for children. I was lucky to survive the Home because at the age of 10 months I got polio, and this meant that I stayed in hospital until I was 7 years old. I was then sent to Cambridge to follow my Mother but went into foster care and was eventually adopted. Through all of these changes in location, those in charge neglected my education because I had a disability. But I loved school, both the learning and the sociability! Yet I only went to school for 3 years in all. Since school age, I’m very proud of my achievements proving people wrong again and again. I also ask people to look at the person in the wheelchair and not at the chair. This is my mantra! At so many workplaces I’ve been the first to be employed who is a wheelchair user. And I’ve been the first Mayor of Cambridge in a wheelchair serving now for my 2nd time as Cambridge Mayor. I love being your Mayor! In my lifetime of experiences as a wheelchair user, - 60, 50, 40, 30 years ago attitudes towards disabled people centred on their impairment as the cause of their experiences and disadvantages – now – things have changed. However, we all still need to work to raise awareness and remove barriers to independence that Cambridgeshire disabled people face.
I’m really proud to be a supporter of the Rowan charity, which gives young people with learning disabilities a thriving Arts Centre, providing a safe, welcoming environment using Arts as a tool to bring people together, and to express their creativity!
I’m really thrilled that the young people involved in the HMD education project have been shocked to learn about the T4 action and about hate crimes in the UK today, and so have chosen to ‘stand together’ with their peer group in Cambridge, chosing Rowan as one of our 2 charities for donations today. So if you can, do please donate at the end of the civic event, to support Rowan Arts activities for those with disabilities here.
And please through words and actions, help to create a culture of understanding and respect, so that children and adults today, don’t have to go through what I experienced growing up!
Thank you singers. I also want to thank all the speakers, poets, dancers, actors, documentary makers, artists, musicians, singers from not only today’s civic ceremony but all those who’ve participated in workshops and school assemblies with Historyworks over the past days, weeks, months. Also, I would like to especially thank Eva Clarke, for helping us mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz to thank Dr Sejad Mekic for leading us to commemorate 25 years since the massacre in Srebenicia. A special thank you too for Michael Rosen for his creative work to help the next generations grapple with the challenges of understanding and interpreting the enormity of the Holocaust. Plus the composer, Bethany Kirby for such wonderful musical compositions adding a depth of emotion to Michael Rosen’s lyrics. Last, but not least may I thank the historian Helen Weinstein, who has been working with 20 schools on this Holocaust Education programme and led Singing Assemblies daily! Also as our Art Director for the Cambridge Holocaust Commemoration, may I thank Helen Weinstein, and her entire team here today from Historyworks for their commitment, attention to detail, and creativity! Please also see more of the HMD school poetry project and artworks on display in their exhibition in the foyer, and again on the big screen here on stage as we move towards the close of our civic HMD commemoration. Importantly, there are follow-on events in our HMD programme in Cambridge over the next weeks which you can read about in the programme - including illustrated talks, film screenings, further fundraising events to support refugees and the homeless – so we can continue learning together and supporting our theme to ‘Stand Together’ to enrich our communities with the helping hand of friendship and love across age groups, faith groups, ethnicities.
Never again We say, “Never again.” But when people with power are pointing in one direction when many minds are pointing in that direction when the guns and bombs are pointing in that direction too, it can happen again. It does happen again. It has happened again. It can be furious and chaotic. It can be calm and orderly. It can start with laws. It can start without them. The people who do it can believe they are saving their country
The people who do it can believe they are just getting their own back.
That’s why It can happen again. It does happen again. It has happened again.
WE ARE BETTER WHEN WE STAND TOGETHER by Michael Rosen
Verse 1 (solo / small group) A child wanders through the ruins A family fears a knock at the door A grandma looks for her old home They know they didn’t start this war Chorus We are better When we stand together When we stand together We are better Verse 1 (full choir) A child wanders through the ruins A family fears a knock at the door A grandma looks for her old home They know they didn’t start this war Chorus We are better When we stand together When we stand together We are better Verse 2 The child is ours, we must make it safe The family’s ours, we must hear their call The grandma’s ours, we must find a home We know we have to stand with all Chorus (2-part round; part 2 enters on ) We are better When we stand together When we stand together We are better We are better When we stand together When we stand together We are better We are better We are better
Song commissioned by Helen Weinstein for #HMD2020 with lyrics by poet Michael Rosen set to music by composer Bethany Kirby
Verse 1 There’s nothing very easy about speaking out There’s nothing very easy knowing how to shout But you see someone picked on for something that they are Nothing they can do: they were born that way Not saying that it’s easy to have your say It can often turn out that the only person's you You’re the only one who can say what’s true Bridge We want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Chorus (unison) Stand together, we stand Stand together, take a stand Strong together, we stand Strong together, hand in hand Chorus (harmony) Stand together, we stand Stand together, take a stand Strong together, we stand Strong together, hand in hand Verse 2 The earth is ours, it’s the only one we’ve got It’s warming up fast, don’t tell me it’s not There’s only one race, it’s the human race We’ve got to stand together or we’re going to lose it It’s the way to survive, so we’d better choose it No matter who’s in charge or who’s got the power They can’t take away what we know is ours Bridge We want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Chorus (harmony) x2 Stand together, we stand Stand together, take a stand Strong together, we stand Strong together, hand in hand Soprano small group (on repeat of chorus) We want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Outro Strong together We stand
Verse 1 There’s nothing very easy about speaking out There’s nothing very easy knowing how to shout But you see someone picked on for something that they are Nothing they can do: they were born that way Not saying that it’s easy to have your say It can often turn out that the only person's you You’re the only one who can say what’s true Bridge We want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Chorus (unison) Stand together, we stand Stand together, take a stand Strong together, we stand Strong together, hand in hand Chorus (harmony) Stand together, we stand Stand together, take a stand Strong together, we stand Strong together, hand in hand Verse 2 The earth is ours, it’s the only one we’ve got It’s warming up fast, don’t tell me it’s not There’s only one race, it’s the human race We’ve got to stand together or we’re going to lose it It’s the way to survive, so we’d better choose it No matter who’s in charge or who’s got the power They can’t take away what we know is ours Bridge We want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Chorus (harmony) x2 Stand together, we stand Stand together, take a stand Strong together, we stand Strong together, hand in hand Soprano small group (on repeat of chorus) We want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Outro Strong together We stand
Verse 1 There’s nothing very easy about speaking out There’s nothing very easy knowing how to shout But you see someone picked on for something that they are Nothing they can do: they were born that way Not saying that it’s easy to have your say It can often turn out that the only person's you You’re the only one who can say what’s true Bridge We want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Chorus (unison) Stand together, we stand Stand together, take a stand Strong together, we stand Strong together, hand in hand Chorus (harmony) Stand together, we stand Stand together, take a stand Strong together, we stand Strong together, hand in hand Verse 2 The earth is ours, it’s the only one we’ve got It’s warming up fast, don’t tell me it’s not There’s only one race, it’s the human race We’ve got to stand together or we’re going to lose it It’s the way to survive, so we’d better choose it No matter who’s in charge or who’s got the power They can’t take away what we know is ours Bridge We want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Chorus (harmony) x2 Stand together, we stand Stand together, take a stand Strong together, we stand Strong together, hand in hand Soprano small group (on repeat of chorus) We want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Outro Strong together We stand
Verse 1 There’s nothing very easy about speaking out There’s nothing very easy knowing how to shout But you see someone picked on for something that they are Nothing they can do: they were born that way Not saying that it’s easy to have your say It can often turn out that the only person's you You’re the only one who can say what’s true Bridge We want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Chorus (unison) Stand together, we stand Stand together, take a stand Strong together, we stand Strong together, hand in hand Chorus (harmony) Stand together, we stand Stand together, take a stand Strong together, we stand Strong together, hand in hand Verse 2 The earth is ours, it’s the only one we’ve got It’s warming up fast, don’t tell me it’s not There’s only one race, it’s the human race We’ve got to stand together or we’re going to lose it It’s the way to survive, so we’d better choose it No matter who’s in charge or who’s got the power They can’t take away what we know is ours Bridge We want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Chorus (harmony) x2 Stand together, we stand Stand together, take a stand Strong together, we stand Strong together, hand in hand Soprano small group (on repeat of chorus) We want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Outro Strong together We stand
Verse 1 There’s nothing very easy about speaking out There’s nothing very easy knowing how to shout But you see someone picked on for something that they are Nothing they can do: they were born that way Not saying that it’s easy to have your say It can often turn out that the only person's you You’re the only one who can say what’s true Bridge We want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Chorus (unison) Stand together, we stand Stand together, take a stand Strong together, we stand Strong together, hand in hand Chorus (harmony) Stand together, we stand Stand together, take a stand Strong together, we stand Strong together, hand in hand Verse 2 The earth is ours, it’s the only one we’ve got It’s warming up fast, don’t tell me it’s not There’s only one race, it’s the human race We’ve got to stand together or we’re going to lose it It’s the way to survive, so we’d better choose it No matter who’s in charge or who’s got the power They can’t take away what we know is ours Bridge We want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Chorus (harmony) x2 Stand together, we stand Stand together, take a stand Strong together, we stand Strong together, hand in hand Soprano small group (on repeat of chorus) We want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Want the elimination of all discrimination Want the abolition of all persecution Outro Strong together We stand
Commissioned by Helen Weinstein of Historyworks for #HMD2020 with lyrics by poet Michael Rosen set to music by composer Bethany Kirby
Verse 1
When there’s no road left and the land is dusty and dry; When there’s no way home and death falls from the sky; When the lightning strikes and floods rip through the town; When there’s nothing to eat and death comes creeping round; When sirens are louder than laughter
Bridge (x3) Who will speak for the fearful who will stand with the weak who will stand up to power and find the words to speak?
Chorus (x2) We will stand together We will stand together and be heard We will stand together Stand together, it’s our word Verse 2 When there’s nothing on the shelf and people wait to grow old; When bullets cut through the air and bones freeze in the cold; When bombs rain down and thousands flee from the city; When eyes are closed in pain who will show any pity? When sirens are louder than laughter
Bridge (x3) Who will speak for the fearful who will stand with the weak who will stand up to power and find the words to speak?
Chorus (x2) We will stand together We will stand together and be heard We will stand together Stand together, it’s our word
Outro(x4) Altos: Who will speak Who will speak for the fearful? Who will stand Who will stand with the weak? Sops (half): We will stand together We will stand Basses: Stand up, stand up Tenors: Who will speak? Who will stand up? Sops (half): Our word, our world Our word, our world
Verse 1 When there’s no road left and the land is dusty and dry; When there’s no way home and death falls from the sky; When the lightning strikes and floods rip through the town; When there’s nothing to eat and death comes creeping round; When sirens are louder than laughter
Bridge (x3) Who will speak for the fearful who will stand with the weak who will stand up to power and find the words to speak?
Chorus (x2) We will stand together We will stand together and be heard We will stand together Stand together, it’s our word Verse 2 When there’s nothing on the shelf and people wait to grow old; When bullets cut through the air and bones freeze in the cold; When bombs rain down and thousands flee from the city; When eyes are closed in pain who will show any pity? When sirens are louder than laughter
Bridge (x3) Who will speak for the fearful who will stand with the weak who will stand up to power and find the words to speak?
Chorus (x2) We will stand together We will stand together and be heard We will stand together Stand together, it’s our word
Outro(x4) Altos: Who will speak Who will speak for the fearful? Who will stand Who will stand with the weak? Sops (half): We will stand together We will stand Basses: Stand up, stand up Tenors: Who will speak? Who will stand up? Sops (half): Our word, our world Our word, our world
Verse 1 When there’s no road left and the land is dusty and dry; When there’s no way home and death falls from the sky; When the lightning strikes and floods rip through the town; When there’s nothing to eat and death comes creeping round; When sirens are louder than laughter
Bridge (x3) Who will speak for the fearful who will stand with the weak who will stand up to power and find the words to speak?
Chorus (x2) We will stand together We will stand together and be heard We will stand together Stand together, it’s our word Verse 2 When there’s nothing on the shelf and people wait to grow old; When bullets cut through the air and bones freeze in the cold; When bombs rain down and thousands flee from the city; When eyes are closed in pain who will show any pity? When sirens are louder than laughter
Bridge (x3) Who will speak for the fearful who will stand with the weak who will stand up to power and find the words to speak?
Chorus (x2) We will stand together We will stand together and be heard We will stand together Stand together, it’s our word
Outro(x4) Altos: Who will speak Who will speak for the fearful? Who will stand Who will stand with the weak? Sops (half): We will stand together We will stand Basses: Stand up, stand up Tenors: Who will speak? Who will stand up? Sops (half): Our word, our world Our word, our world
Verse 1 When there’s no road left and the land is dusty and dry; When there’s no way home and death falls from the sky; When the lightning strikes and floods rip through the town; When there’s nothing to eat and death comes creeping round; When sirens are louder than laughter
Bridge (x3) Who will speak for the fearful who will stand with the weak who will stand up to power and find the words to speak?
Chorus (x2) We will stand together We will stand together and be heard We will stand together Stand together, it’s our word Verse 2 When there’s nothing on the shelf and people wait to grow old; When bullets cut through the air and bones freeze in the cold; When bombs rain down and thousands flee from the city; When eyes are closed in pain who will show any pity? When sirens are louder than laughter
Bridge (x3) Who will speak for the fearful who will stand with the weak who will stand up to power and find the words to speak?
Chorus (x2) We will stand together We will stand together and be heard We will stand together Stand together, it’s our word
Outro(x4) Altos: Who will speak Who will speak for the fearful? Who will stand Who will stand with the weak? Sops (half): We will stand together We will stand Basses: Stand up, stand up Tenors: Who will speak? Who will stand up? Sops (half): Our word, our world Our word, our world
Verse 1 When there’s no road left and the land is dusty and dry; When there’s no way home and death falls from the sky; When the lightning strikes and floods rip through the town; When there’s nothing to eat and death comes creeping round; When sirens are louder than laughter
Bridge (x3) Who will speak for the fearful who will stand with the weak who will stand up to power and find the words to speak?
Chorus (x2) We will stand together We will stand together and be heard We will stand together Stand together, it’s our word Verse 2 When there’s nothing on the shelf and people wait to grow old; When bullets cut through the air and bones freeze in the cold; When bombs rain down and thousands flee from the city; When eyes are closed in pain who will show any pity? When sirens are louder than laughter
Bridge (x3) Who will speak for the fearful who will stand with the weak who will stand up to power and find the words to speak?
Chorus (x2) We will stand together We will stand together and be heard We will stand together Stand together, it’s our word
Outro(x4) Altos: Who will speak Who will speak for the fearful? Who will stand Who will stand with the weak? Sops (half): We will stand together We will stand Basses: Stand up, stand up Tenors: Who will speak? Who will stand up? Sops (half): Our word, our world Our word, our world
WE ARE BETTER WHEN WE STAND TOGETHER
Lyrics by Michael Rosen - commissioned by HistoryWorks
Verse 1 (solo / small group)
A child wanders through the ruins A family fears a knock at the door A grandma looks for her old home They know they didn’t start this war Chorus We are better When we stand together When we stand together We are better Verse 1 (full choir) A child wanders through the ruins A family fears a knock at the door A grandma looks for her old home They know they didn’t start this war Chorus We are better When we stand together When we stand together We are better Verse 2 The child is ours, we must make it safe The family’s ours, we must hear their call The grandma’s ours, we must find a home We know we have to stand with all Chorus (2-part round; part 2 enters on ) We are better When we stand together When we stand together We are better We are better When we stand together When we stand together We are better We are better We are better
WE ARE BETTER WHEN WE STAND TOGETHER
Lyrics by Michael Rosen - commissioned by HistoryWorks
Verse 1 (solo / small group) A child wanders through the ruins A family fears a knock at the door A grandma looks for her old home They know they didn’t start this war Chorus We are better When we stand together When we stand together We are better Verse 1 (full choir) A child wanders through the ruins A family fears a knock at the door A grandma looks for her old home They know they didn’t start this war Chorus We are better When we stand together When we stand together We are better Verse 2 The child is ours, we must make it safe The family’s ours, we must hear their call The grandma’s ours, we must find a home We know we have to stand with all Chorus (2-part round; part 2 enters on ) We are better When we stand together When we stand together We are better We are better When we stand together When we stand together We are better We are better We are better
We are better when we stand together When we stand together We are better A child wanders through the ruins A family fears a knock at the door A grandma looks for her old home They know they didn’t start this war We are better when we stand together When we stand together We are better The child is ours, we must make it safe The family’s ours, we must hear their call The grandma’s ours, we must find a home We know we have to stand with all We are better When we stand together when we stand together we are better
There’s nothing very easy about speaking out there’s nothing very easy knowing how to shout but you see someone picked on for something that they are Nothing they can do: they were born that way Not saying that it’s easy to have your say We’ve seen it happen near or from afar It can often turn out that the only person's you You’re the only one who can say what’s true We want the elimination of all discrimination we want the abolition of all persecution Stand together we stand Strong together take a stand Stand together we stand strong together hand in hand The earth is ours it’s the only one we’ve got It’s warming up fast, don’t tell me it’s not there’s only one race It's the human race we’ve got to stand together or we’re going to lose it It’s the way to survive, so we’d better choose it This is the choice That we have to face No matter who’s in charge or who’s got the power they can’t take away what we know is ours We want the elimination of all discrimination we want the abolition of all persecution Stand together we stand Strong together take a stand Stand together we stand strong together hand in hand
When there’s no road left and the land is dusty and dry; when there’s no way home and death falls from the sky; when the lightning strikes and floods rip through the town; when there’s no evening meal and death comes creeping round; when there’s nothing on the shelf and people wait to grow old; when bullets cut through the air and bones freeze in the cold; when sirens are louder than laughter and thousands flee from the city; when eyes are closed in pain who will show any pity? who will speak for the fearful who will stand with the weak who will stand up to power and find the words to speak We will stand together. Stand together and be heard. We will stand together. Stand together it’s our word.
Welcome to Cambridge’s interfaith civic event by Revd Cannon Adrian Daffern hosting us here at the University Church of Great St Mary’s. We will have a minute of silence together to remember all those we love and see no longer.
CANNON ADRIAN DAFFERN: Dear Deputy Lieutenant, Madam Deputy Mayor, members of Cambridge City Council, - our speakers Eva Clarke BEM, former childrens’ poet laureate Michael Rosen, Eric Murangwa MBE, MP Daniel Zeichner, Barry Griffiths & colleagues from Jimmys Homeless Shelter – and ALL those who have joined us especially the young people, singers, poets and school children who are participating today - a very warm welcome to Great St. Mary’s, the University Church.
We are honoured to have been asked by the City of Cambridge to host this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day Civic Service as an interfaith occasion. For more than eight centuries, Great St Mary’s has stood in the heart of Cambridge, between the Market and the University: a place for Cambridge to come together to mourn, to celebrate, to learn, to remember. Whatever your faith and wherever you come from, be at home here in this place and know that you are welcome, as you are.
Today we come together on this Holocaust Memorial Day, to remember the millions of people murdered in the Holocaust under Nazi Persecution, and in the genocides of more recent years. We will reflect on this year’s international theme, ‘Torn From Home’, through song, poetry and the personal stories of survivors of the Holocaust and in particular to mark the 25 years since the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda.
Finally, today is one of the first times we have gathered as a civic community since the unexpected tragic death of our Cambridge Mayor, Nigel Gawthrope, a friend to so many of us in Cambridge. We will be paying tribute to him at the end of the programme; we would like to begin today’s event with a minute of silence to remember Nigel. Also for everyone gathered to take time to remember those missing from their lives, to think about all those whom we love but see no longer.
Executive Councillor for Communities and Deputy Leader of the Council, Anna Smith explains why we mark Holocaust Memorial Day as a City affirming Cambridge as a place which pledges to equality, asking citizens to respect one another, standing up to hatred and prejudice in all its forms, and to stand alongside the persecuted.
EXEC CLLR ANNA SMITH: It is a real privilege to welcome you to this Holocaust Memorial Day civic event with our theme of ‘Torn from Home’. It’s a privilege as a member of Cambridge City Council, because we strive to be a welcoming city, which celebrates diversity and challenges hate. We are proud to support this event. And it’s a privilege because as a History teacher, I know all too well the importance of the saying, “if we do not remember the past, we are doomed to repeat it”. 27th January 2019 marks the 74th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. And on Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) we pause to commemorate and remember and mourn so many millions murdered by the Nazis. This day also marks subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur. We are privileged to hear from some survivors of genocide in today’s civic commemoration service. Across the globe there are ongoing atrocities perpetrated against groups because of their ethnic or faith or sexual identity. We need to learn from all those who have suffered from persecution. This year we are remembering through the theme, ‘torn from home’. We think of all of those who are forced to flee their homes for their own safety, and of those who were ripped from their homes by authorities. In particular, at this ceremony, we remember the victims of the Holocaust and those of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. I’ve been to visit the city of Paris in France, and of the things I’ve noticed are the memorial plaques which have been put up all over the city. They mark mainly Jewish residents and students who lived and studied in those places. They were torn from home at that spot and died at the hands of Nazi anti-semitism. The plaques are the result of painstaking research and a commitment not to forget. (The ones outside schools simply list the number of students who were lost. But the ones outside apartments list, where possible, names and ages, and the date they were dragged away. First to places in the city, and then, if they survived that, onto concentration camps). ‘Almost all say the same thing ‘n’oublions jamais’ – let us never forget.’ There are similar memorials in many German cities, in the pavements in front of homes. It is a powerful reminder of their lives and tragic deaths. And it is also a reminder to us that we should never be complacent. That hatred and racism can invade our day-to-day lives in the most horrific way. It still shocks and saddens me that this tragedy took place in my lifetime. And that today people around the world are still suffering from hatred and persecution. And this should spur us all on to challenge hatred and prejudice in all its forms, and to stand alongside the persecuted. For those who are elected to serve the people of Cambridge as City Councillors, there are many civic duties to perform, but for me, this event is particularly poignant and important. It marks the start of the calendar year in Cambridge when we renew our ‘Equality Pledge’ to affirm the dignity of all people, their right to respect and their right to equality of opportunity. As a city, we seek to create One Cambridge, Fair for all. We value and celebrate the strength that comes from difference and the positive contribution that diversity brings to our community. Our aspiration is for Cambridge and the wider region to be safe, welcoming and inclusive, and I confirm this commitment to you today.
Eva Clarke and Michael Rosen introduce this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day theme ‘Torn from Home’. Home is a place you should feel safe in. Home is past. Home is present. Home is future. Home is a sense of well-being. Home is peace. Home is community and family and friends. There are many reasons people find themselves in a situation where they don’t have a home. Today we will consider what home means and what life is like for those who have been torn from home.
EVA CLARKE: Why we should remember? These are my reasons: 1. To commemorate, to remember – ‘to keep the memory alive’ of all those millions who died, were killed (perished) during the Holocaust, especially all those & we don’t know the numbers, who have never ever had one single person remember them, because all their families were killed & their communities destroyed. And the only way people live on is through our remembering of them. 2. To tell just one family’s story. As many as there are survivors & their numbers are dwindling, so there are that many different stories/experiences & despite sometimes having common elements, they are all unique. 3. To enable us all to learn the lessons of the Holocaust. But just think of all the genocides since: Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur, (Syria, Myanmar?) & so it goes on. Tragically, not never again, but yet again (your phrase, Helen!) 4. The next reason is linked to the previous one: to try to counteract racism & prejudice, any form of racism & prejudice in order to try to prevent such genocides from happening again. 5. Education is the key to combatting hatred & intolerance & to alert young people about where prejudice & hostility can ultimately lead - genocide.
EVA INTRODUCES Michael Rosen, writer and broadcaster, professor and poet and former Children’s Laureate, is known to many of us as the author of famous poems such as ‘Bear Hunt’ and ‘Chocolate Cake’, but today he is continuing his work we’ve been doing in Cambridge schools, to share our stories and our feelings regarding what we’ve found out about our families and their experiences in the Holocaust. Michael, may I ask you to say a few words about the theme for this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day ‘Torn from Home’ and your new poem ‘What Home Means To me?
MICHAEL ROSEN: Each year for Holocaust Memorial Day a theme is chosen in order to learn about the Holocaust and subsequent genocides, with the life stories of those who were murdered and those who survived at its heart – as well as the experiences of resisters, rescuers and witnesses. This year our theme is ‘TORN FROM HOME’ and we’ve been encouraging the young people we’ve been working with in schools in Cambridge to reflect on how the enforced loss of a safe place to call HOME is part of the trauma faced by anyone experiencing persecution and genocide, forced to be a refugee, homeless… HOME usually means a place of safety, comfort and security. Home is community and family and friends. There are many reasons why people find themselves in a situation where they don’t have a home. I’ve written a piece which Helen asked me to write as a lyric for primary schools to sing, to help children think about what to value about home, what makes us feel safe: ‘I love the place I call my home I love it in the heart of my home I love it in the home of my heart Home is deep inside of me’
Song performed by school choirs led by Mario Satchwell and accompanied by Bethany Kirby. This is a newly commissioned piece by Historyworks with lyrics by Michael Rosen & musical composition by Bethany Kirby, with singers from St Matthew’s Primary School and Milton Road Primary School.
- Verse 1 (twice – soloist 2 lines; small group 2 lines; then full choir 4 lines)
Home is a roof over my head
Home is a pillow on my bed
Home is the smell of good things to eat
Home is the floor under my feet
- Pre-chorus (unison)
A place where I feel safe
A place where I am me
A place where I feel warm
A place where I am free
- Chorus (unison)
I love the place I call my home
I love the place where I am me
I love it in the heart of my home
Home is deep inside of me.
- Verse 2 (twice repeat verse in unison)
Home is the door I want to open
Home is the smiles on all our faces
Home is the seat at the family table
Home is the best of all the places
- Pre-chorus (with harmony)
A place where I feel safe
A place where I am me
A place where I feel warm
A place where I am free
- Chorus (with harmony; sing twice)
I love the place I call my home
I love the place where I am me
I love it in the heart of my home
Home is deep inside of me.
Six candles are lit to pay tribute to the six million murdered during the Nazi Holocaust. The majority of those persecuted and murdered by the Nazis were Jews, so the candles represent the almost six million Jews killed; but also Nazis persecuted and killed the people they labelled as Gypseys (Roma & Sinti), People of Colour, Trade Unionists, and LGBT people, murdered because of their sexuality.
Candles are symbolic to honour the victims of the genocides that have scarred the world in the past 100 years, and we light an additional seventh candle in Cambridge to show our compassion for refugees, for those without a safe home, for those persecuted as minorities, those victims of ongoing conflicts.
Poem written and performed by Michael Rosen, imagining what it would be like to be at home in what should be a safe space, hearing a knock at the door, and being confronted by impossible dangerous choices.
KINDNESS BY MICHAEL ROSEN
A knock at the door
A catch of breath
Find a way out
Or is that way death?
The danger of being heard
The danger of being seen
The danger of being us
But what does it mean?
Running in the dark
Listening for voices
Press on or hide?
Impossible choices.
The danger of being heard
The danger of being seen
The danger of being us
But what does it mean?
A knock at the door
Is this the place?
The handle turns
A kindly face.
The danger of being heard
The danger of being seen
The danger of being us
But what does it mean?
Eva Clarke tells her family story, and explains if her family had not been ‘torn from home’ she would not exist! Telling one family’s story matters, because the only way people live on is through our remembering them. For all those who have perished in wars and genocides, they may never have had one single person to remember them, and so if we tell one family story it allows us to learn lessons and to understand that it must be ‘never again’. Through education and retelling these stories of past prejudice, we can have the key to combatting hatred and intolerance and prejudice today, to try to counteract racism and prejudice and prevent such genocides from happening again.
EVA CLARKE: The theme for this year’s HMD is ‘Torn from Home’. Well, if my parents had not been ‘torn from home, I wouldn’t exist because they would never have met! I’m here this afternoon because I’m a survivor of the Holocaust, but only just, as I was born in the Mauthausen Concentration Camp near Linz in Austria on 29th April 1945. My father, Bernd Nathan, was German but Jewish & fled Berlin in 1933 when Hitler came to power. He escaped to Prague, the capital of Czechoslovakia, thinking that was far enough to be safe. It wasn’t, but had he not done so, he wouldn’t have met my mother, Anka, & I wouldn’t be standing in front of you this evening. He had been an architect/interior designer & my mother had been a law student at the Charles University until the Germans closed the universities. They married on 15th May 1940, already under Nazi occupation. In December 1941, my parents were amongst the first transports to be sent to the Terezin/ Theresienstadt Ghetto/Concentration Camp in Czechoslovakia. Being well able to work, they remained there for 3 years, an unusually long time; my mother always said luck had a lot to do with it. But, at the end of Sept. 1944, my parents’ luck ran out when my father was sent to Auschwitz & incredibly, my mother volunteered to follow him the very next day. Being the eternal optimist & as they had survived 3 years, she thought nothing could get any worse. But she never, ever saw my father again & after the war discovered he had been shot dead on a death march near Auschwitz on 18th January 1945 & as you know, it was liberated by the Russian Army on 27th January 1945. Prior to deportation from Terezin to Auschwitz, when the Nazis discovered Anka was pregnant, they made my parents sign a document saying when the baby was born he/she would have to be handed over to be killed. In the event, my brother, Jiri/George, was born 10th February 1944, wasn’t taken away but died of pneumonia 2 months later. And his death meant my life. Because, had my mother arrived in Auschwitz holding my brother in her arms, she would have been sent straight to the gas chamber. Thankfully, Mengele didn’t realise she was pregnant when asking her ‘Bist du schwange, fesche frau?’ Are you pregnant, pretty woman & she denied it. Anka survived Auschwitz & was sent to a slave labour camp, an armaments factory, in Freiberg, near Dresden in Germany where she spent 6 months, becoming progressively more & more starved & more & more pregnant, which was very dangerous for her. But fortunately, the Germans only realised she was pregnant after Auschwitz had been liberated, so they couldn’t send her back to face the vengeance of Dr. Mengele. At the end of March/beginning of April 1945, when the Germans were evacuating the camps & after a horrendous train journey of 17 days in open coal wagons with no food & hardly any water, the train arrived at Mauthausen. Recognising the notorious name, Anka’s labour began & I was born on a cart between the station & the camp. There are 3 reasons why my mother & I survived & the first is a chilling one: on 28th April, the Nazis had run out of gas for the gas chamber, my birthday is 29th., So, presumably, if the train had arrived on 26th or 27th, again I wouldn’t be here today. The 2nd indirect reason is that Hitler committed su...
This is a traditional Sephardic lullaby surviving down the generations dating back to when Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, a beautiful lullaby telling a child to sleep peacefully, in the language called Ladino, performed by Sing! Community Choir, arranged by Audrey Snyder, conducted by Anna Lovewell and accompanied by Bethany Kirby.
DURME, DURME - A SEPHARDIC LAMENT:
Durme, durme, ijiko de madre
Durme, durme, sin ansia i dolor
Durme, durme, sin ansia i dolor
Sin ansia i dolor, sin ansia i dolor
Durme, durme, durme, ijiko de madre
(Altos only; other sections “aah”)
Durme, durme, ijiko de madre
Kon ermozura de Sh’ma Yisrael
Kon ermozura de Sh’ma Yisrael
Poems written and performed by Cambridge School Students inspired by the workshops in schools with Helen Weinstein, Michael Rosen and Eva Clarke. These poems powerfully empathize with those in the world who have been displaced and have had to leave home through no fault of their own.
Michael Rosen worries about missing family members he was told about as a child, taking us on his historical detective journey where he has taken years to trace his missing Uncle Oscar and Aunt Rachel & shares how his mission to find his family is because otherwise the Nazis would have erased their identity and their memory. Michael Rosen ends with his poem in their honour ‘The ClockMender Oscar Rosen and His Wife Rachel on Convoy 62, November 1943’ a tribute to their experience of persecution during the second world war and their end at Auschwitz.
MICHAEL ROSEN: When I was growing up I heard my father say many times that he had once had two uncles: ‘They were there at the beginning of the war’ he would say ‘but they weren’t there at the end.’ As a child, I didn’t know what to make of this. How could two people just disappear? Why didn’t anyone know what happened to them? When I was a bit older he would say that they must have died ‘in the camps’. What did that mean? I would ask myself. What was a camp? How could you disappear in a camp? And why? My parents often told me stories about life before the war when they were attacked by people they called ‘fascists’. They did this, they said, because we’re Jews’. I’m not sure I understood this either. My mother would tell us about the Second World War at the tea table. She moved the teapot and cups around to tell the stories of the war. She fought the Battle of Stalingrad on the tea table. She made it sound as if we were alive because the Nazis had been beaten at Stalingrad. Bit by bit I got to understand a lot more about these things that yes if the Nazis hadn’t been beaten we probably wouldn’t be alive…..and hat there were horrific camps which were an industry for killing - genocide as we call it today. But the mystery of the two French uncles remained a mystery. Whichever way I tried to find out more - fastening on to fragments of memory about where they probably lived or what their jobs were - I got nowhere. When the full list of all the Jews deported from France came out, I combed it for Rosens. But it’s quite a common name. I went to America and asked my father’s cousins about what they knew. Sadly, they made it clear that they knew nothing. Then something changed everything and it’s been the key that has unlocked everything else. When a distant relative died, some letters were found. Two of them came from one of the French uncles and they were letters pleading for help. And there was an address on the letter. With this address in western France, I have been able to track down books, websites, and archives and pieced together two tragic stories: one of Oscar Jeschie Rosen one of Martin Rozen. Both born in Poland, both migrated to France looking for a place where they wouldn’t be persecuted. Oscar a clockmender, married Rachel, fled to western France when the German army invaded. Forced to wear a yellow star, and fix a sign on his market stall, saying ‘Entreprise Juive’, Jewish business and losing every thing they owned because of the aryanisation law. I found that Martin lodged in a house in a little village, while Oscar and Rachel fled to Nice, occupied at that time by the Italians who refused to hand the Jews over to the Nazis. A man called Angelo Donati had come up with a great plan to help Jews escape to North Africa. The Jews waited in the out-of-use hotels. But then the allies defeated the Italians and the Nazis invaded Nice. Straightaway they started arresting the Jews waiting in the hotels, sending them to a camp near Paris and then on Convoy 62, in a cattle truck to Auschwitz, one of the extermination Camps. Two months later, four policemen knocked on the door of Madame Bobières in the little village of Saint-Hermine in the Vendée, and arrested Martin Rozen. They wrote down what Martin was wearing, how tall he was, what colour his eyes, and what shape his nose and mouth was. They took him to join 30 other Jews in the local town, and then put him on a train to th...
Song performed by Music Director at Historyworks, Mario Satchwell, a poignant song about gaps in our lives, the missing spaces where people used to be. Commissioned by Historyworks with lyrics by Michael Rosen, and musical composition by Kirsty Martin.
THE ABSENTEES
There are gaps
there are blanks
in the house
of my life
there's a face
nothing more
something gone
from my life
She was here
he was there
in the rooms of my life
there's a place
for them both
in the words of my life.
There are gaps
there are blanks
in the house of my life
Eric Murangwa. survivor of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, was the goalkeeper for an international football team, Rayon Sports. He only had his life saved by Hutu team mates and other team supporters because he was a footballer. Eric talks about how this experience has inspired him to dedicate his life to drawing on survivors’ experiences to connect us all to our common humanity through sport and storytelling.
ERIC MURANGWA: As a survivor of genocide, I know from firsthand experience just what it means to be torn from home, as that’s exactly what happened to me 25 years ago in Rwanda. I remember the day I left my home for the last time, just a few hours after the start of the genocide against the Tutsi on April 7th 1994. Little did I know that the day would be the worst day in Rwandan history, a day that reduced every Rwandan to tears, a day when millions of Rwandans, not just me, were torn from their homes and families. I left soon after being attacked by five armed men who threatened to take my life, because I was a Tutsi and they were Hutu, until one of the soldiers recognised me as ‘Toto’, the nickname by which I was affectionately known by fans of Rayon Sports, the top Rwandan football club where I was the number one goalkeeper. Thankfully my life and the lives of those I was with were spared. For the next 100 days I was forced to move from one place to another, desperately trying to save my life. First I fled to my Hutu teammate’s house. After hiding there for a week or so, I had to move on after being told that the killers were coming for me. My colleagues advised me to try Zuzu, one of the board members of the club who lived nearby, and was helped to his house. I stayed there safely for a few days but it was not long before I had to move on once again. I returned to my old teammate’s house, but unsurprisingly, I did not feel safe and after only a few days, a trio of militia tracked me down and I only narrowly avoided death. Feeling my luck was about to expire and with a dwindling number of people ready to risk their lives to help me, I knew I had to find somewhere more secure - better to die trying than submit to my fate, I thought. I returned to Zuzu who promised to take me to the city’s International Red Cross HQ across town, which was providing sanctuary to refugees. Escorted in Zuzu’s vehicle, with two armed guards commandingly aiming their rifles out of the open windows, it was his clout that safely got me through the roadblocks and to the Red Cross HQ in a largely deserted area of Kigali. Unwilling or unable to get me within the walls of the compound, Zuzu left me outside the gates to fend for myself. The Red Cross director refused to take me in claiming that he could not admit me for the sake of the safety and security of those already inside. Out of ideas and just a stone’s throw from safety, I spent the next few nights sleeping beneath the stars, awaiting a much-needed turn of fortune. Providence, it appeared, was on my side when a young couple and their two-week old baby arrived at the gates of the Red Cross HQ, having been forced out of hiding by a band of militia looting the area. Their presence increased the pressure on the facility’s director and, while he would not grant them admission, he helped organise transportation for the family, as well as mine. Soon I found myself within the safe confines of Hôtel des Mille Collines where more than 1,200 took refuge during the genocide – an act of kindness that was famously re-told in the 2004 film called Hotel Rwanda. I remained at the hotel for over a month, before being evacuated to the RPF controlled area where I finally made it to safety, and it was here that I discovered that my close family had survived. This was such good news, and a miracle for me to have my family survive, because we knew the scale of the killing, and that in the 100 days about 3 out of every 4 people who were Tutsi, like me and my family, had been killed by the ...
Poems written and performed by Cambridge School Students inspired by the workshops in schools with Helen Weinstein, Michael Rosen and Eva Clarke.
A Rap performed by Cambridge Academic Partnership Singers, with Choir Director & Lead for Create, Rebecca Lewis, accompanied by Bethany Kirby. Cambridge Academic Partnership students perform this newly commissioned piece by Historyworks with lyrics by Michael Rosen & musical composition by Bethany Kirby.
LYRICS for SONG
What we’re going to tell you about won’t take LONG
We weren’t doing anything you could say was WRONG
It's all about being in the wrong kind of PLACE
It's all about having the wrong kind of FACE
It's all about being in the wrong kind of LINE
It's all about being in the wrong kind of TIME
‘cos we were
called out
we were
turned out
we were
pushed out
we were
shoved out
called out, turned out, pushed out, shoved out
called out, turned out, pushed out, shoved out
called out, turned out, pushed out, shoved out
called out, turned out, pushed out, shoved out
called out, turned out, pushed out, shoved out
nowhere to call home we were all alone
neither here nor there
we were NOWHERE
It's all about being on the wrong kind of SIDE
It's all about having nowhere to HIDE
It's all about NOT having enough to EAT
It's all about US having nowhere but the STREET
‘cos we were
called out
we were
turned out
we were
pushed out
we were
shoved out
called out, turned out, pushed out, shoved out
called out, turned out, pushed out, shoved out
called out, turned out, pushed out, shoved out
called out, turned out, pushed out, shoved out
called out, turned out, pushed out, shoved out
nowhere to call home
we were all alone
neither here nor there
we were (called out, turned out, pushed out, shoved out) NOWHERE
Daniel Zeichner, MP for Cambridge reflects on global refugee crises past and present, conflicts which result in huge levels of human displacement. Daniel is calling on us all to be compassionate for refugees who have been ‘torn from home’ and is proud that Cambridge has recently resettled over 100 refugees.
Friends – it is an honour to be here today and to have been asked to be part of our city’s annual Holocaust Memorial Day event again, which this year is focusing on the concept of being ‘Torn from Home’. It is events like these when Cambridge is at its best. When it displays itself as being the open, tolerant and inclusive city that it is. A city that has respect for others and compassion for those in need; it is a privilege to represent such a city. Before I begin, I would like to extend my gratitude to all those that have been involved in organising today’s event, and to all those that have taken part. It is wonderful to see so many of the city's civil representatives, residents and local schools all together. I was extremely impressed by the contributions of those from the schools, it is heartening to hear the commitment of the next generation at a time when society can feel stressed and so uncertain. I would also like to briefly make mention to my good friend and your committed public servant Mayor Gawthrope, who sadly and unexpectedly passed away a few weeks ago. Holocaust Memorial Day is a significant day of remembrance for the international community - a day to remember the tragedies that inflicted Europe as Hitler unleashed his abhorrent policy of ethnic cleansing on the Jewish populations of our continent. The images that we are all familiar with, showing the horrors that bestowed an entire people, fill me with deep sadness and shock. Shock that such things could ever happen, shock that such things could ever happen again. And they did happen again, to others, in other parts of the world for example in the Balkans and Cambodia. This year of course is 25 years since the genocide in Rwanda against the Tutsis - a genocide that stunned the world for the speed and velocity in which it took hold of a nation. And still today, men, women and children are experience immense suffering in many parts of the world. In Yemen, as the world's worst humanitarian crisis takes hold, and across the Middle East where conflict is ravaging the region and has resulted in huge levels of human displacement. What does this tell us about humanity and our societies? It tells me that they are ever so fragile and reliant on stability. It tells me that 'never again' is not to be taken for granted. Racism still lingers within our communities, within our politics. I am well aware of the unhappiness that many have felt at the resurgence of anti-semitism and the continuance of Islamophobia in our country, and indeed, very sadly in my own Party – it is up to us to confront it at every opportunity - to offer hope and love and to dispel hate. We can be easily reminded of the compassion humankind has for one another when we consider the work done by those close to home. I am pleased to say that here in Cambridge, efforts are made every day to offer hope and assistance to those that have been torn away from their homes thousands of miles away. On Friday, I joined a civic event celebrating the milestone figure of 100 refugees that Cambridge City Council has resettled, and the city welcomed. It was an opportunity to celebrate the cultures of those that have arrived in Cambridge and to hear from several refugees about their experiences - something that can never be easy for anyone to relive the trauma of fleeing one's home. Resettling over 100 refugees is a fantastic achievement and one to be celebrated. I know however that the City Council is eager to do more to help those in need of a new home and an opportunity to rebuild what was lost. Many of us in Parliament continue to call on the Government to live up to their promises of supporting those fleei...
Barry Griffiths, Communities Officer at Jimmy’s Homeless Shelter on East Road reveals to us his own story of how he once became homeless, and how it felt to become faceless and nameless, a body on a bench.
I had a name once
I sat on a bench, home was memory past
I don’t know what happened, it was all so fast
One moment I was Barry, a person that I got
Now I am one of that homeless lot
Faceless, nameless but still alive it seemed
But not worthy of a hello it was deemed
People walk by my bench without a care
One moment I was Barry, now I’m not there
Turned into a number overnight
No conversation, no place, limited rights
Just someone alone on a bench, cold and afraid
One moment I was Barry, now a burden, mislaid
Ensuite, four beds, home, had it all you know
Now here on a bench, with nowhere to go
How do I explain how I got to this place
One moment I was Barry, now I am not even a face
Whilst sitting on the street, I picture all I have lost
Not just items and things, but the emotional cost
Where do I go to recover from this state I’m in
One moment I was Barry, now wondering where to begin
Where do I belong, what use am I now
What’s my purpose, what does my future allow
I need to find my place again, not be a weight to carry
I had a name once, in fact I’m still Barry
The audience will join our voices together with the choirs from the primary and secondary school students, led by Sing! Community Choir, conducted by Mario Satchwell.
WE ARE ONE WORLD, ONE VOICE, ONE HEART BEATING arranged for voice by Sue Kirkpatrick
Part 1
We are one world, one voice, one heart beating
We are one world, one voice, one heart beating
Part 2
Everybody living in this world
Everybody has a voice, let’s use it
Everybody living in this world; One heart beating
Part 3
We are one world – we are one heart beating
We are one world – one heart beating
We carry with us a powerful message from this event today, where we’ve come together to show a strong sense of community and inclusiveness. We remember today a special person who dedicated his life to enriching and supporting our communities and charities in Cambridge, our Mayor, Nigel Gawthrope, who has sadly passed away, so we’ll end with a tribute to him by Cllr Anna Smith.
In memory of Nigel Gawthrope:
Some of the words I shared earlier in today’s ceremony should have been spoken by our much-loved mayor, Nigel Gawthrope. Nigel died tragically and suddenly just a few weeks ago, and I have been asked to give a short tribute on behalf of the city.
Nigel was born in Leeds, and was a lifelong Leeds United fan. But Cambridge was his home for most of his life, and he was clearly so proud to represent that home as a much-loved councillor and mayor. A committed trades unionist, he was father at the chapel at Cambridge University Press from 1980 to 2013, and he was committed to challenging inequality in all its forms.
He was someone who never pushed himself forward. I can remember a particular mayoral photo shoot, for the Green Flag Award on Christ’s Pieces, where he was insistent that the grounds staff had centre stage in the picture, because they were the ones who had done all the work. That was typical of him.
Nigel had such a love for life, and was clearly loving being mayor of Cambridge. For many of us, we will remember Nigel joyfully meeting people at civic events, often accompanied by his wife, Jenny. And in particular, those events which he attended by motorbike, such as the parade of bikers he led to the American Cemetery at Madingley for their memorial event.
Our hearts go out to Jenny, to the rest of his family, and to all those who were proud to call him a friend and colleague. Rest in Peace, Nigel.
'What Home Means to Me' A place where I feel safe A place where I am me A place where I feel warm A place where I am free I love the place I call my home I love the place where I am me I love it in the heart of my home Home is deep inside of me. Home is a roof over my head Home is a pillow on my bed Home is the smell of good things to eat Home is the floor under my feet Home is the door I want to open Home is the smiles on all our faces Home is the seat at the family table Home is the best of all the places I love the place I call my home I love the place where I am me I love it in the heart of my home Home is deep inside of me.
Torn from Home What we’re going to tell you about won’t take LONG We weren’t doing anything you could say was WRONG This is all about being in the wrong kind of PLACE This is all about having the wrong kind of FACE This is all about being in the wrong kind of LINE This is all about being in the wrong kind of TIME ‘cos we were called out turned out pushed out shoved out nowhere to call home we were all alone neither here nor there we were NOWHERE This is all about being on the wrong kind of SIDE This is all about having nowhere to HIDE This is all about us not having enough to EAT This is all about us having nowhere but the STREET ‘cos we were called out turned out pushed out shoved out nowhere to call home we were all alone neither here nor there we were NOWHERE
OSCAR & RACHEL ON CONVOY 62, BY MICHAEL ROSEN
IMAGINING WHAT HIS GREAT UNCLE OSCAR AND GREAT AUNT RACHEL WOULD HAVE EXPERIENCED AS THEY HAD NARROWLY MISSED ESCAPING BY BOAT AND INSTEAD ARRESTED AND TRANSPORTED TO AUSCHWITZ BY TRAIN, FROM PARIS IN FRANCE TO AUSCHWITZ IN POLAND CRAMMED IN A CATTLE TRUCK, WHERE ON ARRIVAL THEY WERE MURDERED BY THE NAZI REGIME IN GAS CHAMBERS.
What did you think, as you and Rachel sat on the floor of the cattle truck as it left Paris? Did you think of the watches and clocks you had mended ? Did you think of the tiny springs and wheels? You with your magnifying glass in your eye poring over the works so that a Monsieur or a Madame could tell the time, correct to the exact second? Did you think of the smell of the sea and the push of a boat against the waves? How you and Rachel would stand on the deck the wind in your faces as you sailed away? Did you look through the gaps in the slats on the side of the truck? Did you see farmers in fields? Women selling clothes in a market? Did you call out? Did you push your hands through the gaps? Did the night come creeping in? Did you see a light from a window where people sat and ate their evening meal? Did you see in the dark horror on Rachel's face? Did she see horror on yours? Did you shut her eyes? Did she shut yours? Thinking of children who shut their eyes to make the world go away? And then behind your eyelids did you think of the cattle that had once stood in the truck as they were taken away to the slaughter-house?
KINDNESS BY MICHAEL ROSEN
A knock at the door
A catch of breath
Find a way out
Or is that way death?
The danger of being heard
The danger of being seen
The danger of being us
But what does it mean?
Running in the dark
Listening for voices
Press on or hide?
Impossible choices.
The danger of being heard
The danger of being seen
The danger of being us
But what does it mean?
A knock at the door Is this the place?
The handle turns
A kindly face.
The danger of being heard
The danger of being seen
The danger of being us
But what does it mean?
On January 31 1944
at 2.30 in the morning in a village in France
4 policemen knock on the door of a woman
who has several lodgers in her house.
They take away one of them,
a man who has done nothing wrong.
They take him to a nearby town
to put him with 30 others
who have done nothing wrong.
He is taken away with them
and put on a train
to where he and they are put
with hundreds of others
who have done nothing wrong.
He is then taken away by train
carrying more than a thousand people
to another country
where he is put with thousands and thousands of others
who have done nothing wrong
and killed.
Martin Rozen
There is a report in the archives of the
‘département’ of the Vendée in western France
which says that:
on 31 January 1944,
officers Salomon, Mazouin, and Cabanetos
under command of Adjutant Le Papu,
from the Fontanay-le-Comte station,
in the Sainte-Hermine Brigade
acting on instructions from
Prefect Monsieur Gaston Jammet
according to the ordinance of Jan 20 1944
called at 2.30 in the morning
at the living quarters of Martin Rozen
in a property owned by Mme Bobières née Meunier
in the village of Sainte-Hermine in the Vendée.
The officers say in their report that Martin Rozen
opened the door and that
they took him and drove him to the station.
Martin Rozen, the report goes on, was:
“...born on 18 August 1890
at Krosniewice in Poland.
Jeweller, son of Jonas and Rachel,
naturalised French, Jewish race.
1 metre 62
brown eyes
oval face
straight nose
regular mouth
dressed in yellow cotton trousers and grey cotton jacket
wearing a Basque beret and low-heeled shoes.
Scar on his left cheek.
He was taken to the Parish Hall at La Roche-sur-Yon.”
...where he met up with 30 other Jews taken that night.
They were taken to the train station,
put on a wagon for La Rochelle,
then Poitiers, then Drancy internment camp.
From there he was taken to Paris Bobigny station,
put on Convoy 68 on February 10 and taken to Auschwitz.
From the Archives of La Vendée there is more:
On March 28 1944,
Madame Bobières wrote to the Prefect of the Vendée
at Roche-sur-Yon, Monsieur Jammet,
informing him that the ‘Feldgendarmerie’
and the Gendarmerie
came to her house on January 31st
and took Mr Rosen, of Jewish nationality,
who had been staying in her house for more than a year.
“A wicker basket containing some linen
belonging to Mr Rosen has been left in the room,
which had been sealed up by the Gendarmes.”
In this room, Mme Bobières writes:
"is my furniture, including a large cupboard,
containing things that are indispensable for my personal use:
sheets, clothes, linen, blankets and family papers.
Besides that, Rosen’s brother-in-law who lives in the next room,
and who is French, would look after the wicker basket,
which is the only piece of furniture belonging to Rosen.
I am 71 years old and infirm.
I have the honour of soliciting your goodwill
in taking off the seals to this room.
I thank you, Monsieur Le Préfet and
hope you will accept my respectful compliments.
Mme Bobières."
On the 15 April
the Prefect
Monsieur Gaston Jammet
(who was the person who sent out
the ordinance to round up the Jews in the Vendée)
informed Mme Bobières
that she would only be able to take the seals off
as and when the Occupation authorities will allow it.
Gaston Jammet
who had sent out orders to round up
the Jews of the Vendée,
had been ordered to do so by
Monsieur Louis Bourgain, Prefect of the region,
who had received orders to do so from
Pierre Laval, Chief of Government in conjunction with
the chief of the Regional Security Police,
(the Sicherheitspolizei), Karl Hermann Herold
who acted under instructions from
his superior officers, Helmut Knochen,
and Heinz Röthke both based in Paris..
Martin Rozen is my father’s uncle.
He didn’t return from Auschwitz.
His name is engraved on the commemorative wall at the
Museum of the Shoah in Paris.
There is a plaque on the wall in La Roche-sur-Yon
where the Parish Hall used to be
commemorating the round-up of
January 30 and 31 1944.
Martin Rozen There is a report in the archives of the ‘département’ of the Vendée in western France which says that: on 31 January 1944, officers Salomon, Mazouin, and Cabanetos under command of Adjutant Le Papu, from the Fontanay-le-Comte station, in the Sainte-Hermine Brigade acting on instructions from Prefect Monsieur Gaston Jammet according to the ordinance of Jan 20 1944 called at 2.30 in the morning at the living quarters of Martin Rozen in a property owned by Mme Bobières née Meunier in the village of Sainte-Hermine in the Vendée. The officers say in their report that Martin Rozen opened the door and that they took him and drove him to the station. Martin Rozen, the report goes on, was: “...born on 18 August 1890 at Krosniewice in Poland. Jeweller, son of Jonas and Rachel, naturalised French, Jewish race. 1 metre 62 brown eyes oval face straight nose regular mouth dressed in yellow cotton trousers and grey cotton jacket wearing a Basque beret and low-heeled shoes. Scar on his left cheek.” He was taken to the Parish Hall at La Roche-sur-Yon.” ...where he met up with 30 other Jews taken that night. They were taken to the train station, put on a wagon for La Rochelle, then Poitiers, then Drancy internment camp. From there he was taken to Paris Bobigny station, put on Convoy 68 on February 10 and taken to Auschwitz. From the Archives of La Vendée there is more: On March 28 1944, Madame Bobières wrote to the Prefect of the Vendée at Roche-sur-Yon, Monsieur Jammet, informing him that the ‘Feldgendarmerie’ and the Gendarmerie came to her house on January 31st and took Mr Rosen, of Jewish nationality, who had been staying in her house for more than a year. “A wicker basket containing some linen belonging to Mr Rosen has been left in the room, which had been sealed up by the Gendarmes.” In this room, Mme Bobières writes: "is my furniture, including a large cupboard, containing things that are indispensable for my personal use: sheets, clothes, linen, blankets and family papers. Besides that, Rosen’s brother-in-law who lives in the next room, and who is French, would look after the wicker basket, which is the only piece of furniture belonging to Rosen. I am 71 years old and infirm. I have the honour of soliciting your goodwill in taking off the seals to this room. I thank you, Monsieur Le Préfet and hope you will accept my respectful compliments. Mme Bobières." On the 15 April the Prefect Monsieur Gaston Jammet (who was the person who sent out the ordinance to round up the Jews in the Vendée) informed Mme Bobières that she would only be able to take the seals off as and when the Occupation authorities will allow it. Gaston Jammet who had sent out orders to round up the Jews of the Vendée, had been ordered to do so by Monsieur Louis Bourgain, Prefect of the region, who had received orders to do so from Pierre Laval, Chief of Government in conjunction with the chief of the Regional Security Police, (the Sicherheitspolizei), Karl Hermann Herold who acted under instructions from his superior officers, Helmut Knochen, and Heinz Röthke both based in Paris.. Martin Rozen is my father’s uncle. He didn’t return from Auschwitz. His name is engraved on the commemorative wall at the Museum of the Shoah in Paris. There is a plaque on the wall in La Roche-sur-Yon where the Parish Hall used to be commemorating the round-up of January 30 and 31 1944.
YOURS HOPEFULLY by Michael Rosen
Meine Lieben
- my dears,
from where we are now
but I can’t say how
we have hopes
we have fears
. So send us news
send us a word
Please send for our brothers
send for our mother.
Nothing more can be said
as this letter may be read by others.
Dear sisters
from your brothers
between us such a distance
meine Lieben ambestens**.
I close this letter
hoping with you
tomorrow will be better
meine Lieben my dears.
*meine Lieben’ (pronounced ‘my-na lee-bn’), meaning ‘my dears’.
**ambestens (pronounced as if in southern British English: ‘um...(rhyming with ‘hum’) bestens’ as if in English it was written ‘bestence’), meaning ‘best wishes’.
Lyrics by Michael Rosen, Musical Composition by Bethany Kirby commissioned by Historyworks
Verse 1 (twice – soloist 2 lines; small group 2 lines; then full choir 4 lines)
Home is a roof over my head
Home is a pillow on my bed
Home is the smell of good things to eat
Home is the floor under my feet< /p>
Pre-chorus (unison)
A place where I feel safe
A place where I am me
A place where I feel warm
A place where I am free< /p>
Chorus (unison)
I love the place I call my home
I love the place where I am me
I love it in the heart of my home
Home is deep inside of me. < /p>
Verse 2 (twice
Home is the door I want to open
Home is the smiles on all our faces
Home is the seat at the family table
Home is the best of all the places
Pre-chorus(with harmony
A place where I feel safe
A place where I am me
A place where I feel warm
A place where I am free
Chorus(with harmony; sing twice)>
I love the place I call my home
I love the place where I am me
I love it in the heart of my home
Home is deep inside of me.
Lyrics by Michael Rosen, Musical Composition by Bethany Kirby commissioned by Historyworks
Verse 1 (twice – soloist 2 lines; small group 2 lines; then full choir 4 lines)
Home is a roof over my head
Home is a pillow on my bed
Home is the smell of good things to eat
Home is the floor under my feet< /p>
Pre-chorus (unison)
A place where I feel safe
A place where I am me
A place where I feel warm
A place where I am free< /p>
Chorus (unison)
I love the place I call my home
I love the place where I am me
I love it in the heart of my home
Home is deep inside of me. < /p>
Verse 2 (twice
Home is the door I want to open
Home is the smiles on all our faces
Home is the seat at the family table
Home is the best of all the places
Pre-chorus(with harmony
A place where I feel safe
A place where I am me
A place where I feel warm
A place where I am free
Chorus(with harmony; sing twice)>
I love the place I call my home
I love the place where I am me
I love it in the heart of my home
Home is deep inside of me.
Lyrics by Michael Rosen, Musical Composition by Bethany Kirby commisioned by Historyworks
Verse 1 (twice – soloist 2 lines; small group 2 lines; then full choir 4 lines)
Home is a roof over my head
Home is a pillow on my bed
Home is the smell of good things to eat
Home is the floor under my feet< /p>
Pre-chorus (unison)
A place where I feel safe
A place where I am me
A place where I feel warm
A place where I am free< /p>
Chorus (unison)
I love the place I call my home
I love the place where I am me
I love it in the heart of my home
Home is deep inside of me. < /p>
Verse 2 (twice
Home is the door I want to open
Home is the smiles on all our faces
Home is the seat at the family table
Home is the best of all the places
Pre-chorus(with harmony
A place where I feel safe
A place where I am me
A place where I feel warm
A place where I am free
Chorus(with harmony; sing twice)>
I love the place I call my home
I love the place where I am me
I love it in the heart of my home
Home is deep inside of me.
Lyrics by Michael Rosen (commissioned by Historyworks)
Musical Arrangement by Bethany Kirby.
LYRICS
What we’re going to tell you about won’t take LONG
We weren’t doing anything you could say was WRONG
This is all about being in the wrong kind of PLACE
This is all about having the wrong kind of FACE
This is all about being in the wrong kind of LINE
This is all about being in the wrong kind of TIME
‘cos we were
called out
turned out
pushed out
shoved out
nowhere to call home we were all alone
neither here nor there
we were NOWHERE
This is all about being on the wrong kind of SIDE
This is all about having nowhere to HIDE
This is all about us not having enough to EAT
This is all about us having nowhere but the STREET
‘cos we were
called out
turned out
pushed out
shoved out
nowhere to call home
we were all alone
neither here nor there
we were NOWHERE
Lyrics by Michael Rosen (commissioned by Historyworks)
Musical Arrangement by Bethany Kirby.
LYRICS
What we’re going to tell you about won’t take LONG
We weren’t doing anything you could say was WRONG
This is all about being in the wrong kind of PLACE
This is all about having the wrong kind of FACE
This is all about being in the wrong kind of LINE
This is all about being in the wrong kind of TIME
‘cos we were
called out
turned out
pushed out
shoved out
nowhere to call home we were all alone
neither here nor there
we were NOWHERE
This is all about being on the wrong kind of SIDE
This is all about having nowhere to HIDE
This is all about us not having enough to EAT
This is all about us having nowhere but the STREET
‘cos we were
called out
turned out
pushed out
shoved out
nowhere to call home
we were all alone
neither here nor there
we were NOWHERE
Lyrics by Michael Rosen (commissioned by Historyworks)
Musical Arrangement by Bethany Kirby.
LYRICS
What we’re going to tell you about won’t take LONG
We weren’t doing anything you could say was WRONG
This is all about being in the wrong kind of PLACE
This is all about having the wrong kind of FACE
This is all about being in the wrong kind of LINE
This is all about being in the wrong kind of TIME
‘cos we were
called out
turned out
pushed out
shoved out
nowhere to call home we were all alone
neither here nor there
we were NOWHERE
This is all about being on the wrong kind of SIDE
This is all about having nowhere to HIDE
This is all about us not having enough to EAT
This is all about us having nowhere but the STREET
‘cos we were
called out
turned out
pushed out
shoved out
nowhere to call home
we were all alone
neither here nor there
we were NOWHERE
Lyrics by Michael Rosen (commissioned by Historyworks)
Musical Arrangement by Bethany Kirby.
LYRICS
What we’re going to tell you about won’t take LONG
We weren’t doing anything you could say was WRONG
This is all about being in the wrong kind of PLACE
This is all about having the wrong kind of FACE
This is all about being in the wrong kind of LINE
This is all about being in the wrong kind of TIME
‘cos we were
called out
turned out
pushed out
shoved out
nowhere to call home we were all alone
neither here nor there
we were NOWHERE
This is all about being on the wrong kind of SIDE
This is all about having nowhere to HIDE
This is all about us not having enough to EAT
This is all about us having nowhere but the STREET
‘cos we were
called out
turned out
pushed out
shoved out
nowhere to call home
we were all alone
neither here nor there
we were NOWHERE
Commisioned by Historyworks
Lyrics: Michael Rosen
Recording, Music & Score: Bethany Kirby
Download a copy of the SCORE HERE
Verse 1
Come Sisters and brothers
Come Fathers and mothers
Come on down to Stourbridge Fair
Come Girls and boys
there's puppets and toys
Come on down to Stourbridge Fair
Verse 2
See Singers and sailors
See Tinkers and tailors
Come on down to Stourbridge Fair
For collars and hats
For baskets and mats
Come on down to Stourbridge Fair
CHORUS
Look over here, look over there
Come on down to Stourbridge Fair
Look over here, look over there
Come on down to Stourbridge Fair
Verse 3
For purses and saddles
For Boars and paddles
Come on down to Stourbridge Fair
You can Sail on the Cam
You can buy pots of jam
Come on down to Stourbridge Fair
Verse 4
Toy-makers and pewterers
Fishmongers and fruiterers
Come on down to Stourbridge Fair
There's true words and lies
jellied eels and pies
Come on down to Stourbridge Fair
CHORUS
Verse 5
What a Ruckus and roister
there's shellfish and oyster
Come on down to Stourbridge Fair
We've had Laughter and tears
for 8 hundred years
Come on down to Stourbridge Fair
CHORUS
THE PARKER’S PIECE FEAST (She’ll be Coming Round the Mountain)
Words by Dave Cohen Sung and Transcribed by Bethany Kirby
Verse 1
Was in 1838 at Parker’s Piece
Fifteen thousand ate a massive lunchtime feast
It was for the celebration, Queen Victoria’s Coronation
Must have been a million farts and burps released.
CHORUS:
Singing I, I, yippee yippee I
Singing I, I, pickle bread and pie
Singing such a massive feast for thousands down at Parker’s Piece,
Full to bursting by the time we said bye bye
Verse 2
More than four thousand five hundred loaves of bread
Fifty tons of beef to fill each hungry head.
Stacks of pickles salt and mustard and we guess a lot of custard
For the sixteen hundred puddings at the spread.
CHORUS:
Verse 3
With the rivers full of sewage, they were fearful,
Drinking water, and so folk all had a beerful.
Even children drank from pots and tiny tots were given tots,
Little wonder everybody was so cheerful.
CHORUS:
Verse 4
When the meal was done the fun did not stop there,
Choi-rs singing, a balloon sent in the air.
Once the kids had stuffed their faces they took part in silly races
Riding donkeys, rams and pigs from here to there.
CHORUS:
Verse 5
There were games and prizes in the meal deal,
Biscuit bolting, orange bobbing, grab an eel.
Even prizes there for winning for the champion of grinning,
Perfect ending to the greatest ever meal.
CHORUS :
Poem by Michael Rosen to mark Holocaust Memorial Day 2018
There are gaps
there are blanks
in the house
of my life
there's a face
nothing more
something gone
from my life
She was here
he was there
in the rooms
of my life
there's a place
for them both
in the words
of my life.
This poem was commissioned by Helen Weinstein, Director of Historyworks. Michael Rosen and Helen Weinstein and her team at Historyworks are working with a wide range of primary and secondary schools to engage young people with the atrocities of the past and to recall missing people in their own words, writing poetry and narratives and songs for this year's theme of this year's HMD which is 'The Power of Words'.
Poem by Michael Rosen
Meine Lieben*
my dears,
from where we are now
but I can’t say how
we have hopes
we have fears.
So send us news
send us a word
as we haven’t heard.
Please send for our brothers
send for our mother.
Nothing more can be said
as this letter may be read
by others.
Dear sisters
from your brothers
between us such a distance
meine Lieben
ambestens**.
I close this letter
hoping with you
tomorrow will be better
meine Lieben
my dears.
*meine Lieben’ (pronounced ‘my-na lee-bn’), meaning ‘my dears’.
**ambestens (pronounced as if in southern British English: ‘um...(rhyming with ‘hum’) bestens’ as if in English it was written ‘bestence’), meaning ‘best wishes’.
A poem by Michael Rosen
A knock at the door
A catch of breath
Find a way out
Or is that way death?
The danger of being heard
The danger of being seen
The danger of being us
But what does it mean?
Running in the dark
Listening for voices
Press on or hide?
Impossible choices.
The danger of being heard
The danger of being seen
The danger of being us
But what does it mean?
A knock at the door
Is this the place?
The handle turns
A kindly face.
The danger of being heard
The danger of being seen
The danger of being us
But what does it mean?
Traditional song of longing sung by women on Tokelau Islands as their men were taken away in slave ships in the 1860s performed by ReSound Acappella Choir.
Sayyid Dawish, Arr. Reem Kelani performed by ReSound Acappella Choir, based on an Egyptian love song – ‘Visit me at least once a year, it’s not fair to forget about me’ Well known throughout the Arabic speaking world as a song of longing for home .
Zourouni Kulli Sana Marra
Haram Tinsouni Bil Marra
Zourouni Kulli Sana Marra
Haram Tinsouni Bil Marra x3
Ana ‘Amalti Eih Fikum
Tishakouni wa-Shakikum
Ana Toul’Umri Badaadikum
Haram, Tinsouni Bil Marra
Yalla Alwehd traditional Syrian song ; ‘Come children, come with me’
Yalla, yalla , ya awlehd
Song especially commissioned by Historyworks to mark HMD 2018, with lyrics written by the renowned poet Michael Rosen and arranged for voices by the composer, Kirsty Martin and performed by ReSound Acappella Choir
Verse 1:
There are gaps x x there are blanks x x
in the house x x of my life x x
there's a face x x nothing more x x
something gone x x from my life x x
Verse 2:
She was here …he was there…
in the rooms… of my life…
there's a place… for them both…
in the words… of my life…
CODA:
There are gaps
there are blanks
in the house
of my life
by Shakih Abdurraheem Muslim Dost, a British citizen imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay 2002-2005 performed by ReSound Acappella choir
Just as the heart beats
In the darkness of the body
So I despite this cage
I continue to beat with life
Those who have no courage or honour
Consider themselves free, but they are slaves
I am flying on the wings of thought
And so, even in this cage
I know a greater freedom
I am flying on the wings of thought
Just as the heart beats
In the darkness of the body
So I despite this cage
I continue to beat with life
On the wings of thought
(Words and music by Jim Boyes) performed by ReSound Acappella Choir
Soaring skywards; leaping sideways
Do or die words cleave the air
Joy and laughter; mornin's after
Raise the rafters, we don't care
If the roof’s beyond repair
Raise the rafters, raise the rafters
Raise the rafters, we don't care
If the roof’s beyond repair
Sisters, brothers, to all others,
Let this be our guiding star
Hearts on fire (but) no messiah
Hear the music from a-far
What we sing is what we are
Hear the music, hear the music
Hear the music from afar
What we sing is what we are.
Over hills and over valleys
Over mountains over seas
Nation shall sing unto nation
Until nations cease to be
Unison in harmony
Until nations, until nations
Until nations cease to be
Unison in harmony
Until nations, until nations
Until nations cease to be
Unison in harmony
This song goes to a traditional shanty tune ‘Roll the old chariots along’, text, Boff Whalley performed by ReSound Acappella Choir, which you can hear from the concert where Rowena Whitehead had invited the audience to participate in learning the songs!
VERSE 1
Well we’ve come a long way for to find ourselves a home x 3
Because we’re citizens of the world
CHORUS
And you’re more than, more than welcome here x3
Cos you’re citizens of the world
VERSE 2
My parents and their parents and their parents before x3
The were citizens of the world
CHORUS
VERSE 3
Here’s hand to help you ashore x3
Cos you’re citizens of the world
CHORUS
VERSE 4
Well our nation’s roots go a long way down x3
And we’re citizens of the world
CHORUS
Alison Burns, words adapted from a poem, Vow, by Clare Shaw performed by ReSound Acappella Choir
Yes, say yes, say yes, say yes
[‘Cos when]
Love had no road, we built it
We shouldered its stones and its dirt, and built it
We laid aside our hurt and built it
When love needed a road
Love had no road, we shouldered its dirt
we laid aside our hurt and built it
When love needed a road
Love had no road, we shouldered its dirt
we laid aside our hurt
When love had no road
Put the word of your hand in mine and say yes, say yes
Text: Rafaela Chacon Nardi, music: Electo Silva, Cuba performed by Resound Acappella Choir
I believe in peace, in children, in doves, in freedom, in weeping and happiness, in your heart, in light
I believe in the new country
And our animated love of life.
Creo en la Paz, los ninos, las palomas, la libertad
El llanto, y la alegria, tu corazon, la luz
Creo, creo en la paz
Creo en la patria nueva
Y nuestro amor unanime al la vida
Words and music by Alison Burns performed by Resound Acappella Choir
Not by one do we run, not by one do we stand.
Not by one do we carry, not by one do we plan.
Not by one do we fly, not by one do we land . Not by one, by one
Not by one do we shine, not by one do we sing.
Not by one do we finish , not by one do we begin.
Not by one do we climb, not by one do we win. Not by one, by one
Not by one do we soar, not by one do we break.
Not by one do we dance, not by one do we make.
Not by one do we love, not by one do we ache. Not by one, by one
Not by one do we try, not by one do we strive.
Not by one do we manage, not by one do we survive.
Not by one do we roar, not by one do we thrive. Not by one, by one
Song composed by Sue Kirkpatrick chosen for the powerful and uplifting lyrics which guided the event to the closing words when Helen Weinstein thanked everyone for their generosity of time and talent, fundraising and support for Refugees. In this recording you can hear that the leader of ReSound, Rowena Whitehead had asked the audience to join in their voices, which everyone really enjoyed!
Part 1
We are one world, one voice, one heart beating
We are one world, one voice, one heart beating
Part 2
Everybody living in this world
Everybody’s got a voice, let’s use it
Everybody living in this world;
One heart beating
Part 3
We are one world – we are one heart beating
We are one world – one heart beating
This song has a terrific message which resonates with the HMD theme for this year and the message is that there is a way to build a positive future. The song is by
Dr. Ysaye Marie Barnwell
(Sweet Honey in the Rock)
Part 1
For each child that's born
a morning star rises and sings
to the universe who we are
Part 2
For each child that's born
star rise and sing
who we are
Part 3
We are one x 4
This song is chosen for HMD because the message of respecting and embracing diversities and promoting equalities is highlighted by Cambridge City Council as the value communicated by the marking of Holocaust Memorial Day.
You may recognize the melody adapted from the very famous Ode to Joy; and in the Road To Peace we have lyrics composed by Paul Seeger, original melody by Beethoven, musical arrangement by Paul Halley.
Lyrics for Road to Peace
Build the road of peace before us
Build it wide and deep and long
Speed the slow, remind the eager
Help the weak and guide the strong
None shall push aside another, none shall let another fall
Work beside me Sisters and Brothers
All for one and one for all
Build a house of peace together
Make the walls both firm and strong
May it be a place of welcome
Where all people may belong.
Every creed and every culture
All-embracing human race
Let the peace of true forgiveness
Joy and blessings fill this place.
This song is chosen for HMD because the message of respecting and embracing diversities and promoting equalities is highlighted by Cambridge City Council as the value communicated by the marking of Holocaust Memorial Day.
You may recognize the melody adapted from the very famous Ode to Joy; and in the Road To Peace we have lyrics composed by Paul Seeger, original melody by Beethoven, musical arrangement by Paul Halley.
Lyrics for Road to Peace
Build the road of peace before us
Build it wide and deep and long
Speed the slow, remind the eager
Help the weak and guide the strong
None shall push aside another, none shall let another fall
Work beside me Sisters and Brothers
All for one and one for all
Build a house of peace together
Make the walls both firm and strong
May it be a place of welcome
Where all people may belong.
Every creed and every culture
All-embracing human race
Let the peace of true forgiveness
Joy and blessings fill this place.
WHEN LOVE HAD NO ROAD resonates with the HMD testimonies of those who have survived genocides and are dislocated by war, where the journey along the road as a migrant or refugee is so powerful as an experience in their travels and as a metaphor for their survival, and this lyric the road is about love, because it is love that can restore and build a road, it is love that can build a structure to restore humanity!
Melody by Alison Burns
Song licences available from http://aliburns.co.uk/song/when-love-had-no-road/
Lyrics adapted from a poem called 'Vow' composed by Clare Shaw
Yes, say yes, say yes, say yes!
Put the word of your hand in mine and say yes
When love had no road we built it
We shouldered its stones and its dirt and built it
We laid aside our hurt and built it
When love had no road
WHEN LOVE HAD NO ROAD resonates with the HMD testimonies of those who have survived genocides and are dislocated by war, where the journey along the road as a migrant or refugee is so powerful as an experience in their travels and as a metaphor for their survival, and this lyric the road is about love, because it is love that can restore and build a road, it is love that can build a structure to restore humanity!
Melody by Alison Burns
Song licences available from http://aliburns.co.uk/song/when-love-had-no-road/
Lyrics adapted from a poem called 'Vow' composed by Clare Shaw
Yes, say yes, say yes, say yes!
Put the word of your hand in mine and say yes
When love had no road we built it
We shouldered its stones and its dirt and built it
We laid aside our hurt and built it
When love had no road
Part 1
We are one world, one voice, one heart beating
We are one world, one voice, one heart beating
Part 2
Everybody living in this world
Everybody’s got a voice, let’s use it
Everybody living in this world; One heart beating
Part 3
We are one world – we are one heart beating
We are one world – one heart beating
Words for this version of the Hebrew Cannon:
Lie la lie lie
Lie la lie lie
Lie la lie lie la lie lie
Lie lie
Lie lie lie lie
Lie lie lie la lie lie
Lie lie
Lie la lie lie
Lie la lie lie la lie lie
This is a traditional jewish tune which has been set out as a song with a musical arrangement and license purchased by Historyworks for our HMD project and performances from Su Hart's The Joy of Singing Book available from www.baka.net or contacting Sue at su@bakka.co.uk
Lyrics by Michael Rosen (commissioned by Historyworks)
Musical Arrangement by Kirsty Martin. Download Score HERE
Performed by ReSound Acappella Choir & Milton Road Primary Choir.
Verse 1:
There are gaps x x there are blanks x x
in the house x x of my life x x
there's a face x x nothing more x x
something gone x x from my life x x
**Verse 2: ****
She was here …he was there…
in the rooms… of my life…
there's a place… for them both…
in the words… of my life…
**CODA: ****
There are gaps
there are blanks
in the house
of my life
Lyrics by Michael Rosen (commissioned by Historyworks)
Musical Arrangement by Kirsty Martin. Download Score HERE
Verse 1:
There are gaps x x there are blanks x x
in the house x x of my life x x
there's a face x x nothing more x x
something gone x x from my life x x
*Verse 2: *
She was here …he was there…
in the rooms… of my life…
there's a place… for them both…
in the words… of my life…
*CODA: *
There are gaps
there are blanks
in the house
of my life
Lyrics by Michael Rosen (commissioned by Historyworks)
Musical Arrangement by Kirsty Martin. Download Score HERE
Verse 1:
There are gaps x x there are blanks x x
in the house x x of my life x x
there's a face x x nothing more x x
something gone x x from my life x x
*Verse 2: *
She was here …he was there…
in the rooms… of my life…
there's a place… for them both…
in the words… of my life…
*CODA: *
There are gaps
there are blanks
in the house
of my life
Lyrics by Michael Rosen (commissioned by Historyworks)
Musical Arrangement by Kirsty Martin. Download Score HERE
Verse 1:
There are gaps x x there are blanks x x
in the house x x of my life x x
there's a face x x nothing more x x
something gone x x from my life x x
*Verse 2: *
She was here …he was there…
in the rooms… of my life…
there's a place… for them both…
in the words… of my life…
*CODA: *
There are gaps
there are blanks
in the house
of my life
Lyrics by Michael Rosen (commissioned by Historyworks)
Musical Arrangement by Kirsty Martin. Download Score HERE
Verse 1:
There are gaps x x there are blanks x x
in the house x x of my life x x
there's a face x x nothing more x x
something gone x x from my life x x
Verse 2:
She was here …he was there…
in the rooms… of my life…
there's a place… for them both…
in the words… of my life…
CODA:
There are gaps
there are blanks
in the house
of my life
Conducted by Rowena Whitehead, Mario Satchwell and Anna-Louise Lawrence leading the choirs of ReSound Acappella Choir & Milton Road Primary Choir and Cambridge primary school singers.
WELCOME TO THE CIVIC EVENT
The Right Worshipful the Mayor of Cambridge, George Pippas, explains why we mark Holocaust Memorial Day as a city.
CAMBRIDGE PLEDGE TO EQUALITY
Councillor Richard Johnson affirms Cambridge as a place which rejects all forms of persecution, discrimination, and hatred.
THE POWER OF WORDS
Holocaust survivor, Eva Clarke, born in a Nazi concentration camp just days before Liberation, underlines the importance of Holocaust Education and introduces this year’s theme, ‘The Power of Words’.
SIX FOR SIX
Six candles are lit to pay tribute to the six million murdered during the Holocaust. Candles are symbolic to honour the victims of the genocides that have scarred the world in the past 100 years, and the persecutions of minorities which are still tragically ongoing today.
SUMMONING UP THE ABSENTEES
Song especially commissioned by Historyworks to mark HMD 2018, with lyrics written by the renowned poet Michael Rosen and arranged for voices by the composer, Kirsty Martin and performed by ReSound Acappella Choir & Milton Road Primary Choir.
Visiting guest speaker, Jo Ingabire, the co-founding director of the charity Survivors Tribune describes her experiences during the genocide in Rwanda. In Kinyarwanda, there’s a saying that goes, ‘The name is the person’ and today this carries more meaning than ever.
_“Words create. They create words adorned with love, poetry, music or hate and fear. In the past they have cursed nations with wars born of hateful ideology, and we see the residue of that even in this age. Today however, words will birth life and joy because I stand before you to say that words saved my life”._
Young people’s poetry from Coleridge Community College, Parkside Community College and Trumpington Community College reflects on the testimony of life stories told by survivors of Genocides, taking the blank page as a friend to show that words belong to them.
Graham Lewis, Development Officer, Cambridgeshire Alliance for Independent Living tells how people with disabilities receive verbal abuse but some advise to ignore it with the adage ‘sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me’. However, for disabled people words matter, and ‘names WILL always hurt me’. Lines of poetry by Martin Niemöller.
Visiting guest speaker, Peter Lantos, was deported to Bergen-Belsen from Hungary; he survived, studied medicine, became Professor of Neuropathology in London, and on retirement exchanged the writing of medical papers for writing books and plays.
“Words of hate can turn into actions of hate, in relation to my childhood experience of the Holocaust and the aftermath under Communist dictatorship in Hungary. Remembering these events may help all of us to reach an understanding and forgiveness”.
The ‘Leading Notes’ composing and singing group from Impington Village Community College respond to seeing news from war-torn areas and their realization that children who are unsafe or on the move fleeing these situations often have no access to education.
Lyrics
Walking down a dusty road
Children's eyes are full of hope
They're chasing their wildest dreams
While sitting in this hopeless scene
They don't get to go to school
Their potential's never full
It's our job to make this right
Broken birds can still take flight
Without the foundation
Of our education
They can't build a better world
And it's easy to forget
Our fortune and good fate
And it's easy to remember
The subjects that we hate
But we can fly on wisdom's wings
So when we hear the caged birds sing
So let them fly, touch the sky
Build a better world
In a distant better world
I hear laughing boys and girls
Echo off the classroom walls
I see their ghosts across the hall
Without the foundation
Of our education
They can't build a better world
And it's easy to forget
Our fortune and good fate
And it's easy to remember
The subjects that we hate
But we can fly on wisdom's wings
So when we hear the caged birds sing
Let them fly, touch the sky
Build a better world.
They sit on that dirty road
While we sit in the classroom
They cry out for enough to eat
While exams drown us in our gloom
They sleep on the pavements
While we sleep in our beds
We moan about homework
While they're trapped in their heads
Without the foundation
Of our education
They can't build a better world
And it's easy to forget
Our fortune and good fate
And it's easy to remember
The subjects that we hate
But we can fly on wisdom's wings
So when we hear the caged birds sing
Let them fly, touch the sky
Build a better world
Daniel Zeichner, MP for Cambridge, describes how there have been great speeches in the past and present – speeches that unite and speeches that divide – but we need to be defending universal rights.
Elliot Harris, Chair of CamCRAG, Cambridge Convoy Refugee Action Group, & Social Enterprise Supervisor at Wintercomfort. Elliot talks about how volunteers from Cambridge to Calais show that anybody can turn words into actions.
Song composed by Sue Kirkpatrick chosen for the powerful and uplifting lyrics which will guide the event to the closing words.
The event ends with those gathered invited to unite their voices to sing or hum along to the Hebrew Cannon as we hear Michael Rosen’s poem called “Hopefully Yours” commissioned for the HMD human rights poetry and song concert.
Michael Rosen talks about his Historyworks project with Cambridge schools called 'History Beneath Our Feet' collaborating on poetry inspired by local history, interviewed on BBC Cambs with BBC's Jeremy Sallis on Lunchtime Live, broadcast on 29th November 2017
Year 5 pupils of Ridgefied Primary School wrote a song about the coming of the Railways to Cambridge in 1845, and who was benefitting from the railways like the Headly Eagle foundry enterprise, and who was not doing well like those who ran haulage businesses using the river as a trade route, or horse and wagons for transporting goods.
Year 4 pupils at Ridgefield Primary wrote a song about Helen’s research using the newspaper accounts of devestation to the Victorian railway cottages on Mill Road and what happened when a bomb fell there in World War 2, and the students came up with meaningful lines imagining hiding in the cupboard under the stairs, what people heard, smelt, felt.
Year 3 wrote a song about Helen Weinstein of Histoworks' mini lesson with them showing them the Victorian School where Ridgefield used to be by the corner of Mill Road featuring learning maths on an abacas and the punishment of the D for Dunce cap!
This history trail audio is narrated by the poet Michael Rosen, with script researched by Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks. This recording is part of a series of Cambridge history trails which have lyrics inspired by 'history beneath our feat' performed by local schoolchildren, with poems by the top poet Michael Rosen and songs by the funny team at CBBC's songwriters commissioned by Historyworks. To find more trails and further information, go to http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails
Along the bank of the river Cam, behind Kings College, an important poem is inscribed on a stone. This isn’t just any poem, it was written by Xu Zhi Mo, one of China’s foremost poets of the twentieth century, and it’s titled ‘On Leaving Cambridge.’ Xu Zhi Mo studied here as a visiting scholar, and when he left in 1928, he wrote a poem which captured his love for Cambridge, and the beauty of the city. Don’t just take our word for it: Mo’s poem is considered so important in China today that school children there are expected to learn it by rote!
Poetry is incredibly important to Chinese culture, used as a medium to shape and transmit cultural values, teach children morals and celebrate the complex and beautiful Chinese language. Historically, China has drawn on the landscape and natural surroundings to inspire art, music and poetry. Xu Zhi Mo did the same, yet this time he chose Cambridge as his inspiration, capturing the city in a Chinese style and creating a new image of English nature in China.
In the 21st century, Chinese culture has a huge and growing influence in Britain, in our cuisine, for example. It’s nice to know that while we enjoy Chinese culture at home, adults and children in China can experience a little bit of ‘Cambridge’ in their day-to-day lives. Here is a verse from Mo’s poem, is there anything you recognise?
‘The golden willows by the riverside Are young brides in the setting sun; Their glittering reflections on the shimmering river Keep undulating in my heart’
This history trail audio is narrated by the poet Michael Rosen, with script researched by Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks. This recording is part of a series of Cambridge history trails which have lyrics inspired by 'history beneath our feat' performed by local schoolchildren, with poems by the top poet Michael Rosen and songs by the funny team at CBBC's songwriters commissioned by Historyworks. To find more trails and further information, go to http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails
When it was first opened in 1838 on what was then the outskirts of town, the Cambridge Workhouse was called ‘The Cambridge Union Workhouse’.
It was originally built in response to strict new rules set out in a transformative Act of Parliament changing welfare, called the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. This ordered that the care of the poor should be taken over from your local parish, and instead be overseen by Boards of Guardians who ran workhouses for an entire town or city or region.
Thus Cambridge Union Workhouse was built to take in people who were unable to afford their rent, and put a roof over their heads. They were called ‘Inmates’ like people in prison. It was horrible for families because they were split up, not just parents from their children, but also men and women were in separate buildings, and usually siblings were split up too, into the girl and boy houses – and you can see in the plans they had separate school rooms, canteens, play areas and dormitories for sleeping. Parents were only able to meet up once a week at most, just for a short time on Sunday after Church, unless the child was under three. Imagine living in the same institution but not able to see or talk to members of your own family?
And workhouses were very much a place for children - in 1839 almost half the workhouse inmates in the country were under the age of 16. Children could be flogged ( beaten with a stick) for minor offences. Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist describes workhouse life for a child in London. Here in Cambridge, children had to work from the age of seven, with just three hours a day for school. Children were set chores that hurt your hands, such as digging up potatoes, and breaking up stones to make gravel, for hours at a time, day after day. On one occasion a Cambridge inmate was caught stealing a potato from the Workhouse allotment, and he was given 7 days hard labour as a punishment. All the adults had to work ten hours a day with few breaks. Women were set to do cleaning and laundry and cooking, often working for other institutions, so that they earned money for the Workhouse which they couldn’t keep. Men’s work was back- breaking too, grinding wheat and corn, breaking up rocks into stones, unpicking old ropes which tore up fingers and made them bleed.
The workhouse was usually overcrowded and it was deliberately made to be an unappealing place to live. This was to try to discourage people from ending up there, because the costs of providing housing was paid for by local taxes. In some cases people were known as tramps, because if they couldn’t prove they were born locally, they were told they could only stay for a night at a time, then tramp on. They would be given a bed in a tramp cell and some dinner in exchange for specific work chores, but couldn’t come back again for several more nights, so they would walk from workhouse to workhouse every day moving from town to town across the country, which earned them the name of “tramps”. In Cambridge, there was a row of tramp cells uncovered in a recent archaeological excavation showing that they were along the front garden of the Workhouse right next to Mill Road.
It was considered very shameful to end up in a workhouse one woman remembers the threat:
We stayed with my Grandmother until November when my granny got us a ticket for the workhouse. My mother said ‘No, I won’t take my children to the workhouse – you’ll need that before I will’.
The trouble was ...
This history trail audio is narrated by the poet Michael Rosen, with script researched by Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks. This recording is part of a series of Cambridge history trails which have lyrics inspired by 'history beneath our feat' performed by local schoolchildren, with poems by the top poet Michael Rosen and songs by the funny team at CBBC's songwriters commissioned by Historyworks. To find more trails and further information, go to http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails
Cambridge was growing rapidly in Victorian times, with new workers arriving with their families needing to be housed and for children to be educated. This school was built in the Victorian era to meet this need.
The population was growing because of industrialisation and the coming of the Railway in 1845 which brought more trade and families to live and work in Cambridge. Some poor children went to Ragged Schools, offering poor and homeless children free schooling. Charles Dickens wrote about children going to the Ragged School in London in his famous story ‘A Christmas Carol’ which he set in his own Victorian times. There was a Ragged School in Cambridge which was founded by a charity. It was located near St Matthew's Primary School on what was then called Albert Street and opened in 1854. The building is still there today, as part of the Brunswick Nursery. There are descriptions from Victorian diarists who were fundraising for shoes and clothes and books to help support the children attending Cambridge’s Ragged School. The Victorian Schools in Cambridge were built in response to the first Education Act past in 1870. What further increased the need for schools was the Elementary Education Act past in 1880 when it became the law that children had to attend school between the age of 5 and 10. Parents paid about 2p (2d) each week for them to attend. In 1891 the law changed so that parents no longer had to pay for their children’s education from the age of 5 to 10. So it was now free for children to go to school. All children aged between 5 and 7 were taught in the Infant School, but from the age of 7 girls and boys were taught separately. Girls and boys had to use different entrances and had separate classrooms. The Victorian school day started at 9 o’clock sharp. The bell would ring to tell children it was time for school as not many people had clocks or watches at home.
You needed to make sure you were on time, or you would be sent to the Headteacher’s Office for a telling off and some Headteachers hit pupils with a cane! The day always started with Assembly, which went on until 9.30am. At Assembly the Headteacher would lead all children in saying ‘The Lord’s Prayer’, singing a hymn and listening to a story from the Bible. After Assembly it would be time to get on with your lessons. Each day lessons were based around the ‘3 Rs’: •Reading •wRiting •aRithmetic
The first lesson of the day was reading, which started straight after the register had been taken. At the start of the lesson everyone would be given a ‘reader’ by a monitor. A ’reader’ was a special book that had simple sentences for children to learn to read from. Children took it in turns to read out loud to the rest of the class, stood at the front of the classroom while the other children would follow along in their own ‘reader’. Children learnt to write on slates using thin slate pencils, as it was much cheaper than paper. Once they were older they used copybooks, made of paper, which they wrote in with pen using ink stored in inkwells on their desks, which often dripped ink and could get very messy! Children learnt to count using an abacus but were also expected to do a lot of mental arithmetic, meaning doing lots of sums in your head. They learnt to add, subtract, multiply and divide using this method of the abacus and practicing doing sums in your head. Some of the curriculum was experimental and children had object lessons, where ...
This history trail audio is narrated by the poet Michael Rosen, with script researched by Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks. This recording is part of a series of Cambridge history trails which have lyrics inspired by 'history beneath our feat' performed by local schoolchildren, with poems by the top poet Michael Rosen and songs by the funny team at CBBC's songwriters commissioned by Historyworks. To find more trails and further information, go to http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails
The Industrial Revolution that swept across Cambridge in the Victorian era brought many changes to the city. As the population rose, people began living in small houses without baths, toilets or clean running water. In these cramped streets, some people even threw their sewage out of the window, or into the river. This created a massive increase in sicknesses and diseases in each neighbourhood, which the authorities struggled to control. Believing that infection was carried in the bad smells known as ‘miasmas’, doctors founded the Isolation Hospital in the fields way out of town to take people away from these poisonous odours. The concept of germs existed in the late Victrorian era, but the majority of scientists didn’t believe this. Anningston, the Medical Officer for Health for Cambridge, was unsure about the germ theory preferring to believe instead that diseases were indeed the result of bad smells or ‘miasmas’. This, it was believed, explained why diseases were more common in the unsanitary areas of town that stank. By isolating a patient from the bad odours it was believed they would be cured.
Right up until the end of the Victorian era, rivers in Cambridge were were essentially open sewers because the Sewage Pumping Station wasn’t build until 1894. Illnesses such cholera, typhus, measles, and scarlet fever were common but it new cases of smallpox, as well as an increasing number of cases of diarrhoea in infants that prompted the building of the Isolation hospital in 1885.
At the Hospital, there was a separate block for each disease, and strict hygiene rules to stop patients getting another illness – you didn’t want smallpox AND scarlet fever!
The hospital was formed of seven separate wings radiating out from a central hub, each wing for a different infectious disease. Within each wing were two wards, one for women and one for men. The wards were spaced 40 feet apart and there were strict instructions for moving between wards, to avoid spreading infection. There was also a set amount of space around each bed to encourage the movement of fresh air, as, according to the miasma theory, fresh air would cure the disease.
As the understanding of diseases changed and germ theory started to become more accepted, isolation became less important and the uses of the hospital altered. During the First World War it was used as the place where men signed up to the army, to fight in the war; and the smallpox wing was suggested as a place for German Prisoners of War, although there is no evidence that it was ever used as such. The hospital was also used to house refugees from Serbia, fleeing the conflict there with Austria-Hungary. They had travelled 1,500 miles to get to Cambridge.
Today the hospital is part of the NHS. It is known as Brookfields Hospital and has a specialist area for old people, and because Cambridge has grown so much since Victorian times the hospital is no long in fields far out of town but near the end of bustling Mill Road.
This history trail audio is narrated by the poet Michael Rosen, with script researched by Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks. This recording is part of a series of Cambridge history trails which have lyrics inspired by 'history beneath our feat' performed by local schoolchildren, with poems by the top poet Michael Rosen and songs by the funny team at CBBC's songwriters commissioned by Historyworks. To find more trails and further information, go to http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails
The Windmill for Grain Mill Road was named after the windmill that once stood in this area, from the times that all the land was used for agriculture, and the only building on the town end of Mill Road was the Windmill. Early maps show the Mill set back slightly from Mill Road, positioned between what is now Mawson Road and Covent Garden. The exact location of the windmill was probably in what are now the back gardens of 56 and 56A Mill Road. When depicted in the background of pictures of Parker’s Piece from the Victorian period the Windmill dominates the landscape. There is a report in the news papers from the Great Storm of 1821 describing how the Miller and the Windmill sails were struck by lightening. The Miller survived but the sail canvases were burnt to nothing and the wooden structures reduced to splinters. Although repaired on that occasion, we do know that the windmill did not survive the coming of the railways do decades later when the last mill owner, George Humfrey, sold the windmill in 1844 he auctioned off not only the building, but the the fixtures and fittings. The land was subdivided into 4 plots to be redeveloped into shops and houses to service the nearby railway station which was opened in July 1845.
The Steam Mill for Coprolite Whilst the Mill powered by wind was being sold off, a new Mill powered by steam was soon to be built on another Mill Road building plot. This was because the Headly Engineering Company bought the plot at the top of Mill Road by the railway line.
The Headly family was one of the major iron-founding families in Cambridge, and has a history of casting iron in the town longer than anyone else. The Headly iron works foundry called ‘The Eagle’ was located on Market Hill on the site that is currently occupied by Marks & Spencer, so facing the market square. By the 1840s, the foundry had passed through two generations to two brothers, James and Edward. During the 1840s, their business grew extensively, expanding backwards from the street to Trinity churchyard. A devastating fire struck the foundry on 28 February 1846 and destroyed part of the Market area and consequently they moved the foundry away from the market place to a site more appropriately situated for heavy industry, by the railway line on Mill Road. And although the brother’s partnership ended after an argument in 1852. James remained at the foundry teaming up with John Manning, an ironmonger from Mill Road.
With the move to Mill Road the Headly engineering company were well placed to service the needs of the newly opened railway line, making implements for the navvies such as spades and tracks and shunting wagons. Importantly, Headlys built the first and only steam engine to be made in Cambridge, which they called The Eagle but unfortunately it was too light to pull the heavy wagons on the main lines, so it was used instead as an inspection vehicle. However, the Headly works continued to thrive, building steam pumps for mills and tanneries and other heavy industries.
One such enterprise, close to home, was the Coprolite Mining industry. From the 1860s onwards, the Headlys invested heavily in the flourishing coprolite industry with the assistance of relatives in Coton whose land was dug for coprolite. Coprolite is fossilised faeces from the Jurassic period, and it became an important source of phosphate to be used as fertiliser. Local sources were found at Coldham’s Common and all along the geological area called the Cam...
This history trail audio is narrated by the poet Michael Rosen, with script researched by Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks. This recording is part of a series of Cambridge history trails which have lyrics inspired by 'history beneath our feat' performed by local schoolchildren, with poems by the top poet Michael Rosen and songs by the funny team at CBBC's songwriters commissioned by Historyworks. To find more trails and further information, go to http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails
The Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences is the oldest Museum in Cambridge and holds the oldest items! It is said that a walk through the Museum takes you on a 4.5 billion year journey through time, from the meteoritic building blocks of planets, to the thousands of fossils of animals and plants that illustrate the evolution of life in the oceans, on land and in the air.
The Museum has over 2 million items including rocks, fossils and minerals. The style of the Museum is Victorian, with old cabinets of curiosities, and looks like the set of a Harry Potter film.
The Museum is fascinating and it is free to the public! Magnifying glasses can be borrowed from the staff at the desk to help visitors examine specimens close-up! The names of the specimens you can explore are in the categories of Palaeontology (fossils), Mineralogy (minerals), Petrology (igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary rocks), Building Stones.
Favourite items in the Museum are partial skeletons of hippos and mammoths. These species from Africa were discovered along the banks of Cambridgeshire Rivers, showing that back in deep time East Anglia was connected to the African Continent. The Sedgwick Museum’s fossil called ‘Hippopotamus amphibius’ is a massive skeleton discovered in 1907 just outside Cambridge. The skeleton is the remains of a mammal that lived about 120,000 years ago in the Pleistocene epoch, and is the same species of Hippo that lives in Africa to this day.
The Sedgwick Museum is named after Professor Adam Sedgwick who was an ambitious collector in the Victorian period. He was sourcing specimens via a network of researchers, including Mary Anning, from whom he purchased a number of ichthyosaur specimens, now on display in the Museum. By the time of his death in 1873 the collection had grown to a staggering half a million specimens. In the Victorian era the fossils called ‘Coprolites’ were mined in the areas called the ‘Cambridge Greensand’ and these are fossilised faeces which date from about 110 million years ago. The fossils are on display in the cabinets of the Museum, and they look like dog poo turned into stones. And if you look with the magnifier, you can see lots of fish bones in the poos. These coprolites were mined on Coldham’s Common and other clay areas near the River Cam, where they were mined in seams from the layer beneath the clay . Once extracted the fossils were washed and ground up in a mill, mixed with acid and water to make super charged fertiliser for the fields around to grow better crops to feed a growing population in Victorian times.
What Jurassic creature left these deposits? The fossilized poos are mostly linked to Pterosaurs (Greek for flying lizard); fish-eating reptiles, including the Ornithocherius specimens and Ichthyosaurs (Greek for fish lizard); which flew above the Cambridge Greensands and lived off the fish in this swampy area. The remains of the Ornithocherius in the museum show them to have a wing span of approximately 2.5 metres (8.2 feet), an unusual carved snout and a straight jaw that narrowed at the tip. It had fewer teeth than other related species and its teeth were mainly vertical rather than pointing outwards.
Although many people would generally categorise all these specimens as dinosaurs, Pterosaurs and Ichthyosaurs are not actually dinosaurs as technically they do not have the correct attributes to fit in this category of prehistoric animal. They did however exist at th...
This history trail audio is narrated by the poet Michael Rosen, with script researched by Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks. This recording is part of a series of Cambridge history trails which have lyrics inspired by 'history beneath our feat' performed by local schoolchildren, with poems by the top poet Michael Rosen and songs by the funny team at CBBC's songwriters commissioned by Historyworks. To find more trails and further information, go to http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails
During Roman times, the River Cam was fully navigable from the Wash out at the seaside as far as Cambridge and was the northernmost point where transport from East Anglia to the Midlands was practicable. Therefore, Magdalene Bridge marks the site of an important Roman era river crossing. It used to be known as “Great Bridge”. All routes, both local and long- distance, had to converge on this crossing point, giving it immense strategic importance in times of peace for trade and in times of war to control armies and supplies.
An essential service for the survival of Cambridge, was the grinding of grain to make bread to feed both town and gown. The Mills were water powered and situated beyond the Backs where the River Cam supplied water to the Mill Pond. Here there were two competing Mills, the Bishop’s Mill and the King’s Mill, with another rival mill, Newnham Mill, just around the corner. Most of the grain was transported in from the south by barge, and then sold to merchants who shipped it by River beyond Cambridge as flour, ready to be sold on to bakers.
The River was therefore the most important means of transport for goods and services for Cambridge and in the 12th century, King Henry I issued a writ saying that Cambridge was to be the key port in the County. This meant that Cambridge had a monopoly over local river trade so that market traders thrived at the expense of those in other towns further downstream.
But this all changed in 1845 with the opening of the railway to London, which dealt the river trade its death-blow. Up until then the River Cam was the essential travel and trading route by which Cambridge was fed and built with boats bringing fish and grain, meat and salt, coal and reeds, timber and stone. Many business people in Cambridge had been dependent on the River for their trade.
The early importance of the River to Cambridge is captured on the City’s Coat of Arms which shows three sailing boats on the River; the Great Bridge topped with Cambridge Castle; flanked by giant Seahorses showing the city’s trading and strategic significance in relation to the River and the route to the Great Ouse and trade routes overseas via the Wash. Our song called ‘Seahorses’ is on the website for you to listen to and sing along to.
The biggest Fair in Europe, called Stourbridge Fair, also had boosted trade using the River from when it started in 1211 under a special charter from King John, and up to its heyday in the 1600s to 1800s. It ran for several weeks every September using the meadows between Stourbridge and the Leper Hospital with traders camping out all the way back along the River Cam to Fen Ditton. I’ve written a poem about all the numerous wares and foods and entertainments and you can view the film of it (shot on location at Stourbridge Fair) on the website.
This history trail audio is narrated by the poet Michael Rosen, with script researched by Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks. This recording is part of a series of Cambridge history trails which have lyrics inspired by 'history beneath our feat' performed by local schoolchildren, with poems by the top poet Michael Rosen and songs by the funny team at CBBC's songwriters commissioned by Historyworks. To find more trails and further information, go to http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails
The red letter box and the red telephone box are both iconic features of towns, cities and villages around the UK. Both structures help us understand how communications evolved from the Victorian era - when the national postal service began - through the invention of the telephone and the erection of public phone boxes - right up to installation of wifi hot-spots.
The first red telephone box was designed by Giles Gilbert Scott, an English architect, who was born in 1880 and is famous in Cambridge for designing part of Clare College in the mid 1920s and the Cambridge University Library in the 1930s. But back in 1924 he won a design competition and his iconic “K2” red telephone box went into production. His design was later used as the inspiration for the mass production of the “K6” telephone box, a slightly smaller version of the original box, which was created in 1935 for George V’s Silver Jubilee and named the “Jubilee Kiosk”. More than 100,000 of these K6 boxes were then put into towns and villages across the UK. Although the mobile phone has largely replaced the need for them many “K2” and “K6” telephone boxes can still be found.
If you look at the red phone box on “The Backs” along Queens Road and then look up at the tower of the University Library you’ll see from shape of the tower and the top of the telephone box that the same architect designed both.
During the Victorian era, before the invention of telephones, communication for the general public was by letter post. The first adhesive stamp to pay for postage – the Penny Black - was made available in 1840 when many of the letters went by stage coach pulled by horses. But the transportation of mail was made much more efficient for Cambridge by the advent of the railway in 1845 with the first lines built to connect Cambridge and London.
The first pillar or “letter” box was installed in Jersey, in the Channel Islands in 1852 at the suggestion of the novelist Anthony Trollope then a General Post Office official. The first box was installed on the mainland a year later in Botchergate, Carlisle in the North of England and soon after that another letter box was installed at Barnes Cross, Bishop's Caundle in Dorset. That one is still in use today over 150 years later! The earliest box in Cambridge stands outside Kings College – it’s an unusual shape!
The first pillar boxes didn’t have to be a standard colour and it wasn’t until 1874 that red became the accepted colour, but it took over 10 years for all the post boxes to be painted the right colour! The design was later improved to make the first ‘National Standard Box’ in 1859 and today there are over 100,000 of varying designs. Did you know you can often see when a letter box was built by examining the letters on the front – it’s “Stamp of Authority” with VR standing for Queen Victoria , ER for Edward VII ( 7th) GR for George V ( 5th ) GVIR for George VI (6th) and EIIR for Elizabeth the Second – if you find one for Edward VIII ( 8th) you’ll be very lucky – there are fewer than 200 from his very short reign in 1936 . See if you can spot the letters on the next letter box you see and work out which king or queen it stands for. Look out for a very old box at the corner of Priory Road and Riverside – why wouldn’t you want to climb on it?
This history trail audio is narrated by the poet Michael Rosen, with script researched by Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks. This recording is part of a series of Cambridge history trails which have lyrics inspired by 'history beneath our feat' performed by local schoolchildren, with poems by the top poet Michael Rosen and songs by the funny team at CBBC's songwriters commissioned by Historyworks. To find more trails and further information, go to http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails
The name Addenbrookes is now known to present residents of Cambridge, because of "Addies" - the huge hospital and medical research institution on the outskirts of Cambridge. That is the new Addenbrooke’s Hospital opened in 1962 - but the original Addenbrooke’s site was here on Trumpington Street where the current Judge’s Business School now stands.
The original hospital was founded following a generous gift of £4,500, which was left by John Addenbrooke in his will to found a voluntary hospital for the poor people in the local area.
On 13th October 1766, Addenbrooke’s Hospital opened with 20 beds, 3 surgeons, 3 physicians, one matron and a resident apothecary (the person who made your medicines – (the profession is now called pharmacy and the shop where you collect your medicine - the chemists)
The Addenbrookes complex was also the site of an infamous 'VD' (sexual disease) clinic which is a cause of much hilarity amongst older locals because it is currently where Brown's Restaurant is.
Addenbrookes himself was indeed a pioneering medic, hugely influential in the annals of the history of medicine. He was interested in everything about how the world worked and collected all sorts of exhibits. His cabinet of curiosities has 27 drawers of various sizes – inside are seeds, powders, bones, fossils, stone axe-heads and even a wooden clog. It’s housed at his former college, St Catherine's and the college is still trying to identify exactly what all the items are.
This history trail audio is narrated by the poet Michael Rosen, with script researched by Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks. This recording is part of a series of Cambridge history trails which have lyrics inspired by 'history beneath our feat' performed by local schoolchildren, with poems by the top poet Michael Rosen and songs by the funny team at CBBC's songwriters commissioned by Historyworks. To find more trails and further information, go to http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails
The Museum of Cambridge was originally a timber framed coach inn called the ‘White Horse Inn’ at the bottom of Castle Street. The inn was built in the 17th Century and was a thriving business for over three hundred years because it was at a major crossroads near the River Cam where travellers and tradesmen could stop overnight.
The old inn is now a museum telling stories about Cambridge and the surrounding Fen communities. It has fantastic collections which tell intriguing histories about people who lived and worked in the local area. You can even see all the timber rooms, with an old pub bar and a big kitchen, including the archway through which coaches and horses would enter the courtyard.
One very successful Cambridge innkeeper from Tudor times is Thomas Hobson. He had a coaching inn where he rented out horses to people in the area who needed to travel out of town. He devised a system to make sure that his best horses didn’t get too tired - only offering the customer the horse at the front of the stable which was ready to go. This is where the famous phrase ‘Hobson’s Choice’ comes from: the customer couldn’t select whichever horse they wanted, instead it was – ‘take it, or leave it’ – Hobson’s choice! We have a funny song and a round written about Thomas Hobson by Dave Cohen, the CBBC’s Horrible Histories Songwriter, which you can listen to on the website.
Hobson made so much money that he was able to give donations to good causes. There is a wonderful portrait of him upstairs in the Museum where you can see he has a huge ruff or collar in the Elizabethan style, and a massive money bag to show off that he gave to charitable causes. In Cambridge there was a big problem in Tudor times with all the water contaminated by the contents of chamber pots and other muck, so Hobson’s charity gave donations for a special gutter called a conduit to bring fresh water all the way into the centre of Cambridge from the villages by Trumpington. In the market square the water was hooked up to a drinking fountain and a water pump. If you go into the cobbled courtyard of the Museum see if you can spot the old water pump and find the big pointy stone pieces from Hobson’s fancy fountain that used to be in the market place.
The Cambridge Museum is one of the oldest social history museums in the country and is stuffed with amazing objects and their stories, many of which were collected by a fantastic researcher called Enid Porter, who ran the museum for decades. She collected old toys and sporting kit so you can see what children and young people played with in the past. To find out about how people ate and survived, she would travel around the town and countryside talking to people collecting up old cooking equipment and recipes, and finding out what clothes and shoes people wore in the past. She also collected traditional hand made tools used for shoe making and for tasks such as eel and duck catching. One of Enid Porter’s ghoulish interests was collecting stories about witches and old recipes for curing diseases and scaring away ghosts, including the folklore and legends about birth, marriage and death. She visited with people all around Cambridgeshire and listened to these stories about the olden days and wrote down their memories in notebooks. From the research in her notebooks, she wrote a famous book, “Cambridgeshire Customs and Folklore”.
I loved the legend in Enid Porter’s book about how the stone lions outside the Fitzwilliam ...
This history trail audio is narrated by the poet Michael Rosen, with script researched by Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks. This recording is part of a series of Cambridge history trails which have lyrics inspired by 'history beneath our feat' performed by local schoolchildren, with poems by the top poet Michael Rosen and songs by the funny team at CBBC's songwriters commissioned by Historyworks. To find more trails and further information, go to http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails
Since the very early years of the Fitzwilliam Museum’s existence in the Victorian era four stone lions have been positioned outside the museum, two at the north steps and two at the south steps In 2016 the Fitzwilliam Museum celebrated 200 years since Richard, VII Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion, gave enough money to build a museum to house his library and art collection for the University of Cambridge. His aim was to further "the Increase of Learning and other great Objects of that Noble Foundation". It’s free to go in, so pop inside and dip in to past worlds via the collections of coins and medals; arms and armour, glass and ceramics , paintings and much much more.
Life moved much more slowly in pre Victorian times and although Viscount Fitzwiliiam made his donation in 1816 but it still took more than 20 years until the the Vice-Chancellor laid the foundation stone of the Fitzwilliam Museum, below where the northern lions now rest, and the building could begin. In that same year ,1837, the year Queen Victoria started her reign, the sculptor William Grinsell Nicholl became involved in work carving decorative details on the Corinthian columns and the decorative aspects of the façade at the front of the building , but then in 1839 he sculpted the four iconic lions that guard the south and north steps to the Fitzwilliam Museum’s portico entrance. Do you know there is a legend that at night the lions come alive a wander the streets. I’ve written a poem celebrating the secret life of the four stone lions here at the Fitz - those words also feature in a short film about Cambridge and a song – go to the website to enjoy them – but not before you’ve experienced the glories within the museum itself.
This history trail audio is narrated by the poet Michael Rosen, with script researched by Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks. This recording is part of a series of Cambridge history trails which have lyrics inspired by 'history beneath our feat' performed by local schoolchildren, with poems by the top poet Michael Rosen and songs by the funny team at CBBC's songwriters commissioned by Historyworks. To find more trails and further information, go to http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails
The Guildhall lies on the south side of the market square and today is the location for many activities including council meetings in the council chamber, committee rooms and the tourist information centre.
What might surprise you is that the area close to the Guildhall and Market Place used to be called 'the Jewry' in the 12th and 13th Centuries? The Jewry is not an old and odd way of spelling 'jewellery'. Even though this area in Cambridge is indeed a real gem, the name comes from the fact that the area used to be a hub for the Cambridge Jewish community. Although the Jewry area of Cambridge was marked on earliest maps to be located around All Saints (where the craft market is held), in the early days the Jewry stretched from the Guildhall down to the Round Church. The Jewish Synagogue was beneath the very site of today’s Guildhall and next door there used to be the house of a wealthy Jew named Benjamin. Benjamin's house was eventually taken from him in 1224 by King Henry II and used as a prison. The Jewish community was discriminated against and exiled from England in 1290 and did not return again to Cambridge in numbers until Jewish intellectuals and refugees joined the University and settled between the 1890s and the 1940s. The Jewish community is now thriving and there is more than one Jewish congregation. If you look up in Cambridge you can often spot the Coat of Arms on bridges, and signs, and above doorways. Indeed its there above the door of the Guildhall. The Coat of Arms of Cambridge shows the River Cam with three ships on the water to demonstrate the important role the river played in the development of the city as a market town, with boats bringing wares to sell in Cambridge. The red roses and gold Fleur de Lys (which means lily flower in French) are Royal symbols to show the status given to Cambridge by monarchs across the centuries, and specifically the charter granting this Coat of Arms by Elizabeth I in 1575. There is a bridge with fortifications to represent the “Great Bridge of Cambridge” which is the present Magdalene Bridge.
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Most noticeable are the two red monsters either side of the Coat of Arms which are special mythical horses belonging to Neptune, called “Hippocampi”. These seahorses are symbols of the sea emphasizing the importance of Cambridge’s access to London and the World via the river route to the Wash and sea beyond!
We have a song about the Coat of Arms called “Seahorses” written by Dave Cohen. You can listen and sing along to it on the website.
If you pop into the entrance of the Guildhall there is a Roll of Honour to remember those who died on the battlefields in World War I. When the war ended in 1918 the bells of Great St Mary’s on Market Square rang out across the city and local citizens rejoiced. The Roll of Honour at Cambridge Guildhall names the 1,414 local men who lost their lives in battle, a sacrifice that the city has never forgotten. The residents of Cambridge experienced violence and hunger during the First World War, whilst local women and children had to take on lots of new responsibilities.
Further inside the Guildhall you might get to see the ceremonial chain of office and one of the maces which are held in the Guildhall as they symbolise the authority of council officials. One Cambridge mace had a very eventful history. Back in the 1640s there was a civil war in England between King and Parliament, and this put Cambrid...
This history trail audio is narrated by the poet Michael Rosen, with script researched by Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks. This recording is part of a series of Cambridge history trails which have lyrics inspired by 'history beneath our feat' performed by local schoolchildren, with poems by the top poet Michael Rosen and songs by the funny team at CBBC's songwriters commissioned by Historyworks. To find more trails and further information, go to http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails
The Cambridge market was founded in Saxon times and grew in size during the Middle Ages. Cambridge was a very important trading centre in East Anglia. And hosted the annual Stourbridge Fair on the outskirts of town - the biggest fair in England! At the weekly market lots of different items were sold in the market, such as fruit and vegetables, fish, timber, stone, and coal. Cambridge was in the middle of the fens so almost everything had to be brought in by boat on the Cam, which joins the Ouse and reaches the sea at King’s Lynn. Some goods came all the way from Europe. The City’s Coat of Arms, issued by Elizabeth I, showing Seahorses, the Great Bridge and the River Cam with boats, is set above the Guildhall door on the south side of the square. The elements in the Coat of Arms demonstrate how important river trade was to Cambridge. Streets were often named after the goods that were sold there, but because the market is so old, many of the words have changed over time. What do you think was sold on Peas Hill? It wasn’t peas! ‘Peas’ is a corruption of the Latin ‘pisces’, meaning fish. Big public events were held in the marketplace, including executions. Queen Mary I, also called Bloody Mary, ordered that the leading Protestants of Cambridge be burnt at the stake in the marketplace. Two of these Protestants, Martin Bucer and Paul Fagius, were already dead! That didn’t stop Mary: she ordered their corpses dug up and burnt anyway. We have a song about Martin Bucer written by Dave Cohen, the CBBC Horrible Histories Songwriter. You can listen and sing along to it on the website. In the middle ages, Cambridge was a very smelly place. The college’s toilets emptied into the river, and the dirty water spread diseases. To help clean up the city, the town and university had a substantial donation from a local man named Thomas Hobson to build a waterway that would bring in fresh water from the countryside. It was known as Hobson’s Conduit (commonly called Hobson’s River) and you can still see a small section of it today, running in ditches on either side of Trumpington Street, outside the Fitzwilliam Museum. In the Market Square a fountain was built in 1614 to give clean drinking water to the people of Cambridge. This also marked the end point of Hobson’s Conduit. The remains of the fountain can be seen today in the centre of the market square looking like a giant flower pot! Thomas Hobson had made his money by organising the carrying of messages from London to Cambridge for which he stabled about forty horses at his inn…
His main job was organising the carrying of messages on horseback between London and Cambridge for which he stabled about forty horses at his inn. But as he owned more horses than he ever needed, he decided to start renting them out at short notice. He provided boots, bridles and whips so the academics and university students, who were his main customers, could set out straight away. To those who had used his horses but had nowhere else to stay in Cambridge he also offered board and lodging at his Inn. He was the first person in England to set up such a business! He was a shrewd businessman, no doubt about it, and soon noticed that his customers always wanted the fastest horses, which left those horses tired and overworked, and others unused. So he placed all his horses in a single line, only offering customers the horse at the front, a bit like the taxi ranks of today! The choice was “take it, or leave ...
This history trail audio is narrated by the poet Michael Rosen, with script researched by Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks. This recording is part of a series of Cambridge history trails which have lyrics inspired by 'history beneath our feat' performed by local schoolchildren, with poems by the top poet Michael Rosen and songs by the funny team at CBBC's songwriters commissioned by Historyworks. To find more trails and further information, go to http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails
Trains, ships and buses all developed as methods of transport in the Victorian period, but it was the arrival of the railways that had the biggest impact connecting people and places speedily. Train travel was only possible when steam powered engines were invented, which uses coal fired up in a boiler to heat water to make the steam to power the engine. The first successful railway locomotive train ran in 1804. And after that the famous Stephenson’s Rocket was designed in 1829. People were a bit scared of trains at first because of accidents, but Queen Victoria used train travel, and the railway tracks expanded everywhere in what was known as railway ‘mania’, with rival companies competing for territory.
However, building railway lines and a station in Cambridges was not easy because of objections from the University. Whilst many places have a train station near their city centre, Cambridge’s station is curiously located by Romsey, over a mile from town with tracks that bend around rather than running through the centre. This was because over 20 locations were turned down. Colleges objected to the prospect of noise and amidst fears that the students would be tempted away on daytrips. There was also the possibility of girlfriends or boyfriends being attracted to visit distracting the students from their studies! So it was that the University agreed to a station as long as they could employ watchmen to spot and stop any university students who had bought a ticket with the intention of sneaking off for the day!
So eventually work started on a Cambridge line and the first ever timetable for Cambridge trains was published on 22nd July 1845. Just over a week later on 30th July the railway was officially opened to the public. The first lines went to London and Norwich. The Great Eastern Company had some of the fastest trains - with a train recorded going at 70mph on route to London! The trains had a non-stop time of 72 minutes from Liverpool Street to Cambridge, covering 55.75 miles on its journey. This was much faster than the coach and horses which took a whole day to get to London.
You may find this hard to believe but before the coming of the Railways, clocks around the country didn’t show the same time at the same time - which is a bonkers fact to get your head around! So your pocket watch in Cambridge could be showing a different time from your friend’s in Ely or Peterborough or Birmingham or York. Once a train line was going to go north linking all these places together, it was essential the clocks were synchronized. So it was that in 1880 “British tibme” was standardized across the whole country. Now trains could run to a set timetable.
As the railways boomed so Cambridge’s stagecoach buses, drawn by horses, declined. The old medieval routes of rivers with barges, and roads with horses , that had once made Stourbridge Fair so successful were replaced by railway tracks with locomotives. And then, following on from the coming of the railway, Stourbridge Fair declined.
Those who benefitted were the Navvies, many of whom had emigrated from Ireland where the Great Famine forced people to flee abroad to find work and food. Navvies took their name from “navigators” who had built the canals in the previous century, but in Cambridge they had other names too! Patrick Macgill, the Cambridge man known as the “navvie poet”, (because he had himself worked as a Navvie) called his colleagues “muck-men” and “moleskin sla...
This history trail audio is narrated by the poet Michael Rosen, with script researched by Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks. This recording is part of a series of Cambridge history trails which have lyrics inspired by 'history beneath our feat' performed by local schoolchildren, with poems by the top poet Michael Rosen and songs by the funny team at CBBC's songwriters commissioned by Historyworks. To find more trails and further information, go to http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails
Although you will see many women celebrating their graduations alongside their male classmates nowadays, this wasn’t always the case. Women’s colleges were founded in the mid-1800s, but despite doing all of the hard work and exams, women weren’t full members of the University and so were not awarded any degrees in Cambridge until after World War Two, in 1948! Unsurprisingly, the women of the University became rather fed up with this lack of equality. They rallied together to bring about an official vote on the matter on the 21st of May, 1897. The day of the vote brought lots of protestors to Cambridge, men who had degrees from the University and were outraged about the campaign for women to be awarded degrees were given voting rights, even if they had graduated years before!
Unfortunately for women almost three times as many men voted against them as for them. Thrilled, some male students made fun of female students and even made effigies of a woman on a bike representing emancipated women and also the leading female campaigners. They hung these figures up along wires above the queue of voters going into the Senate, and afterwards burnt the effigies in the Market Square.
They hung these figures up along wires above the queue of voters going into the Senate, and afterwards burnt the effigies in the Market Square. You can see the photographs from the newspaper of the time, showing a woman in stripey stockings riding a bike up above the corner of the market square, with hundreds of men in boaters beneath waiting in line to vote against women to have equal rights to education. Gah!
By the middle of the 1800s, women had grown sick and tired of being seen as inferior to men. Women, who were, by law, owned by their husbands, banded together to campaign for rights, like access to education and the ability to vote in a general election. The passionate campaign by the Suffragettes in London is well known, but the Suffragettes’ actions in Cambridge are less famous, although they were just as violent. The Cambridge Suffragettes gave numerous speeches to crowds, both in surrounding villages, and in famous places like Parker’s Piece and the Market Place. These speeches were sometimes received well, but often, angry townsmen or undergraduates tried to interrupt! The men would drown out the speakers with whistles and bells, and even by singing famous songs like ‘Have a banana’. Once, when Mrs Brailsford was speaking on a van on Parker’s Piece, children and teenagers began moving the lorry, pushing her slowly into the middle of a cricket match! But, the Suffragettes did more than talk – their motto was “Deeds not words”. In 1913, the Suffragettes in Cambridge planted two homemade bombs, one at a railway crossing and another at the Varsity Rugby Pavilion. The latter was made in a mustard tin! In the same year, the Suffragettes placed a package reading “Votes for Women” in the lounge of a famous hotel! There was panic when the package was found, but it turned out only to be a block of wood! Some women achieved the vote in 1918, but it wasn’t until 1928 that the United Kingdom had universal suffrage!
This history trail audio is narrated by the poet Michael Rosen, with script researched by Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks. This recording is part of a series of Cambridge history trails which have lyrics inspired by 'history beneath our feat' performed by local schoolchildren, with poems by the top poet Michael Rosen and songs by the funny team at CBBC's songwriters commissioned by Historyworks. To find more trails and further information, go to http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails
From humble beginnings, Stourbridge Fair became a huge event every September for the next 700 years. The Charter for the Fair was granted in 1211 by King John of Magna Carta fame, designed as a fund-raiser to support the sick and elderly, especially those looked after at the local Leper Hospital. The fair continued even after the Leper numbers declined and the last inmates moved to Ely. Then the Chapel for the Leper Hospital was converted to be a store-house for the Fair stalls and booths and was also used as the pub for the Fair workers too. It is the only building related to the Fair that you can see today!
In its hey day Stourbridge Fair was the largest medieval fair in England and possibly across the whole world. It drew traders from all over Europe to the banks of the RiverCam.
The River was a vital route and most of the wares and the traders came to Stourbridge Fair by boat – with those from London and from overseas coming via King’s Lynn. The fair was therefore an important trading event, where local people purchased pots and pans, clothes and textiles, baskets and mats, horses and horseshoes, pitch and tar, coal and charcoal, iron and timber, books and musical instruments. There are also records of book auctions at the Fair, and whole libraries were often sold this way, so that a street of the Fair was renamed ‘Booksellers Row’. In his notebooks, the famous Cambridge scientist of the late 1600s Isaac Newton describes visiting the booksellers and buying books on astronomy and also prisms which he calls ‘prisons’.
Prisms are made of glass & refract light, so Newton used these for some of his groundbreaking experiments. I’ve written a poem about Newton and the Fair (which you can watch as a film on the website), called ‘As I Was Going to Stourbridge Fair - Newton, Apple Pie, Prisms or Prisons…’. There were also many entertainments on offer, including toy stalls and puppet shows, musical and theatrical booths. Stourbridge Fair had something for everyone! Garlic Row and Mercer Row were the poshest thoroughfares and these names are still there on the street signs today! They were the main rows for the smarter booths and where the organizers would set out marker stones each year in the fields showing where the stalls would stand.
On Garlic row you had booths selling fine china and glass, silks and fine wool cloth, and haberdashery which included thread, lacy collars, and all the things you needed for making your own clothes, (which was what people did in the era before ‘off the peg’ clothes shops). The fancier stall holders on Mercer Row were selling fabrics and woollen suits and hats for the richer people and often had changing rooms at the back of the booth which were used as bedrooms at night. You could also buy live animals and dead parts of animals as well! Horses were sold by the travellers and this is possibly how we get the name of ‘Stourbridge’ - ‘Stour’ being a word for horse, and ‘bridge’ because the Fair was near the bridge over Coldham’s Brook.
Raw wool and leather skins were also important items at the Fair - these were brought in from farms by horse-drawn wagons, so other traders and householders could buy wool to spin, and leather to make into shoes and belts and jackets; the wagons were then used as cover to sleep under at night, as the stall holders mostly slept over at the fair all the days they paid their rent for their pitch. Accounts showing they often stayed for a good tw...
This history trail audio is narrated by the poet Michael Rosen, with script researched by Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks. This recording is part of a series of Cambridge history trails which have lyrics inspired by 'history beneath our feat' performed by local schoolchildren, with poems by the top poet Michael Rosen and songs by the funny team at CBBC's songwriters commissioned by Historyworks. To find more trails and further information, go to http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails
Where St Catherine’s College chapel now stands there used to be an inn, run by Thomas Hobson, who lived between 1544 and 1631 - an impressive 87 years in an era when you were expected to die before you reached 40. And Hobson wasn’t a lazy man either. His main job was organising the carrying of messages on horseback between London and Cambridge, for which he stabled about forty horses at his inn. But as he owned more horses than he ever needed, he decided to start renting them. He provided boots, bridles and whips so the academics and university students, who were his main customers, could set out straight away. To those who had used his horses but had nowhere else to stay in Cambridge he also offered board and lodging at his Inn. He was the first person in England to set up a business renting out horses on such a large scale!
He was a shrewd businessman, no doubt about it, and soon noticed that his customers always wanted the fastest horses, which left those horses tired and overworked, and others unused. So he placed all his horses in a single line, only offering customers the horse at the front, a bit like the taxi ranks of today! The choice was “take it, or leave it” - Hobson’s choice! In other words – no choice at all!
Hobson was well known in the area, and he is featured in writings by the famous poet John Milton, author of Paradise Lost, who also lived in Cambridge. Milton immortalised Hobson by writing about him in his poems called “On the University Carrier”, “Another on the same” and “Hobson’s epitaph”. Inspired by these works, the playwright Harold Brighouse wrote the play “Hobson’s Choice” which became an international film and gave the expression world-wide exposure!
We have a funny song and a round about Thomas Hobson written by Dave Cohen, the CBBC Horrible Histories Songwriter. You can listen and sing along to it on the website.
Hobson was famous in Cambridge not just for his horses, but also for his philanthropy. He donated money to the Town and University to bring fresh water into the city centre, through a conduit commonly called “Hobson’s River” which fed a big fountain and a water pump in Market Square.
Today, you can find the pieces of the original Hobson fountain from Market Square on display in the courtyard at the Museum of Cambridge.
This history trail audio is narrated by the poet Michael Rosen, with script researched by Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks. This recording is part of a series of Cambridge history trails which have lyrics inspired by 'history beneath our feat' performed by local schoolchildren, with poems by the top poet Michael Rosen and songs by the funny team at CBBC's songwriters commissioned by Historyworks. To find more trails and further information, go to http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails
Roger Ascham was a famous schoolteacher in the Elizabethan era and so it is very apt that Milton Road Primary School is on Ascham Road. Roger Ascham was originally from a place called Askam in Yorkshire but he came to live in Cambridge as a student in 1530. He then stayed on when he became a teacher of the ancient languages of Latin & Greek as a Fellow of St John’s College at the University of Cambridge.
Ascham was well known because he worked for the Tudor Monarchs and was Princess Elizabeth’s private tutor from 1558 to 1560 (when she was between the ages of 15 and 17), but also because he was interested in improving the education of all children in England. He wrote a famous book about his theories of Education, called ‘The schoolmaster’, which was printed many times in the 1570s and into the 1600s. In it he argued that children should be taught up to the age of seven using the English language, the language they spoke at home, rather than Latin and Greek which was the language for international learning and royal court life. Ascham didn’t think learning Latin and Greek was right for young children – was he right do you think?
After his divorce from Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII changed the national religion from Roman Catholic (where services were held in Latin) to Protestant (where services were held in English). There was also a new law that stated all children had to learn their ABC and Prayers – called the “Catechism” and that this would be tested at church on Sunday. This meant they had to learn their alphabet in English in order to know the Church of England prayers.
Now it wasn’t just rich people who were learning to read (taught by private tutors at home) but children from ordinary families learning from their local church minister or at school. These schools were often called ‘dame schools’ if the teacher was a woman and ‘petty schools’ if the teacher was a man. Both boys and girls went to these schools which were often held in the church porch or the teacher’s front room rather than a specially designed classroom.
The starter book for children in Tudor and Stuart times was called the Hornbook because it was a piece of paper with the Alphabet and Lord’s Prayer stuck on a wooden paddle, and pinned under a piece of animal horn, looking a bit like a square version of a table tennis bat. The children learnt all their classes by rote, sounding out vowels and phrases aloud, (never reading silently), so schools were noisy places! They had a long school day from 7am to 5pm in winter and 6am to 4pm in summer. Pupils were given soup called pottage before they started school, and the same at lunchtime. Pottage was made of oats or barley, so it was a bit like having porridge, to keep children fuelled for their school day. Their main meal at 6pm would be pottage again with bread and possibly with the addition of peas or meat or cheese to fill them up before bed!
Most children were poor and so they left school aged seven to go to work. Boys and girls could earn pennies for their families working as cleaners, and doing farm work like running around the fields to scare crows away from the crops, feeding chickens, looking after sheep, or collecting wool & spinning it. Because writing was, traditionally, only taught from the age of seven upwards many children learnt to read but never learnt to write. From the age of 7, if you were lucky, you went to grammar school where you not only learnt to write using a quill a...
This history trail audio is narrated by the poet Michael Rosen, with script researched by Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks. This recording is part of a series of Cambridge history trails which have lyrics inspired by 'history beneath our feat' performed by local schoolchildren, with poems by the top poet Michael Rosen and songs by the funny team at CBBC's songwriters commissioned by Historyworks. To find more trails and further information, go to http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails
As the population of Cambridge surged with businesses and housing, plus the University growing, there was a problem with sewage and smells in the River Cam. Not only did this cause discomfort to breathing and health problems, it also spread diseases, such as typhoid and cholera. The terrible stench and state of the river was noticed alike by poor and rich, worker and monarch.
On a visit to Cambridge in 1843, Queen Victoria asked, “What are those pieces of paper floating in the river?” Rather than saying they were book and newspaper pages used as toilet paper, the tactful answer was, “Those Ma’am are notices for the students to say that bathing is forbidden!”. By the end of the Victorian era, the River Cam was finally cleaned when the pumping station was built on Riverside in 1894 through which the sewage from the city was pumped out to the village of Milton, powered by steam pressure. It was only then that leisure became the main activity on the River Cam instead of traders, with punts and rowing boats, replacing barges and sailing skips.
BOATING AND BATHING
But the Cambridge University Boat Club was founded in 1827 and the first competitions called ‘Bumping Races’ started in Cambridge in 1828, so these students were rowing in raw sewage during the early days. This form of racing developed of chasing crews along the Cam because the river was too narrow for the boats to race side by side. It must have been difficult for the students to be using the river when it was still the main place where the Colleges put their sewage, but the river experience was transformed with the building of pipes and the pumping station by the end of the Victorian era. This was when swimming in the River became possible with pleasure spots created at Coe Fen and Sheeps Green, where bathers preferred to bathe upstream where the River was cleanest.
Dave Cohen, the CBBC’s Horrible Histories songwriter has written some funny songs about the River Cam which you can listen to and sing along to using our website.
This history trail audio is narrated by the poet Michael Rosen, with script researched by Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks. This recording is part of a series of Cambridge history trails which have lyrics inspired by 'history beneath our feat' performed by local schoolchildren, with poems by the top poet Michael Rosen and songs by the funny team at CBBC's songwriters commissioned by Historyworks. To find more trails and further information, go to http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails
As the population of Cambridge surged with businesses and housing, plus the University growing, there was a problem with sewage and smells in the River Cam. Not only did this cause discomfort to breathing and health problems, it also spread diseases, such as typhoid and cholera. The terrible stench and state of the river was noticed alike by poor and rich, worker and monarch. On a visit to Cambridge in 1843, Queen Victoria asked, “What are those pieces of paper floating in the river?” Rather than saying they were book and newspaper pages used as toilet paper, the tactful answer was, “Those Ma’am are notices for the students to say that bathing is forbidden!”. Eglantyne Jebb was an economist and important campaigner for improved living conditions. She wrote an important policy report advocating proper piping from toilets to sewage pipes, and a sewage treatment facility, to prevent ground water contamination and promote clean water. By the end of the Victorian era, the River Cam was finally cleaned when the pumping station was built on Riverside in 1894 through which the sewage from the city was pumped out to the village of Milton, powered by steam pressure. It was closed down in 1968, but you can see the site today with the huge chimney. The Curator and volunteers maintain the steam engines, which are now on display as part of the Cambridge Museum of Technology.
This history trail audio is narrated by the poet Michael Rosen, with script researched by Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks. This recording is part of a series of Cambridge history trails which have lyrics inspired by 'history beneath our feat' performed by local schoolchildren, with poems by the top poet Michael Rosen and songs by the funny team at CBBC's songwriters commissioned by Historyworks. To find more trails and further information, go to http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails
Parker's Piece is one of Cambridge's most famous open spaces. Originally part of Trinity College, it was acquired by the town of Cambridge in 1613 as pasture land and named after a college cook, Edward Parker. In the 19th century, it was used as a first-class cricket-pitch and a sports ground for Varsity matches between the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford. In 1838, a feast for over 15,000 people was held in honour of Queen Victoria's coronation. There were bands, choirs, sports and games, fireworks, and even a hot air balloon. In 2012 the Olympic Torch was brought to Parker’s Piece on its way to the Olympic Stadium in the run up to the London 2012 Olympics and 2014 isaw the start of the Third Leg of the Tour de France cycle race. Today, this green space continues to be a popular place of recreation for football, cricket, fairs, picnics and events. The story of the Victorian Coronation Festival on Parker’s Piece On the 28th of June, 1838, the Municipality of Cambridge organised something that truly went down in history; one of the largest banquets ever prepared, hosting 15,000 diners and 17,000 spectators, which was set up at Parker’s Piece to celebrate the Coronation of Queen Victoria! The total number of participants was 32,000, at a time when the population of Cambridge was less than 30,000! The “Coronation Festival” is even more impressive if we consider that the plan was finally approved on the 15th of June, only 13 days before the event. At first, the Organising Committee wanted to simply put on some fireworks; but the Mayor had other ideas: something unique that would engage the entire population of the town, from the aristocracy to the poorest classes, and allow the rich people to be kind to the poor by feeding them and providing activities and entertainments. At 2pm the 15,000 sang grace led by the choirs of Kings College and dinner began: meat, bread and pickles, some water and a lot of ale; last but not least, plum-pudding “in a supply that has never been witnessed in this kingdom before”. The amount of food is hard to imagine, and every Cambridge College kitchen must have been busy baking the meats and puddings to feed such a huge crowd. You can see in the pictures of the time, tables laid out with hundreds at a sitting on the Parker’s Piece grass. In total, the diners consumed 14,000 pounds of meat, 72lbt of mustard, 140 lbs salt, 125 gallons of pickles, 4,500 loaves of bread, 1,608 plum puddings of 6.5lbs each and 99 barrels of ale. Naturally, the only toast allowed for the whole day was “The Queen”. Queen Victoria had not yet visited Cambridge but she came to the throne in 1837 and ruled for more than 63 years, so there was time yet for her to arrive in person to meet both town and gown. For the special Coronation Feast there was a bandstand placed where the ‘Reality Checkpoint’ lamp-post now stands in the centre of Parker’s Piece. From this platform, music played to those feasting that included an Overture and a Choral Finale performed by the choirs of Trinity and King’s College. At the end of the meal, after the national anthem, a massive balloon was raised into the air. This day would have been the biggest community event in anyone’s lifetime. At this event, the poorer people of Cambridge were not only given a day off work, but they were treated to free food and drink. Imagine if you were an inmate at the Workhouse, what it must have felt like to have a day where the rich ...
This history trail audio is narrated by the poet Michael Rosen, with script researched by Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks. This recording is part of a series of Cambridge history trails which have lyrics inspired by 'history beneath our feat' performed by local schoolchildren, with poems by the top poet Michael Rosen and songs by the funny team at CBBC's songwriters commissioned by Historyworks. To find more trails and further information, go to http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails
On a warm evening in 1666, just after dinner, the soon to be famous Issaac Newton sat down beneath this tree outside of Trinity to mull over his thoughts, when all of a sudden he was struck on the top of his head by a large, red apple. ‘Eureka’, he cried, and gravity was discovered. As entertaining as this tale is, Newton was not struck on the head by an apple and he was not underneath this tree. In fact, no such tree existed in Cambridge at the time. But in just half a century, this grand myth was woven by his admirers from its original simple story. This tree is a grafted descendant of the original one at the home of Sir Isaac Newton's mother in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire. On a visit to his mother's garden during his Cambridge days in the late 1660s, he observed a red apple fall from a tree and only then began to consider the mechanism that drove what is now termed gravity. However a tree can be found at Trinity College, the college he attended, to commemorate Newton’s famous discovery.
This history trail audio is narrated by the poet Michael Rosen, with script researched by Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks. This recording is part of a series of Cambridge history trails which have lyrics inspired by 'history beneath our feat' performed by local schoolchildren, with poems by the top poet Michael Rosen and songs by the funny team at CBBC's songwriters commissioned by Historyworks. To find more trails and further information, go to http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails
Marshall of Cambridge was established in 1909 by David Gregory Marshall as a car vehicle business, specialising as a chauffeur drive company. It was located in a small lock-up garage in Brunswick Gardens. Marshall’s first involvement in aviation dates back to 1912, when its mechanics helped repair the engine of a British Army airship, the Beta II, which had made an emergency landing on Jesus Green, just behind where the Marshall garage was located close to the centre of town before it moved to Newmarket Road. The Marshall family purchased an estate on what was then the edge of Cambridge, the house and land of Whitehall Farm and in 1937 the new Cambridge Airport opened. With the Second World War in 1939, the aerodrome soon became involved in war work; training pilots and repairing airplanes. Whitehall Farm was sold to build houses for Whitehall Estate and Peverel Estate, but the Marshall aerodrome buildings and runways expanded to become a complex at the top of Newmarket Road.
This history trail audio is narrated by the poet Michael Rosen, with script researched by Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks. This recording is part of a series of Cambridge history trails which have lyrics inspired by 'history beneath our feat' performed by local schoolchildren, with poems by the top poet Michael Rosen and songs by the funny team at CBBC's songwriters commissioned by Historyworks. To find more trails and further information, go to http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails
King’s College Chapel is one of the most iconic buildings in Cambridge and took over 70 years to finish!
King’s College and its chapel was founded by Henry VI who lived from 1421 to 1471, but Henry never saw the completed chapel because the main structure of the building wasn’t finished until 1515, long after his death. It was the Tudor Kings Henry VII and Henry VIII who were left with the job of completing this impressive building.
The first stone is believed to have been laid on St. James’ Day on 25th July, 1446 by King Henry VI himself. However the construction of the chapel was a very slow process, largely due to funding problems, as Henry VI’s grand designs were very expensive and he was in the middle of fighting various wars.
Despite the College asking for the construction work to start again , because it looked really ugly in its semi-completed state, there was once a period of 20 years when no building work was done at all.
Finally In 1508 work on the chapel restarted under Henry VII and although he died in 1509, money from his will ensured that the building work continued under Henry VIII. In 1515 the whole building was at last complete, including the beautiful fan vault ceiling, which was designed by architect John Wastell. Amazingly, given all the previous delays, that took just 3 years to create. This impressive ceiling is still the largest fan vault ceiling in the world weighing as much as 312 elephants.
How do you think it stays up there?
Just over one hundred years after the laying of the foundation stone of King’s College Chapel, at the time of King Henry VIII’s death in 1547, the Chapel was considered to be one of the grandest and most exquisite buildings in Europe. It still is to this day. When you look up at the ceiling, do you think it looks like looking up at trees in a wood? The Chapel is very popular with tourists and costs several pounds to go round, but if your class is from a Cambridgeshire school it can arrange a free visit. Then in the Chapel you’ll be able see images representing the Tudors; there’s a carved Tudor rose and a variety of creatures. There’s a dragon for Wales - because the Tudor family came from there - and in the stained glass windows I’m told you can find a bat. Take a penny out of your pocket – on one side there’s an image of a portcullis – the gate to a castle – can you find a picture of one in the chapel? And can you find the head of someone called the “green man” ?
In 2014 a collection of Cambridge primary schools, together with the choristers of Kings College Chapel, sang and recorded a song written by composer Michael Berkeley. It was written in celebration of the foundation of the College. If you go to the website you can listen to it.
This history trail audio is narrated by the poet Michael Rosen, with script researched by Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks. This recording is part of a series of Cambridge history trails which have lyrics inspired by 'history beneath our feat' performed by local schoolchildren, with poems by the top poet Michael Rosen and songs by the funny team at CBBC's songwriters commissioned by Historyworks. To find more trails and further information, go to http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails
Gwen Raverat is one of the most important British wood engravers, and the artist who brought this form of printmaking technique into the 20th century. She was born in Cambridge in 1885, as Gwendolen Mary Darwin and lived at Newnham Grange and in Wychfield. Her grandfather was Charles Darwin, the famous naturalist, but she never met him, as he died before she was born. She was very curious as a child and she soon developed a strong interest in drawing and in literature. Her mother taught her how to read at the age of five, and at nine she started to take drawing lessons with Mary Greene, a professional painter based in Cambridge but educated in Paris. As a child, Gwen considered these drawing lessons the most important thing in her life. Even after enrolling at the prestigious Slade School of Fine Arts in London, in 1908, Gwendolen kept strong links with Cambridge and was an active member of the “neo-pagans”, the intellectual circle of Cambridge students which included Virginia Wolf and Rupert Brooke. Thanks to Brooke, she met a French student who had come to England to become a painter, Jacques Raverat. They soon fell in love and got married; their love story inspired Virginia Wolf for her novel “The Voyage Out.” After the death of her husband, Gwendolen moved back to Cambridge, making the town the centre of her professional and spiritual life. Apart from her activities as an illustrator and engraver, she collaborated in several productions for the New Theatre. Perhaps because of the attachment to her family and to her home town, Gwen had also a keen interest in children’s fiction and in childhood memoirs. Her first commission for book illustration was “The Cambridge Book of Poetry for Children” by Kenneth Grahame, now a classic anthology. In 1947, when she was 62, she wrote and illustrated her childhood memoirs. “Period Piece: A Cambridge Childhood” tells the story of her life as a child in Cambridge and the story of her family. The book was published in 1952 and has never been out of print since. Gwen Raverat died in 1957 at the Old Granary, very close to Newnham Grange. Both houses are now part of the Darwin College complex. One of its student accommodations is dedicated to her memory and on the street, a blue plaque reminds us of her birthplace and the importance of the Darwin family in the Cambridge community.
This history trail audio is narrated by the poet Michael Rosen, with script researched by Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks. This recording is part of a series of Cambridge history trails which have lyrics inspired by 'history beneath our feat' performed by local schoolchildren, with poems by the top poet Michael Rosen and songs by the funny team at CBBC's songwriters commissioned by Historyworks. To find more trails and further information, go to http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails
Great St. Mary’s foundations were thought to have been laid around 1010 and it was first recorded in legal documents in 1205, when it was called ‘St. Mary-by-the-market’. It became the University of Cambridge church when scholars arrived in 1209 and it has been in the heart of Cambridge for over a thousand years! The church completely burnt down in 1290, which wasn’t surprising, as it was surrounded by thatched roofed buildings and wooden market stalls! The church that you can see standing today started to be built in 1478, as part of a huge rebuilding programme and was completed with the addition of wooden roof beams, with carved bosses that were donated by Henry VII in 1506. Henry VII donated 100 oak trees from Chesterford Park in Essex for the roof to be completed. However this was very naughty, as the King didn’t actually own the forest – it belonged to the Abbot of Westminster, John Islip. The Abbot wasn’t very happy about this and Henry had to write a letter to apologise for his terrible behaviour!
In Tudor times, religion was a matter of life and death. Martin Bucer was a celebrated Protestant theologian. While the Protestant boy-king Edward VI ruled England, Martin Bucer became Professor of Theology at Cambridge. When Martin died, 3,000 people crammed into Great St Mary’s for his funeral – so many that the benches had to be repaired. Just six years later, the Catholic Queen Mary was on the throne and Martin Bucer’s Protestant ideas made him a target for royal revenge. Mary burned many Protestants alive, but Bucer was already dead. This didn’t stop her. Martin Bucer’s body was dug up from his grave in Great St Mary’s, chained to a stake in the market square and burned, along with a pile of books. Some people mocked the university authorities for binding the ‘rotten carcases’ with chains, saying that ‘they might be burnt loose without peril, for it was not to be feared that they would run away.’ Later, Mary’s Protestant half-sister Elizabeth I ordered the ashes from the bonfire to be reburied in Great St Mary’s again, so Martin Bucer is still remembered here today. We have a song about Martin Bucer written by Dave Cohen, the CBBC’s Horrible Histories Songwriter and commissioned by Historyworks. You can listen and sing along to it on the website. During Elizabeth I’s reign, she visited Great St. Mary’s in 1564 as part of a state visit to Cambridge. The University wanted to make a good impression on the Queen but the outside of the church was covered in deep mud, so they had to disguise it with twenty loads of sand! Also when she arrived the tower wasn’t finished, which meant that Great St. Mary’s was fined for not being able to ring the bells! Overall Elizabeth I’s visit was seen a great success. She attended two debates and also made a speech in Latin during her visit, in which she said she would donate to the University- but she never kept her promise! Elizabeth I’s visit not only benefited those at the University, it also helped the city’s market and traders. It led to her enacting a charter in 1575, which gave permission for traders to hold the market. The Cambridge Coat of Arms was created for the Charter and can still be seen on the Guildhall in the Market Square. We have a song about the Coat of Arms called “Seahorses” written by Dave Cohen. You can listen and sing along to it on the website.
Town Meets Gown at Great St Mary's Nowadays, Cambridge people mix well with those who come to the city’s world ...
This history trail audio is narrated by the poet Michael Rosen, with script researched by Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks. This recording is part of a series of Cambridge history trails which have lyrics inspired by 'history beneath our feat' performed by local schoolchildren, with poems by the top poet Michael Rosen and songs by the funny team at CBBC's songwriters commissioned by Historyworks. To find more trails and further information, go to http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails
Eglantyne Jebb was an educator and economist, a philanthropist and social activist, a political campaigner for women’s rights and children’s rights and refugees' rights in the era of Queen Victoria. Her story can be pinned to her family home which still exists called “Springfield” on the corner of Sidgewick Street and Queens Road overlooking the backs at Queens Green. And although Queens Green and Road were named such to mark the visit of Queen Victoria to Cambridge in 1842 and 1847, Eglantyne was not herself born until 1876 in Shropshire but frequently came to stay in Cambridge because she came from a powerful intellectual family, her uncle being the Professor of Classics who socialized with the Darwin family and the founders of Newnham College, filled with feisty educated women with progressive ideas and activist attitudes.
It is no surprise that Eglantyne went to College too, first to Oxford and then to teacher training college, showing a quirky streak by chucking out most of the furniture so she could study in a room with no distracting objects. Importantly for Cambridge, she returned to live there in 1900 and was put to work by the infamous social reformer and economist Florence Keynes, to research the poverty and inequality between town and gown that most in the University overlooked.
In 1906 Eglantyne published this survey of economic inequalities and the social consequences of poverty, which was called “Cambridge: a Social Study” highlighting the poor working and living conditions, especially the diseases and deaths arising from bad sanitation. Her activism made a difference to Cambridge and then to the UK, because Eglantyne joined the marches and processions of the suffragettes to campaign for the votes for women.
And after that, her work made a difference internationally when she campaigned as a refugee organizer in the Balkans during the First World War, fundraising for the relief of famines and food distribution to refugees, becoming a particular expert about the plight of displaced children in war, going on to co-found the Save the Children Fund on 6th January 1920, a charity that works in war torn situations to this day. Her determination to change the world for the better did not stop there, and her most important achievement in terms of safeguarding child protection which still has resonance today, was that in 1924 the League of Nations endorsed her Declaration on the Rights of the Child.
This history trail audio is narrated by the poet Michael Rosen, with script researched by Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks. This recording is part of a series of Cambridge history trails which have lyrics inspired by 'history beneath our feat' performed by local schoolchildren, with poems by the top poet Michael Rosen and songs by the funny team at CBBC's songwriters commissioned by Historyworks. To find more trails and further information, go to http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails
If you look out of the windows of St Luke’s Primary School or walk to the top of French’s Road, off Victoria Road, you can still some old barns and a big windmill missing its sails. The reason the road and the windmill is known locally as French’s is because in 1847 William French, a local miller moved to Cambridge and began to rent Chesterton Mills. A few years later “Miller” French paid £440 at a public auction to buy the land with a small farm and orchards surrounding the old windmill. After that the Mill was run by several generations of the French family for well over one hundred years.
The French family still live nearby today, and great great grandson (also called William French), has memories of going out on deliveries with the horse and wagon, and having warm rolls and doughnuts given to him at the bakeries where his family business delivered the sacks of flour. He remembers watching the flywheel spinning at great speed as the belt whizzed around driving the mill-stones. He also has old family photos showing the farm animals such as chickens and pigs, horses and cows.
Just imagine that where the school playground is today, there used to be a lovely orchard where William’s granny kept her chickens, and he would collect the eggs for pocket money to sell at the market. He remembers at Christmas that turkeys would be raised and then killed off and sold. If pigs escaped from the sty, there was a great fuss with all the men from the mill coming to help drive them back home to their pigsty. They’d wave metal tools at them because the pigs were so heavy if they charged at you, they could push you over in the muck & perhaps break your bones!
William French remembers that it was extremely tiring working at the Mill because it was lots of lifting of massive bags of grain and flour. All the workers would also work very long hours, getting up at dawn to deliver the bakeries their freshly ground flour.
For the first 20 years the windmill would have relied solely on the weather, needing the wind in its sails to drive the mill-stones which ground the wheat. However, the Millers discovered that wind power was just not a reliable source of energy to enable the mill-stones to create fine enough flour.
With the arrival of the railways to Cambridge in 1845 and inspired by the steam revolution which was powering the train engines as part of the ‘railway mania’ of the Victorian era, in 1868 William French decided to install a steam engine to power the grinding process. As with the railway engines, coal was burned to heat water to make steam. It was the steam, under pressure, which drove the pistons of the engine which turned the drive wheel and the belt that was connected to the machinery in the windmill. When there was too little wind the new engine would be stoked up with coal and steam power was used instead – a bit like a hybrid motor car the French family now had two sources of power. The steam engine also had its own Engine House with a very tall chimney, and if you look up you can see it does look very similar to the steam engine chimney that was built in 1894 at the Sewage Pumping Station on Riverside nearby. This is now the home of the Cambridge Museum of Technology where you have the chance to see engines in action.
The French family always adopted new technology for powering the mill and just as they moved from wind to steam power in the Victorian era so they moved from steam to gas and then finally to diesel in th...
This history trail audio is narrated by the poet Michael Rosen, with script researched by Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks. This recording is part of a series of Cambridge history trails which have lyrics inspired by 'history beneath our feat' performed by local schoolchildren, with poems by the top poet Michael Rosen and songs by the funny team at CBBC's songwriters commissioned by Historyworks. To find more trails and further information, go to http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails
Charles Darwin was a scientist who studied in Cambridge. He was supposed to train as a vicar, but he found beetle collecting much more interesting, and became a scientist instead. His radical theory of evolution by natural selection made us rethink our place in the world. Charles Darwin spread his ideas by giving lectures and talks and writing letters. But most importantly, he wrote a famous book which was a best seller, called "On the Origin of Species" and it was first published on 24 November 1859. His book is still read today and inspires scientists and thinkers. Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection said that humans were descended from a common ape-like ancestor. In Victorian times, this was a controversial challenge to Christian ideas about God creating humans. As an old man, Darwin returned to Cambridge in 1877 to receive an honorary Doctor of Laws degree. During Darwin’s honorary degree ceremony, a prankster dangled this stuffed monkey dressed in academic robes from the gallery of the Senate House, which ‘excited some mirth’.
We have a song about the Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution called “Theory of Evolution” written by CBBC’s Horrible Histories songwriter Dave Cohen. You can listen and sing along to it on the website.
This history trail audio is narrated by the poet Michael Rosen, with script researched by Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks. This recording is part of a series of Cambridge history trails which have lyrics inspired by 'history beneath our feat' performed by local schoolchildren, with poems by the top poet Michael Rosen and songs by the funny team at CBBC's songwriters commissioned by Historyworks. To find more trails and further information, go to http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails
The periods of History that cover the story of Cambridge Castle begin with the Romans 2000 years ago and pass through the Anglo Saxons and Vikings to the Normans 1000 years ago then bridge the Medieval period through the Tudors and Stuarts to the Georgian age just before the start of the Victorian era.
The Romans chose to have a camp on the land where the castle mound now sits and there is evidence that there was an Anglo-Saxon execution cemetery because excavation of burials has revealed the skeletons of individuals executed either through beheading from behind, or by hanging. Then there was a prison of some sort on Castle Hill from when the Norman motte and bailey castle was built in 1068 by William the Conqueror. This location was originally seen as ideal because it was at the most northern point at which an army could pass over the Cam from the Eastern Counties to the middle of England. Nearby was the only bridge that crossed the Cam for many miles. It was then called the Great Bridge but it’s now Magdalene Bridge – it was in fact the original Cam-bridge - Cambridge. In William’s wooden built castle there was a dungeon to keep prisoners, as well as the sheriff’s office, and monthly county courts were held here. The Castle was not important in terms of warfare after 1215 and the records of Henry III mention it entirely in connection with royal government and justice.
In the later Medieval times, when the University was established, there were tensions between clerks (scholars or churchmen) and the other inhabitants of the town. Our records are full of accounts of clerks causing trouble, either fighting amongst themselves, or against townsmen. In 1261–4 a group of clerks planned to burgle the house of a Cambridge wine merchant at Hauxton. They were betrayed by fellow clerks, and were caught in the act by the sheriff, who carried their decapitated heads back to the Castle.
Edward I rebuilt the castle around 1289, but that rebuilt castle has also disappeared. Edward himself stayed there on March 24th/25th 1293, the only recorded royal visit.
From the 1340s the gatehouse was the main castle gaol until the end of the 18th century. The Upper floor of the gatehouse was reserved for debtors, criminals were housed below.
In Tudor times there was a survey of the castle telling us that the gatehouse was used as a common Gaol and for the home of the gaoler. The rest of the walls of the castle were in ruins.
An account of the castle from 1802 reports that in the lower gaol there were 4 strong rooms, and in the high gaol there was a kitchen and other offices, and 6 rooms for debtors. Castle Yard was spacious but not secure enough to allow the prisoners to exercise.
Many of the prisoners were debtors, individuals who had been imprisoned for owing money. Theft was also common reason for imprisonment, but there are records of individuals committing more unusual crimes, including a certain John Stallan, who was charged with starting eleven fires in the Great Shelford area, simply so that he could seek a reward for alerting the Fire Office. He was later hanged at the Castle Prison for his crime.
In the early 1800s a new gaol was built, designed by Mr. Byfield and any records for the original castle disappear from sight.
This history trail audio is narrated by the poet Michael Rosen, with script researched by Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks. This recording is part of a series of Cambridge history trails which have lyrics inspired by 'history beneath our feat' performed by local school children, with poems by the top poet Michael Rosen and songs by the funny team at CBBC's songwriters commissioned by Historyworks. To find more trails and further information, go to http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails
The original Cambridge University Botanic Garden was started in 1760 on the site of a former Augustinian Friary near the centre of town. This small 5 acre site was then sold to build the Cavendish laboratories when in 1831, Professor Henslow, who importantly was Charles Darwin’s teacher, decided that a larger garden was needed. So it was that in the Victorian era, with the research focused on understanding species (especially studied by Darwin and his colleagues in botanical science) the plants were moved to a new 40 acre site on Trumpington Road. The first tree was planted in 1846 and further trees and shrubs were planted in their botanical sequence, which by the end of the 1800s meant that the Botanic Garden contained the rarest tree collection in the country.
The Botanic Garden continues the tradition from the Victorian era of carrying out important research on the subject of plant genetics: that is the understanding of how plants pass on the information about their structure and growth. This is now called Plant Science rather than the term the Victorians used which was Botany as in: Botanical Garden. One of the most interesting features for historians to see today, is the series of Chronological Beds which show how plants have been introduced into cultivation in Britain from the earliest times to the present day, and also tells the story of global travellers who brought back new specimens and species to the UK. For example, it is thought that the Holly Hock (which is an Anglo-Saxon word) was brought from Palestine at the time of the Crusades, when the Knights returning from those Wars brought back the seeds.
The early potato came to England in Tudor times, possibly with the Elizabethan travellers Drake or Raleigh, who brought back varieties from Spain, which had in turn come from Peru. But the potato from South America that we eat today, is linked to the potato brought back from the islands off Argentina by Charles Darwin himself! The tomato also came from South America, and was again brought to Europe from Peru in Tudor times. The first written evidence of a tomato eaten in Italy dates from 1550 and in England seeds were grown from the late 1590s but lots of people were worried about eating them because there were rumours that they were poisonous! Hum, that would have made a Tudor Pizza night a bit of a challenge!
This history trail audio is narrated by the poet Michael Rosen, with script researched by Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks. This recording is part of a series of Cambridge history trails which have lyrics inspired by 'history beneath our feat' performed by local school children, with poems by the top poet Michael Rosen and songs by the funny team at CBBC's songwriters commissioned by Historyworks. To find more trails and further information, go to http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails
There are records of a Town Gaol in Cambridge from the 13th century onwards. Early on there was a small cell on the marketplace and a big facility up on Castle Hill. The new gaol was only located on Parker’s Piece for a relatively short amount of time in the 19th century; it was built in 1827, but had fallen out of use by 1878.
The building of the Town Gaol on Parker’s Piece was a controversial matter because Parker’s Piece marked an area of a donated meadow that the University and the town and shared. In those days beyond Parker’s Piece there were just fields and market gardens, orchards and a mill to grind cereal for bread, milking parlours for cows, pigsties and orchards bordering the way out of town along Mill Road.
But the Council had an eye on using the space and started buying up parcels of land for Victorian welfare institutions like a Workhouse on Mill Road, and then further out, a Hospital for people with highly infectious diseases.
Building a Town Gaol, was an incredibly expensive enterprise, costing the town £25,000! Not everybody was happy to pay for a new prison. Lord Palmerston presented a petition to Parliament from the Chancellor, Master, and Scholars of the University of Cambridge, complaining that they should not have to pay for the new prison. This was clearly a matter of tension between town and gown.
The new prison was apparently state of the art. The Municipal commissioners visiting the Town Gaol in 1833 were very impressed. They noted that there were 8 yards for the prisoners to exercise, 8 dayrooms, and the prison could comfortably accommodate 47 prisoners. Indeed, in 1832 there had been 208 prisoners staying at the gaol in total, and there had been no deaths, a fact that was considered something of a success. We are also told that the prisoners had their own chaplain.
In old photographs and engravings the prison building looks monumental, like a castle, with a large gateway and crenalations along the top. The rough location was where the Parkside Pool ends and the Kelsey Kerridge Sports Hall stands today. In the pictures of 1838 depicting the huge feast on Parker’s Piece to celebrate the Coronation of Queen Victoria, the artist is clearly on the roof of the Town Gaol, because it overlooks Parker’s Piece from the south side. The famous engravings of the feast show ladies in their finery observing the feast from the crenalations.
We know a lot about the prisoners held at Cambridge Town Gaol from newspaper reports about their crimes, and trials. Theft was a common crime. For example a ring of thieves were committed to the gaol after stealing a silver watch, and another thief was said to have stolen a bay horse. Crimes included political corruption. A certain Robert Canham spent 3 months at the gaol in 1835 for trying to bribe inhabitants into voting for the Tory candidate in the election! But there were miscarriages of justice. For example, an unnamed individual was arrested for sending three parcels of stolen pigeons to London by the Norwich coach. He accused the keeper of Cambridge Town Gaol of false imprisonment, and, after being proven innocent was paid damages for the mistake.
This history trail audio is narrated by the poet Michael Rosen, with script researched by Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks. This recording is part of a series of Cambridge history trails which have lyrics inspired by 'history beneath our feat' performed by local schoolchildren, with poems by the top poet Michael Rosen and songs by the funny team at CBBC's songwriters commissioned by Historyworks. To find more trails and further information, go to http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails
This is the story of the Cattle Market, which started close to the market place in Anglo Saxon times, then went north to be near river transportation, and then moved to a huge site by the station in 1885 to take advantage of the Victorian age of rail travel.
In Victorian times, markets developed from selling locally to becoming national and international - not only for industrial goods made in Cambridge - (like Headly’s foundry making iron railings and weather vanes and train tracks and fixings) - but also for selling fresh goods, such as the relatively short sell-by- date of animals like chickens and beef cattle!
Whilst the central market in Cambridge sold groceries to the public - (like fruit and vegetables, eggs and cheese, fish and poultry and meat directly to customers), - nearby there were places for these products to be sold between farmers and the grocers and wholesalers who sold them on to shops and butchers, hotels and pubs and canteens.
In Victorian Cambridge most of these agricultural goods were sold at two venues. First, at the Corn Exchange which was the market for grain to make bread and other baked goods. Second, at the Cattle Market which sold live animals such as pigs, cows, sheep, chickens; and close to Christmas there would be turkeys and geese sold there too!
When the railways arrived in Cambridge the Cattle Market was on the opposite side of town, on Pound Hill in the Castle area. So at the very time the station opened in 1845, offering up the prospect of speedy travel for goods in wagons, the Cattle market was located far away on the hill to the north of Cambridge, the other side of the Cam, which would have been handy for River transportation, but not for rail. So once the railways opened, then livestock operators and auctioneers started to have cattle pens off Hills Road to be close to the station, so effectively there was no longer ONE Cattle Market, and it was harder for the council to check on and regulate the terms and conditions of sale.
Therefore, after lots of negotiations, Cambridge City council purchased a huge site for the Cattle Market (an extensive plot of almost 14 acres, on land between Cherry Hinton Road and Hills Road which had been owned by Jesus College). On old photographs you can see a wide curving paved road for the cattle to walk off Hills Road on their own ramp down to the Cattle Market. Maps of the station area then show how there were train track sidings directly connecting the main lines to the Cattle Market, so that cows and sheep and pigs could be moved in wagons to and from the Cattle Market directly by rail.
The engineering company who owned the Eagle Foundry, Headlys, made all the railings for the animal pens and their water troughs locally at their business on Mill Road. The pens at the market could hold 700 bulls and up to 2000 pigs or sheep at one time, so it was extremely noisy and smelly! The market was very successful with live beasts coming from Scotland in the north and Ireland to the west, put up for auction in Cambridge, and then the bulk of the meat sold off for public consumption in London. It became by far the largest cattle market in East Anglia and hosted the popular Easter Bank Holiday Market for the region.
In its heyday hundreds of live cattle would be transported by train and ship to the market from Scotland and Ireland, every week. The site operated until 1990, but with the rise of supermarkets, the activities of lives...
This history trail audio is narrated by the poet Michael Rosen, with script researched by Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks. This recording is part of a series of Cambridge history trails which have lyrics inspired by 'history beneath our feat' performed by local schoolchildren, with poems by the top poet Michael Rosen and songs by the funny team at CBBC's songwriters commissioned by Historyworks. To find more trails and further information, go to http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails
Work in the Victorian era was sweaty and dirty, but most people didn’t have running water or even a bath at home. In Cambridge you couldn’t even go and wash in the river because it was full of poo and other rubbish. When Queen Victoria visited in 1843 and asked the Master of Trinity why there was so much paper in the river Cam - he replied that they were “signs prohibiting bathing!” He didn’t want to say that was toilet paper and sewage floating down the river! This insanitary state of affairs led to the spread of diseases like cholera and typhoid the likes of which killed half of all children by the age of 15.
What Cambridge needed to get properly clean was a Public Bath House.
But the problem wasn’t just here in Cambridge, it existed across the entire country and in 1848 Queen Victoria’s Government passed the first Public Health Act. This set up local Boards of Health to look after the welfare of their city’s residents by providing sewerage and clean water. One of the first steps in Cambridge was the building of the Sewage Pumping Station – in 1894 – now home to the Cambridge Museum of Technology on Riverside.
But it took a lot longer for Cambridge to get its Bath House. In fact it took more than 30 years until a site was chosen in the Romsey area. It was particularly important to place it here because most men, and even some children, worked in factories and on the nearby railways in all sorts of dirty jobs!
In Cambridge in 1923 studies revealed that the vast majority of houses had no baths and the only place to bathe was in the kitchen with a bucket or a tin bath yet it still took 4 more years of campaigning before the council authorities finally built the Bath House on the corner of Gwydir Street and Mill Road.
In 1913, the council forced the owners to sell them “Gwydir House” - the house on this corner - because the site was required for street widening. The building was then demolished and discussions began on how to use the site. It was offered first to the Education Committee, but they decided that the site was not suitable for a school, so, after a very long delay, the decision was made to use the site as the long awaited Public Bath House. At first costs were estimated at £4,000 but soon this was raised to £7,500, which the council drew from the Ministry of Health. Mr C Kerridge was given the job of building the baths for £7,331.
The builder installed eighteen slipper baths (those really massive ones that look like an old fashioned slipper that you have to climb into) and two “douche” baths (douche is the French word for shower so these baths had showers over them).
The council determined that there should be three members of staff: a male attendan t, a senior female attendant and a junior female attendant, who were to be paid £3, £2 10s, £2 a week respectively. From a short list, Mr Galloway, Mrs Ray and Miss Middleton were chosen. Each was given a uniform: a blue overall for the male attendant and white ones for the female attendants.
The Bath House was finally opened on the 3rd February 1927 to great fanfare. Notice that the Cambridge coat of arms boasting River and Seahorses is placed above the front door. The mayor unlocked this door using a golden key and all the councillors bought a ticket, although they didn’t actually take a dip! The first bath was actually taken by a man named Ben Benstead, along with his friend Doug Smith in the neighbouring cubicle. But, not everything went to plan! T...
LYRICS by CBBC's Horrible Histories song-writer, Dave Cohen
1845 Cambridge railway Station built beyond our Mill Road Wonder if the first train to arrive Came when the clock said 1845
FREEDOM TRAIN BY ROLLO DILLWORTH - for educational learning purposes only! Enjoy singing using transcription of lyrics below:
verse1 Woo Woo ((All aboard! Just get on board! Get on board! )) Woo Woo ((All aboard! Just get on board! Get on board! )) ((Shout hallelujah! All aboard the freedom train )) Bound for glory where peace and justice reign. One day we shall overcome, can’t go back to where we started from Freedom train’s a comin’. Get on board./….. Freedom train’s a comin’. Get on board./…..
CHORUS: Get on board. Get on board. Freedom train’s a comin’. ((IT’S COMIN’)) won’t you ge-et on boa-aaard! Get on board. Get on board. Freedom train’s a comin’. Get on board.
Verse 2 Woo Woo ((All aboard! Just get on board! Get on board! )) Woo Woo ((All aboard! Just get on board! Get on board! )) ((Shout hallelujah! Gonna ride to glory land )) On to victory, I’ll join that heavenly band In the land where I will sing, songs of the people will set me free. Freedom train’s a comin. Get on board. /…. Freedom train’s a comin’. Get on board./…..
CHORUS: Get on board. Get on board. Freedom train’s a comin’. ((IT’S COMIN’)) won’t you ge-et on boa-aaard! Get on board. Get on board. Freedom train’s a comin’. Get on board.
Bridge You may hinder me here, - but you can’t hinder me there the lord in Heaven - s - gonna answer my prayer I am goin’ home - to see the elders there, To sing the songs of hope for freedom everywhere.
END CHORUS ((OOHH Get on bo-ard, ain’t gonna let nobody turn me ‘round Get on bo- ard, ain’t gonna let nobody turn me ‘round x 6))
Ohh Freedom Ohh Feedom x4
Freedom train’s a comin’. Get on board/….. Freedom train’s a comin’. Get on board.
FREEDOM TRAIN BY ROLLO DILLWORTH - for educational learning purposes only! Enjoy singing using transcription of lyrics below:
verse1 Woo Woo ((All aboard! Just get on board! Get on board! )) Woo Woo ((All aboard! Just get on board! Get on board! )) ((Shout hallelujah! All aboard the freedom train )) Bound for glory where peace and justice reign. One day we shall overcome, can’t go back to where we started from Freedom train’s a comin’. Get on board./….. Freedom train’s a comin’. Get on board./…..
CHORUS: Get on board. Get on board. Freedom train’s a comin’. ((IT’S COMIN’)) won’t you ge-et on boa-aaard! Get on board. Get on board. Freedom train’s a comin’. Get on board.
Verse 2 Woo Woo ((All aboard! Just get on board! Get on board! )) Woo Woo ((All aboard! Just get on board! Get on board! )) ((Shout hallelujah! Gonna ride to glory land )) On to victory, I’ll join that heavenly band In the land where I will sing, songs of the people will set me free. Freedom train’s a comin. Get on board. /…. Freedom train’s a comin’. Get on board./…..
CHORUS: Get on board. Get on board. Freedom train’s a comin’. ((IT’S COMIN’)) won’t you ge-et on boa-aaard! Get on board. Get on board. Freedom train’s a comin’. Get on board.
Bridge You may hinder me here, - but you can’t hinder me there the lord in Heaven - s - gonna answer my prayer I am goin’ home - to see the elders there, To sing the songs of hope for freedom everywhere.
END CHORUS ((OOHH Get on bo-ard, ain’t gonna let nobody turn me ‘round Get on bo- ard, ain’t gonna let nobody turn me ‘round x 6))
We shall overcome--Oh x6
Freedom train’s a comin’. Get on board/….. Freedom train’s a comin’. Get on board.
FREEDOM TRAIN BY ROLLO DILLWORTH - for educational learning purposes only! Enjoy singing using transcription of lyrics below:
verse1 All aboard! Just get on board! Get on board! All aboard! Just get on board! Get on board! Shout hallelujah! All aboard the freedom train ((Bound for glory where peace and justice reign. One day we shall overcome, can’t go back to where we started from)) Freedom train’s a comin’. Get on board./…..
CHORUS: Freedom train’s a comin’. Get on board. Get on board. Get on board. IT’S COMIN’ won’t you ge-et on boa-aaard! Get on board. Get on board. Freedom train’s a comin’. Get on board.
Verse2 All aboard! Just get on board! Get on board! All aboard! Just get on board! Get on board! Shout hallelujah! Gonna ride to glory land ((On to victory, I’ll join that heavenly band In the land where I will sing, songs of the people will set me free.)) Freedom train’s a comin. Get on board. /….
CHORUS: Freedom train’s a comin’. Get on board. Get on board. Get on board. IT’S COMIN’ won’t you ge-et on boa-rd! Get on board. Get on board. Freedom train’s a comin’. Get on board.
Verse3 You may hinder me here, - but you can’t hinder me there the lord in Heaven - s - gonna answer my prayer I am goin’ home - to see the elders there, To sing the songs of hope for freedom everywhere.
END CHORUS OOHH Get on bo-ard, ain’t gonna let nobody turn me ‘round Get on bo- ard, ain’t gonna let nobody turn me ‘round x 6 ((We shall overcome--Oh Freedom))
Freedom train’s a comin’. Get on board/….. Freedom train’s a comin’. Get on board.
FREEDOM TRAIN BY ROLLO DILLWORTH - for educational learning purposes only! Enjoy singing using transcription of lyrics below:
verse1 All aboard! Just get on board! Get on board! All aboard! Just get on board! Get on board! Shout hallelujah! All aboard the freedom train ((Bound for glory where peace and justice reign. One day we shall overcome, can’t go back to where we started from)) Freedom train’s a comin’. Get on board./…..
CHORUS: Freedom train’s a comin’. Get on board. Get on board. Get on board. IT’S COMIN’ won’t you ge-et on boa-aaard! Get on board. Get on board. Freedom train’s a comin’. Get on board.
Verse2 All aboard! Just get on board! Get on board! All aboard! Just get on board! Get on board! Shout hallelujah! Gonna ride to glory land ((On to victory, I’ll join that heavenly band In the land where I will sing, songs of the people will set me free.)) Freedom train’s a comin. Get on board. /….
CHORUS: Freedom train’s a comin’. Get on board. Get on board. Get on board. IT’S COMIN’ won’t you ge-et on boa-rd! Get on board. Get on board. Freedom train’s a comin’. Get on board.
Verse3 You may hinder me here, - but you can’t hinder me there the lord in Heaven - s - gonna answer my prayer I am goin’ home - to see the elders there, To sing the songs of hope for freedom everywhere.
END CHORUS OOHH Get on bo-ard, ain’t gonna let nobody turn me ‘round Get on bo- ard, ain’t gonna let nobody turn me ‘round x 6 ((We shall overcome--Oh Freedom))
Freedom train’s a comin’. Get on board/….. Freedom train’s a comin’. Get on board.
Don’t think you can take the migrants out of me. Every time I hear you say all the wrongs that migrants supposedly do, you are saying it to the migrants in me, people who travelled thousands of miles so they could work in sweat shops, in boot and shoe factories, on market stalls, people who ran from danger, threats, hate, bullets and bombs.
Maybe I look as if you could take the migrants out of me, my hands are soft, no one’s told me I’m not allowed to live here though someone once told me I’m not ‘indigenous’, which made me wonder: if I’m not indigenous, are my children indigenous? Would their children be indigenous? When does a person become indigenous? How long does it take to be indigenous?
Maybe I look as if you could spin a story at me about how threatening and dangerous migrants are, as if neither I nor you would ever dream of upping sticks and living somewhere else and being, you know, a migrant, as if neither I nor you might suddenly find ourselves in a wrong place at a wrong time carrying the wrong passport, with a face that doesn’t fit, and needing to get out, move, find a safe place because, what is it, only mad, bad and sad people do that sort of thing and neither me or you are mad, bad or sad enough? so, don’t think you can take the migrants out of me; the migrants in me tell me about criss-crossing Europe criss-crossing the Atlantic they warn me, they remind me of long, long hours at work benches, they remind me of relatives, who at one moment, were as safe as houses, and the next had no houses to be safe in who fled armies, officials, police, all acting legally on behalf of their governments, relatives who found themselves sitting ducks waiting to be snaffled, transported, and disappeared forever, and of course you don’t want anything like that to happen to anyone even though our country acting in our name has helped in the business of turning millions out of their houses people so desperate as to climb into rubber dinghies as if they were safe as houses.
I went to see my father’s cousin Michael. He was born in Poland.
When the Nazis came in the west his parents put him on a train going east and he never saw them again. They died in a Nazi death camp.
When the Russians came in the east he was arrested, put on a train and sent to one of the Russians camps. But he lived.
When I went to see him he wouldn’t tell me any of this. When he went out of the room his wife said he can’t bear to talk about it. When he came back into the room he said, ‘Tell him the story about my cousin Leosia.’
So they told me about the story about cousin Leosia. ‘When the Nazis came in the west Leosia pretended to be a Christian. She put a crucifix around her neck and then she fetched her grandmother’s brooch and took the diamonds off it. She took the soles off the heels of her shoes put the diamonds inside the heels and put the soles back on. She thought if there were going to be any problems she would be able to sell them. Then she went west into Germany.
In Germany she worked in a factory. No one ever found out that she was Jewish.
At the end of the war she couldn’t face going back to Poland. Her parents, all her friends and all her relations had been taken away to the camps and killed.
She went to Israel to find her brother Naftali.
She told him how she had lived right through the war with diamonds in the heels of her shoes. ‘I already knew if ever I got into difficulty I could’ve sold them and maybe paid someone to help me. And here they are’, she said, ‘the very diamonds themselves.’
And Naftali said, ‘Where did you get the diamonds from, Leosia?’ And Leosia said, ‘From our grandmother’s brooch.’
So Naftali said, ‘Listen carefully, Leosia. Many years ago, our grandmother wrote to me. She said that grandfather’s business wasn’t doing too well and so to help out She had taken the diamonds off her brooch put in glass ones instead and sold off the diamonds. She didn’t tell anyone about it but she wrote to me to get it off her chest.
You went through the whole war with nothing more than bits of glass in the heels of your shoes.’
What is racism?
It’s a clockmender who left his country to get a better living and all is fine until things start changing there’s an invasion he and his wife run to another town and the people who are supposed to keep law and order decide to put him and his wife on a list and then they decide that they will make them wear a special badge marking them out as different and then they decide that they will take all their money away from them and the clockmender and his wife have nothing much more they can do but sell old clothes in the market where they must put a special badge on their stall marking them out as different and they send letters to America for help from their relatives and they hear stories about how people like them are being shot and transported to places where they never come back from so they run again and they hear rumours of a place where they’ll be safe and they get there somehow and then someone from the army that invaded arrives and he hates people like the clockmender and his wife and he has lists and with the help of the people who are supposed to keep law and order he gets hold of the clockmender and his wife and he puts them on a train to a housing estate which has been converted into a kind of prison and from there they are shipped to a big station and from there they are shipped out of the country to a special place where people will work till they die where people are tortured where people starve to death where people fall ill and have no means of being cured where people are shot where people are gassed to death and the clockmaker and his wife are never seen again… No one in their family knows what happened to them for years and years until one of the letters that the clockmender sent to America turns up and bit by bit one of the people in the family finds the books that have the lists of the people who like the clockmender were rounded up and shipped out and bit by bit he puts the story together he doesn’t fully know why he’s doing this other than that he doesn’t want it to be that no one knows he doesn’t want it to be that people specialise in saying that such things didn’t happen so he finds out more and more about about the clockmender and his wife and the clockmender is called Oscar, known as Jeschie and his wife is Rachel and Oscar is Oscar Rosen who was my father’s uncle and now you know what I found out now you know what I wanted you to know and now I know that this isn’t something that no one knows.
In the beginning was the word and the word is ours:
the names of places, the names of flowers, the names of names, words are ours.
Page-turners for early learners
How to boil an egg or mend a leg
Words are ours
Wall charts Love hearts
Sports reports Short retorts
Jam-jar labels Timetables
Words are ours
Following the instructions for furniture constructions
Ancient mythologies Online anthologies
Who she wrote for Who to vote for
Joke collections Results of elections
Words are ours
The tale’s got you gripped Have you learned your script?
The method of an experiment Ingredients for merriment
W8n 4ur txt Re: whats nxt
Print media Wikipedia
Words are ours
Subtitles on TV Details on your CV
Book of great speeches Guide to the best beaches
Looking for chapters on velociraptors
Words are ours
The mystery of History The history of mystery
The views of news The news of views
Words to explain The words for pain
Doing geography Autobiography
Arabian Nights Fighting for your rights
What to do in payphones Goodbyes on gravestones
Words are ours.
When we talk about sisters and brothers and fathers and mothers when it comes to my dad there’s always a place where there’s a bit of a space. It’s a gap with no one there. It’s a father, a dad, over there somewhere.
When we talk about sisters and brothers and fathers and mothers and we get to the sisters and brothers of my father’s father he shuts his eyes and says he’d rather not talk about that.
But we ask for their names and where they are where do they live and is it far? And bit by bit he tells us their names none of them here there was a war, he explains.
And we sit and we think about us sitting here how sisters and brothers could just disappear but because Mum and Dad were in a different place they could stay here where they were safe my mother and father were able to survive and here we are now and we’re all alive
Don’t drown. Practise swimming for a long, long time. Don’t drown. Practise shouting, ‘Help!’ Don’t drown. Keep the water out. Don’t drown. Call for help. Don’t drown. If you see the water rising, leave. Don’t drown. If you think you’re sinking, grab something. Don’t drown. If you think there’s no way out, you’re probably wrong and there is a way out. Find it Don’t drown. If you think you’re stuck, probably you’re not. Don’t drown. If you think you can’t go on, Probably you can. Don’t drown.
She sat in the back of the van and we waved to her there
we ran towards her but the van moved off
we ran faster she reached out for us
the van moved faster we reached for her hand
she stretched out of the back of the van we ran, reaching
the van got away we stopped running
we never reached her before she was gone.
In our flat faces speak of places across the sea.
In our flat voices walk in talking, but not like me.
In our flat books fly around us saying, ‘Never stop saying “Why?”’.
In our flat stories stroke us until we cry.
In our flat, there was a mother and father who were born so poor they told us: even if we now have more no one is worse than you; things could be fair if we learned how to share, and they sang a sweet song that said war is wrong.
Find out what’s possible, they said. Find out what’s possible. Find out what’s possible, they said. Find out what’s possible.
We’re walking, we’re walking, we’re walking away, we’re walking away from the bullets.
Bullets don’t grow in the ground. There is no fruit where the bullet is found.
We’re walking, we’re walking, we’re walking away, to where we know that something will grow. This is why we said goodbye to the ones we loved who were found lying still on the ground.
We’re walking, we’re walking, we’re walking away…
You know You gotta go. No time to grieve You just gotta leave. Get away from the pain On the move again.
You gotta move it To prove it. Prove it To move it.
Take the train. Catch a plane.
Make the trip In a ship.
Take a hike. Ride a bike.
Go by car. Going far.
Use your feet On the street.
Get stuck In a truck.
You gotta move it To prove it. Prove it To move it.
Then you arrive And you’re alive. You arrive. You’re alive.
What you leave behind Won’t leave your mind But home is where you find it. Home is where you find it. Home is where you find it. Home is where you find it.
Today The rain has died My shoes have died The sun has died My coat has died The earth has died Today.
One day The rain will flower My shoes will laugh The sun will sing My coat will fly The earth will dance One day.
You can’t do something yesterday. You can’t do something tomorrow. You can only do something now.
You can remember something from yesterday. You can plan something for tomorrow. You can only do something now.
What you did yesterday can help you choose what to do now.
What you did yesterday and what you do now can help you plan what to do tomorrow.
But you can only do something now.
My dad is a map: follow this road cross this bridge go round this lake don’t fall down this cliff climb this hill stop and look at this view.
Today I’ve got to follow this road cross this bridge go round this lake not fall down this cliff climb this hill stop and look at this view without a map.
The space is a friend. I tell it what hurts.
I tell it why I’m not good. The space is a friend. I tell it the bother I’m in. It won’t let me tell lies.
The space looks at me. It never says I’m good. It never asks me the kinds of question I don’t know the answer to.
The space never shames me. The space never laughs at me.
When there is something in my head Making me sad or wild, The space takes it.
The space takes it till it’s a space no more, till it’s full of what I wanted to say, till it’s full of what I didn’t know I wanted to say.
Then it’s there in front of me talking of how I am so the bother or the sadness or the wildness can be quiet for a while.
Tell me that’t not a friend? I don’t think so.
That’s a friend.
This is the newborn child. This is the child just come into the world. Was it born in a hotel suite? Was it born on to the ground and left there As its parents ran from guns and bombs?
What shall we do with the newborn child? What shall we make it? A boy or a girl?
Shall the child live in the city with the sound of trains, trams, buses and cars? Shall the child live in the country with the sound of tractors, dogs and chainsaws? Shall the child live up a mountain? Or on a beach? Shall the child live in a house, an apartment, a tent or a hut?
Shall the child live with a mother who hasn’t eaten for three months? Shall the child live where there is a bath on every floor? Shall the child drink dirty water every day? Shall the child live?
You choose. This is the newborn child. What kind of child is this child?
The Cambridge Navvies with lyrics and melody by Patrick Olsen, Chorus and Harmonies and Score by Bethany Kirby
VERSE ONE The Navvies were men who made the canals, For twelve hours a day they’d sweat with their pals, Movin’ twenty tonnes of earth in a barrow up a plank, And leavin’ it all at the top of the bank.
VERSE TWO The navvies were men who laid the train tracks, Cutting through hills with a pick and an axe, Lay-in’ the ties and covered them with stones. Sun burning their skin and wind freezing their bones.
CHORUS Oh the navvies came to our town from Ireland and Cornwall and all around Oh the navvies united they stand from Wales and Scotland and far away lands
VERSE THREE When the whistle would blow, they’d off to their homes, Built near the tracks so they’d not far to go. For wages they’d get beef and a gallon of beer.. Then they’d drink and they'd stink all with a very good cheer.
CHORUS Oh the navvies came to our town from Ireland and Cornwall and all around Oh the navvies united they stand from Wales and Scotland and far away lands
VERSE FOUR When they got near to Cambridge, they ran into a bind, The colleges they said, (suddenly whispering) “noisy navvies must pay a fine” (a little louder) So the navvies built the station a mile out of town…(loud again) Where they wouldn’t disturb all the men in their gowns. Well our train tracks and boat paths are amazingly loooooong (hold this note until everyone turns blue) Built by the navvies the heroes of song.
CHORUS Oh the navvies came to our town from Ireland and Cornwall and all around Oh the navvies united they stand from Wales and Scotland and far away lands
A Railway themed soundscape Commissioned by Helen Weinstein and Co Created by the team at Historyworks with Musical Direction by Bethany Kirby and voices by the community choir called the 'Railway Singers' for the Rhythm, Rhymes & Railways project. Recorded and Edited on Sunday 08th October 2017 by Mario Satchwell.
The Cambridge Navvies with lyrics and melody by Patrick Olsen, Chorus and Harmonies and Score by Bethany Kirby
VERSE ONE The Navvies were men who made the canals, For twelve hours a day they’d sweat with their pals, Movin’ twenty tonnes of earth in a barrow up a plank, And leavin’ it all at the top of the bank.
VERSE TWO The navvies were men who laid the train tracks, Cutting through hills with a pick and an axe, Lay-in’ the ties and covered them with stones. Sun burning their skin and wind freezing their bones.
CHORUS Oh the navvies came to our town from Ireland and Cornwall and all around Oh the navvies united they stand from Wales and Scotland and far away lands
VERSE THREE When the whistle would blow, they’d off to their homes, Built near the tracks so they’d not far to go. For wages they’d get beef and a gallon of beer. Then they’d drink and they'd stink all in a very good cheer.
CHORUS Oh the navvies came to our town from Ireland and Cornwall and all around Oh the navvies united they stand from Wales and Scotland and far away lands
VERSE FOUR When they got near to Cambridge, they ran into a bind, The colleges they said, (suddenly whispering) “noisy navvies must pay a fine” (a little louder) So the navvies built the station a mile out of town…(loud again) Where they wouldn’t disturb all the men in their gowns. Well our train tracks and boat paths are amazingly loooooong (hold this note until everyone turns blue) Built by the navvies the heroes of song.
CHORUS Oh the navvies came to our town from Ireland and Cornwall and all around Oh the navvies united they stand from Wales and Scotland and far away lands
Michael Rosen's Hand On the Bridge adapted to song by Bethany Kirby Performed by our Railway Singers
Hand on the bridge, Feel the rhythm of the train. Hand on the window Feel the rhythm of the rain. Hand on your throat Feel the rhythm of your talk Hand on your leg Feel the rhythm of your walk Hand in the sea Feel the rhythm of the tide Hand on your heart Feel the rhythm inside Hand on the rhythm Feel the rhythm of the rhyme Hand on your life Feel the rhythm of time Hand on your life Feel the rhythm of time Hand on you life Feel the rhythm of time.
Michael Rosen's Railway Excursions Song adapted to song by Bethany Kirby Performed by our Railway Singers
Chorus 1: A SPEcial CHEAP ExCURsion TRAIN Chorus 2: To WALton-ON-the NAZE and BACK Chorus 1: AUGust EIGHTeen SEVenty SIX Chorus 2: August eighteen seventy-six
Chorus 1: Oo-oo-woo Chorus 2: Psssshhhhhtttt
Chorus 1: EARly START at TWENty past SIX. Chorus 2: CAMbridge, SHELford, NEXT stop LINton Chorus 1: SAFfron WALden, BARTlow, HAVerhill Chorus 2: NEXT stop CLARE, and THEN it’s MELford
Chorus 1: Oo-oo-woo Chorus 2: Psssshhhhhtttt
Chorus 1: ArRIVing at WALton at NINE forty FIVE Chorus 2: GREAT Eastern RAILway’s DAY at the SEA Chorus 1:The WHOLE round TRIP will COST 3 BOB Chorus 2: “No LUGGage allOWED”; “No LUGGage allOWED”
Chorus 1: Oo-oo-woo Chorus 2: Psssshhhhhtttt
Freedom Train: COMPOSED BY ROLLO DILWORTH Commissioned by the Chicago Children’s Choir in celebration of their 50th anniversary, Josephine Lee, Artistic Director
Grass Grows, Years Disappear- based on Michael Rosen's 'Coldham's Common' poem, composed and scored by Bethany Kirby, Produced by Helen Weinstein, Commissioned by Historyworks
Lyrics Giant lizards in the sky Wide wings take them high Flapping and stopping, leaving their droppings For millions of years right here
The years pass and the grass grows The grass grows over the years disappear And here we are, we stand right here
Up above people come and go Their pigs and cows moving slow Free to graze upon the ground 'Til a Lord puts a fence around Nowhere for the pigs and cows And with the people starving now One Jack 'o the Style, he leads a revolt They break down the fence and call a halt
The years pass and the grass grows The grass grows over the years disappear And here we are, we stand right here
One John Ball from Barnwell way Said beneath the grass there lay Some magic stuff which if ye had enough Would make any plant grow Very few knew the reason why Was down to lizards in the sky Flapping and stopping, leaving their droppings For millions of years right here
The years pass and the grass grows The grass grows over the years disappear And here we are, we stand right here
Giant Lizards in the Sky - based on a poem by Michael Rosen, composed and scored by Bethany Kirby, Produced by Helen Weinstein, Commissioned by Historyworks
Giant lizards in the sky Wide wings take them high Flapping and stopping, leaving their droppings The years pass and the grass grows The grass grows over the years disappear Here we are, we stand right her Here we are, we stand right here
Giant Lizards in the Sky - based on a poem by Michael Rosen, composed and scored by Bethany Kirby, Produced by Helen Weinstein, Commissioned by Historyworks
Giant lizards in the sky Wide wings take them high Flapping and stopping, leaving their droppings The years pass and the grass grows The grass grows over the years disappear Here we are, we stand right her Here we are, we stand right here
Michael Rosen's Pterosaur Poo poem - adapted to song by Bethany Kirby
Pterosaur poo, Pterosaur poo. Thousands found it. Didn’t know what to do! Pterosaur poo, Pterosaur poo, Made of stone. Too hard to chew. Ptesosaur poo, Pterosaur poo. Near to where, the cows go moo. Pterosaur poo. Pterosaur poo. Now it’s ancient. Once it was new. Pterosaur poo. Pterosaur poo. Thousands came. Did they queue? Pterosaur poo. Pterosaur poo. In a poem by you know who!
The Cambridge Navvies with lyrics and melody by Patrick Olsen, Chorus and Harmonies and Score by Bethany Kirby
VERSE ONE The Navvies were men who made the canals, For twelve hours a day they’d sweat with their pals, Movin’ twenty tonnes of earth in a barrow up a plank, And leavin’ it all at the top of the bank.
VERSE TWO The navvies were men who laid the train tracks, Cutting through hills with a pick and an axe, Lay-in’ the ties and covered them with stones. Sun burning their skin and wind freezing their bones.
CHORUS Oh the navvies came to our town from Ireland and Cornwall and all around Oh the navvies united they stand from Wales and Scotland and far away lands
VERSE THREE When the whistle would blow, they’d off to their homes, Built near the tracks so they’d not far to go. For wages they’d get beef and a gallon of beer.. Then they’d drink and they'd stink all with a very good cheer.
CHORUS Oh the navvies came to our town from Ireland and Cornwall and all around Oh the navvies united they stand from Wales and Scotland and far away lands
VERSE FOUR When they got near to Cambridge, they ran into a bind, The colleges they said, (suddenly whispering) “noisy navvies must pay a fine” (a little louder) So the navvies built the station a mile out of town…(loud again) Where they wouldn’t disturb all the men in their gowns. Well our train tracks and boat paths are amazingly loooooong (hold this note until everyone turns blue) Built by the navvies the heroes of song.
CHORUS Oh the navvies came to our town from Ireland and Cornwall and all around Oh the navvies united they stand from Wales and Scotland and far away lands
The Cambridge Navvies with lyrics and melody by Patrick Olsen, Chorus and Harmonies and Score by Bethany Kirby
VERSE ONE The Navvies were men who made the canals, For twelve hours a day they’d sweat with their pals, Movin’ twenty tonnes of earth in a barrow up a plank, And leavin’ it all at the top of the bank.
VERSE TWO The navvies were men who laid the train tracks, Cutting through hills with a pick and an axe, Lay-in’ the ties and covered them with stones. Sun burning their skin and wind freezing their bones.
CHORUS Oh the navvies came to our town from Ireland and Cornwall and all around Oh the navvies united they stand from Wales and Scotland and far away lands
VERSE THREE When the whistle would blow, they’d off to their homes, Built near the tracks so they’d not far to go. For wages they’d get beef and a gallon of beer.. Then they’d drink and they'd stink all with a very good cheer.
CHORUS Oh the navvies came to our town from Ireland and Cornwall and all around Oh the navvies united they stand from Wales and Scotland and far away lands
VERSE FOUR When they got near to Cambridge, they ran into a bind, The colleges they said, (suddenly whispering) “noisy navvies must pay a fine” (a little louder) So the navvies built the station a mile out of town…(loud again) Where they wouldn’t disturb all the men in their gowns. Well our train tracks and boat paths are amazingly loooooong (hold this note until everyone turns blue) Built by the navvies the heroes of song.
CHORUS Oh the navvies came to our town from Ireland and Cornwall and all around Oh the navvies united they stand from Wales and Scotland and far away lands
The Cambridge Navvies with lyrics and melody by Patrick Olsen, Chorus and Harmonies and Score by Bethany Kirby
VERSE ONE The Navvies were men who made the canals, For twelve hours a day they’d sweat with their pals, Movin’ twenty tonnes of earth in a barrow up a plank, And leavin’ it all at the top of the bank.
VERSE TWO The navvies were men who laid the train tracks, Cutting through hills with a pick and an axe, Lay-in’ the ties and covered them with stones. Sun burning their skin and wind freezing their bones.
CHORUS Oh the navvies came to our town from Ireland and Cornwall and all around Oh the navvies united they stand from Wales and Scotland and far away lands
VERSE THREE When the whistle would blow, they’d off to their homes, Built near the tracks so they’d not far to go. For wages they’d get beef and a gallon of beer.. Then they’d drink and they'd stink all with a very good cheer.
CHORUS Oh the navvies came to our town from Ireland and Cornwall and all around Oh the navvies united they stand from Wales and Scotland and far away lands
VERSE FOUR When they got near to Cambridge, they ran into a bind, The colleges they said, (suddenly whispering) “noisy navvies must pay a fine” (a little louder) So the navvies built the station a mile out of town…(loud again) Where they wouldn’t disturb all the men in their gowns. Well our train tracks and boat paths are amazingly loooooong (hold this note until everyone turns blue) Built by the navvies the heroes of song.
CHORUS Oh the navvies came to our town from Ireland and Cornwall and all around Oh the navvies united they stand from Wales and Scotland and far away lands
Michael Rosen's Hand On the Bridge adapted for song by Bethany Kirby
Hand on the bridge, Feel the rhythm of the train. Hand on the window Feel the rhythm of the rain. Hand on your throat Feel the rhythm of your talk Hand on your leg Feel the rhythm of your walk Hand in the sea Feel the rhythm of the tide Hand on your heart Feel the rhythm inside Hand on the rhythm Feel the rhythm of the rhyme Hand on your life Feel the rhythm of time Hand on your life Feel the rhythm of time Hand on you life Feel the rhythm of time.
LYRICS by CBBC's Horrible Histories song-writer, Dave Cohen with some script input from Historyworks, sung here by Bethany Kirby:
As I was riding from Cambridge by train All along down along, out along lea I saw all the people who worked to maintain Two fitters one shunter, stone breaker, boiler maker
One railway examiner and all Five drivers all stood by the wall
As I was travelling in my Cambridge carriage All along down along, out along lea I saw all the people who helped with my baggage Four porters, three clerks and two guards and inspectors
A tubby controller and all A signalman high in his stall As I was walking through Romsey one day Thoday and Sedgewick Streets, all I could see
Was dozens of houses where railwaymen stay Two fitters one shunter, stone breaker, boiler maker Four porters, three clerks and two guards and inspectors One labourer, a strongman, coal porter, not song man
The railway examiner and all, Too many of them to recall
Michael Rosen's Cambridge Railway Excursions Poem adapted to song by Bethany Kirby
Chorus 1: The DAY exCURSion to LONdon and BACK Chorus 2: The day excursion to London and back Chorus 1: FOResters FETE at the CRYstal PALace Chorus 2: Foresters Fete at the Crystal Palace
Chorus 1: Oo-oo-woo [a mix of delight and the whistle of an engine] Chorus 2: Psssshhhhhtttt [a mix of breathing out and the sound of an engine giving off steam.]
Chorus 1: AUGust EIGHTeen SIXty-EIGHT Chorus 2: August eighteen sixty-eight Chorus 1: STARTing in CAMbridge at SIX-fifTEEN Chorus 2: Starting in Cambridge at six-fifteen
Chorus 1: Oo-oo-woo Chorus 2: Psssshhhhhtttt
Chorus 1: STOPping at WHITTlesford, SAFFron WALden STANsted NEXT, then BISHop’s STORTford. Chorus 2: SAWbridgeWORTH and then it’s HARlow ArrRIVing in LONdon at NINE o’CLOCK.
Chorus 1: Oo-oo-woo Chorus 2: Psssshhhhhtttt
Chorus 1: The DAY exCURSion to LONdon and BACK Chorus 2: The day excursion to London and back Chorus 1:The WHOLE round TRIP will COST 3 BOB Chorus 2: “No LUGGage allOWED”; “No LUGGage allOWED”
Chorus 1: Oo-oo-woo Chorus 2: Psssshhhhhtttt
Chorus 1: A SPEcial CHEAP ExCURsion TRAIN Chorus 2: To WALton-ON-the NAZE and BACK Chorus 1: AUGust EIGHTeen SEVenty SIX Chorus 2: August eighteen seventy-six
Chorus 1: Oo-oo-woo Chorus 2: Psssshhhhhtttt
Chorus 1: EARly START at TWENty past SIX. Chorus 2: CAMbridge, SHELford, NEXT stop LINton Chorus 1: SAFfron WALden, BARTlow, HAVerhill Chorus 2: NEXT stop CLARE, and THEN it’s MELford
Chorus 1: Oo-oo-woo Chorus 2: Psssshhhhhtttt
Chorus 1: ArRIVing at WALton at NINE forty FIVE Chorus 2: GREAT Eastern RAILway’s DAY at the SEA Chorus 1:The WHOLE round TRIP will COST 3 BOB Chorus 2: “No LUGGage allOWED”; “No LUGGage allOWED”
Chorus 1: Oo-oo-woo Chorus 2: Psssshhhhhtttt
LYRICS
1: I have a song to sing 2: Come, let the music ring 3: I can do anything 4: I have a song, what can go wrong 5: I have a song to get me along
LYRICS 1: This old freedom train has been a long time coming 2: Ain’t nobody can’t afford it, so you’d better jump on board it 3: Gimme that freedom, gimme that freedom 4: Gimme that freedom, freedom, freedom (chk-a-chk), freedom, freedom, freedom (chk-a-chk)
LYRICS 1: Early in the morning, when I wake up, early in the morning when I wake up 2: I brush my teeth, I eat my bread, I drink my coffee and go back to bed 3: Early in the morning 4: Early in the morning
Eagle Engine Number Nine,
Rolling down the Cambridge line.
At Ely Fens at half past nine,
Back once more get home on time!
All Aboard
Whooo Whooo!!
Mind The Gap
All Aboard
Whooo Whooo!!
Mind The Gap
All Aboard
Whooo Whooo!!
Mind The Gap.
A POEM OR SONG OR CHANT THAT CELEBRATES THE TWO GREAT DAY TRIPS ARRANGED BY THE GREAT EASTERN RAILWAY IN 1868 AND 1876 TAKEN FROM THE POSTERS OF THE TIME
Poem by Michael Rosen Commissioned by HistoryWorks For ‘Creating My Cambridge’ S106 Project
Chorus 1: The DAY exCURSion to LONdon and BACK Chorus 2: The day excursion to London and back Chorus 1: FOResters FETE at the CRYstal PALace Chorus 2: Foresters Fete at the Crystal Palace
Chorus 1: Oo-oo-woo [a mix of delight and the whistle of an engine] Chorus 2: Psssshhhhhtttt [a mix of breathing out and the sound of an engine giving off steam.]
Chorus 1: AUGust EIGHTeen SIXty-EIGHT Chorus 2: August eighteen sixty-eight Chorus 1: STARTing in CAMbridge at SIX-fifTEEN Chorus 2: Starting in Cambridge at six-fifteen
Chorus 1: Oo-oo-woo Chorus 2: Psssshhhhhtttt
Chorus 1: STOPping at WHITTlesford, SAFFron WALden STANsted NEXT, then BISHop’s STORTford. Chorus 2: SAWbridgeWORTH and then it’s HARlow ArrRIVing in LONdon at NINE o’CLOCK.
Chorus 1: Oo-oo-woo Chorus 2: Psssshhhhhtttt
Chorus 1: A SPEcial CHEAP ExCURsion TRAIN Chorus 2: To WALton-ON-the NAZE and BACK Chorus 1: AUGust EIGHTeen SEVenty SIX Chorus 2: August eighteen seventy-six
Chorus 1: Oo-oo-woo Chorus 2: Psssshhhhhtttt
Chorus 1: EARly START at TWENty past SIX. Chorus 2: CAMbridge, SHELford, NEXT stop LINton Chorus 1: SAFfron WALden, BARTlow, HAVerhill Chorus 2: NEXT stop CLARE, and THEN it’s MELford
Chorus 1: Oo-oo-woo Chorus 2: Psssshhhhhtttt
Chorus 1: ArRIVing at WALton at NINE forty FIVE Chorus 2: GREAT Eastern RAILway’s DAY at the SEAside Chorus 1:The WHOLE round TRIP will COST you 3 BOB Chorus 2: “No LUGGage allOWED”; “No LUGGage allOWED”
Chorus 1: Oo-oo-woo Chorus 2: Psssshhhhhtttt
The Cambridge Navvies by Patrick Olsen 2017
The /Nav-vies were men who / made the can-als for / twelve hours a day they’d / sweat with their pals movin’ / twenty tonnes of earth in a / barrow up a plank… and / leavin’ it all at the /top of the bank.
The navvies were men who / laid the train tracks / Cutting through hills with a / pick and an axe. / Lay-in’ the ties… / covered them with stones. Sun / burning their skin and / Wind freezing their bones.
When the / whistle would blow, they’d off to their homes, / Built near the tracks so they’d /not far to go. For / wages they’d get beef and a gallon of beer.. then / they’d drink and stink all with a / very good cheer.
When / they got near Cambridge, they ran into a bind, The / colleges they said, (suddenly whispering) “noisy navvies must pay a fine” (a little louder) So the / navvies built the station… a / mile out of town…(loud again) Where they / wouldn’t disturb all the men in their gowns.
Well our train tracks and boat paths are amazingly loooooong (hold this note until everyone turns blue) Built by the navvies the / heroes of song.
CHORUS Oh the Nav-vies came to our town from Ireland and Cornwall and all around Oh the Nav-vies united they stand from Wales and Scotland and far away lands
Michael Rosen says that he wondered about how to tackle writing a history poem about Stourbridge Fair and came up with the idea of a kind of ghost monologue. So this new poem, commissioned by Helen Weinstein at HistoryWorks for 'Creating My Cambridge' is called "Newton, Apple Pie, Prisms or Prisons?" and starts with a meeting with a stranger, and the stranger starts talking...
Taster of a documentary feature format by Historyworks about The Leper Chapel in Cambridge which would be a metaphor for the outsider in society ( particularly the migrant and trading traveller) because the documentary will explore the stories of this plot over 800 years and will have a gripping sound texture to create a poetic exploration with Michael Rosen's responses and will be layered up with found sounds and poetry from local children and sound improv work with community choirs to create a rich audio texture... the voices you will hear in this taster recorded by HistoryWorks are those of the historians Eamon Duffy and Honor Ridout, The Singing History Primary Choir at HistoryWorks Concert, and the response of the poet Michael Rosen.... interviews by Helen Weinstein, and voices recorded by Mario Satchwell & Jon Calver... to be developed into a long form documentary format with Michael Rosen with the recordings of further voices at the Leper Chapel plot of travellers, archaeologists, historians, singers and poets....
Hey Mr Miller! What a swing that you bring to the band! x2
With your trombone and your saxophone, We can hear you all through the land. x 2
Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba da ba da ba da ba da ba ba ba da ba doo wah! x2
Poem devised collaboratively with Helen Weinstein who briefed Michael Rosen about the area and the local history & you can find the resources for parents and teachers about Coldham's Common, Coprolite mining and more on our website http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/songs-creative/resources/local-history-topics
MICHAEL ROSEN'S COLDHAM'S COMMON POEM The years pass and the grass grows, the grass grows over the years disappear...
Underground clues are found. Listen! And we can hear across a hundred million years...
The sound of the sea where now there’s a tree; giant lizards in the sky wide wings take them high swooping on fish in the waves gliding over rocks and caves flapping and stopping leaving their droppings for millions of years right here, just here.
The years pass and the grass grows, the grass grows over the years disappear.
What were droppings and bone turn to stone deep down, day and night silent, slow, out of sight vast beyond measure a secret treasure deep in the ground waiting to be found.
Up above people come and go their pigs and cows moving slow free to graze upon the ground until a Lord puts fences round: nowhere for the pigs and cows, and with the people starving now one Jack o’ the Style leads a revolt with a hundred others they call a halt break the fences and burst back through with pigs and cows, their hens and ewes.
The years pass and the grass grows, the grass grows over the years disappear.
One John Ball from Barnwell way beneath the grass, said there lay some sort o’ magical stuff the which - if ye had enough, mixed it right, made it just so, it’d make any plant grow and in a matter of just a few years thousands came and dug right here.
Very few knew that all the while they were free to do so, ‘cos of Jack o’ the Style very few knew that the reason why was down to lizards in the sky for millions of years, leaving behind what many years later, others would find.
The years pass and the grass grows, the grass grows over the years disappear and here we are: we stand right here.
Pterosaur poo, Pterosaur poo. Thousands found it. Didn’t know what to do! Pterosaur poo, Pterosaur poo, Made of stone. Too hard to chew. Ptesosaur poo, Pterosaur poo. Near to where, the cows go moo. Pterosaur poo. Pterosaur poo. Now it’s ancient. Once it was new. Pterosaur poo. Pterosaur poo. Thousands came. Did they queue? Pterosaur poo. Pterosaur poo. In a poem by you know who!
By Michael Rosen
For more details visit http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails/great-st-marys-cambridge-market-area/
The Cambridge Market square is what it is today as a result of the Great Fire. This took place on the night of Saturday 15th September 1849, when a blaze broke out at half past midnight at a clothier’s shop full of textiles. In those times, there were wooden houses and workshops erected like a shanty town in the middle of what is now the Market Square, and spreading down Petty Curry and Peas Hill. Even Great St Mary’s had shops with upstairs dwellings leaning on the east wall, which meant if you looked up in Church you could see into neighbours’ bedrooms! It was therefore easy for a fire to spread because of the clusters of wooden structures. Water from Hobson’s Fountain should have been used to quickly put out the fire, but the key to the Conduit had been mislaid in the panic so the townspeople had to put the fire out with buckets, forming a long chain from the river. Newspaper reports describe when the Chemist shop caught fire, that the chemicals turned the flames every colour of the rainbow like a firework display! Thankfully no-one died when many structures in and around the market were burnt to the ground. The extra space gave the market place its modern shape.
For more details visit http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails/great-st-marys-cambridge-market-area/
Although you will see many women celebrating their graduations alongside their male classmates nowadays, this wasn’t always the case. Women’s colleges were founded in the mid-1800s, but despite doing all of the hard work and exams, women weren’t full members of the University and so were not awarded any degrees in Cambridge until after World War Two, in 1948! Unsurprisingly, the women of the University became rather fed up with this lack of equality. They rallied together to bring about an official vote on the matter on the 21st of May, 1897. The day of the vote brought lots of protestors to Cambridge, men who had degrees from the University and were outraged about the campaign for women to be awarded degrees were given voting rights, even if they had graduated years before! Unfortunately for women almost three times as many men voted against them as for them. Thrilled, some male students made fun of female students and even made effigies of a woman on a bike representing emancipated women and also the head female campaigners. They hung these figures up along wires above the queue of voters going into the Senate, and afterwards burnt the effigies in the Market Square.
For more details visit http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails/great-st-marys-cambridge-market-area/
QUEEN ELIZABETH I VISITS GREAT ST MARY’S
In the summer of 1564, Queen Elizabeth I came to Cambridge, her only visit to the university city throughout her long reign. The students and professors of the Tudor University as well as residents of the town began preparing frantically for her arrival: the cross in the market square was painted, the churchyard and the streets were covered in sand (to hide the sewage and rubbish underneath!), and stores of food collected. When Queen Elizabeth entered the city, she was met with cheers and trumpeters playing. But because the bell tower was still not finished, the Church was fined for failing to peal out the bells to announce her arrival! Elizabeth wore pearls and precious stones but no crown on her head, and was ‘dressed in a gown of black velvet’ and ‘a hat that was spangled with gold’. She was entertained throughout her stay by members of the University, who put on plays and lectures for her. A particularly memorable event was a disputation (a type of debate in front of an audience) held in Great St Mary’s Church. Scholars from the University debated with each other whether it was better to eat more for lunch than for dinner. The young Queen didn’t seem to enjoy it much, commenting that the scholars were very shabbily dressed in torn and muddy robes, and complaining that she couldn’t hear them as they mumbled too much! She promised to give generously to the University like her Grandfather before her, but she never did!
For more details visit http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails/great-st-marys-cambridge-market-area/
In Tudor times, religion was a matter of life and death. Martin Bucer was a celebrated Protestant theologian. While the Protestant boy-king Edward VI ruled England, Martin Bucer became Professor of Theology at Cambridge. When Martin died, 3,000 people crammed into Great St Mary’s for his funeral – so many that the benches had to be repaired. Just six years later, the Catholic Queen Mary was on the throne and Martin Bucer’s Protestant ideas made him a target for royal revenge. Mary burned many Protestants alive, but Bucer was already dead. This didn’t stop her. Martin Bucer’s body was dug up from his grave in Great St Mary’s, chained to a stake in the market square and burned, along with a pile of books. Some people mocked the university authorities for binding the ‘rotten carcases’ with chains, saying that ‘they might be burnt loose without peril, for it was not to be feared that they would run away.’ Later, Mary’s Protestant half-sister Elizabeth I ordered the ashes from the bonfire to be reburied in Great St Mary’s again, so Martin Bucer is still remembered here today.
For more details visit http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails/great-st-marys-cambridge-market-area/
There have been bells at Great St Mary’s from at least 1303 and they rang to call everyone to Church services; to open the town Corn market; to toll for births, marriages and deaths; and to announce the start of University meetings and lectures. They rang out for great events like royal coronations and victories in battles; but also tolled every evening to remind local people to cover over the fires in their hearths for the night and this continued until the outbreak of the Second World War. And because the tower was not completed until 1608, the bells were hung on temporary frames, located both inside and outside the Church door, and in the church yard by the market, where the ringers stood using long ropes. The belfry was completed in 1596 with four bells. However, now there are thirteen new bells, all cast in 2009 as part of the 800th anniversary of Cambridge University. You can find the belfry when you walk up the stairs of the tower, and you will be able to see all these bells in the bellchamber. What is even more distinctive about Great St Mary’s is the noise made by the chimes of the clock. There has been a clock on Great St Mary’s above the door since 1577, when there were very few public clocks. The tune of the chimes are known as the ‘Cambridge Quarters’ and have become very famous because they were copied for the ‘Westminster Chimes’ of Big Ben at the Houses of Parliament. Not everyone knows that our Cambridge chimes were the first bongs!
For more details visit http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails/great-st-marys-cambridge-market-area/
Charles Darwin was a scientist who studied in Cambridge. He was supposed to train as a vicar, but he found beetle collecting much more interesting, and became a scientist instead. His radical theory of evolution by natural selection made us rethink our place in the world. Charles Darwin spread his ideas by giving lectures and talks and writing letters. But most importantly, he wrote a famous book which was a best seller, called "On the Origin of Species" and it was first published on 24 November 1859. His book is still read today and inspires scientists and thinkers. Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection said that humans were descended from a common ape-like ancestor. In Victorian times, this was a controversial challenge to Christian ideas about God creating humans. As an old man, Darwin returned to Cambridge in 1877 to receive an honorary Doctor of Laws degree. During Darwin’s honorary degree ceremony, a prankster dangled this stuffed monkey dressed in academic robes from the gallery of the Senate House, which ‘excited some mirth’. There is also a monkey that was carved in the roof at Great St Mary's centuries earlier. See if you can spot it high up above the nave!
For more details visit http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails/great-st-marys-cambridge-market-area/
Christopher Cooke was one of Cambridge’s youngest war heroes. He was only 15 when he survived a disaster which proved that the deadly German U-boats had changed naval warfare forever. As a cadet at the Royal Naval College, Christopher was sent to sea on HMS Aboukir as soon as the First World War began. On 22September 1914, Christopher was asleep in his hammock as HMS Aboukir sailed near the coast of Holland when a torpedo struck. As the cruiser sank, Christopher swam towards the Aboukir’s sister ship in his pyjamas. Before he could reach safety, two British cruisers were torpedoed and sunk by the German submarines. In total, 1,459 men died in the disaster. Christopher had learned to swim in the River Cam at Newnham. He managed to stay afloat in the icy North Sea until he was rescued by a Lowestoft fishing trawler called the Coriander. Christopher returned to Cambridge and became a local celebrity for a few days, telling the story of his lucky escape at high table in the colleges. Tragically, Christopher died in the accidental explosion of HMS Vanguard at Scapa Flow on 9 July 1917. He was 17 and you can see his name on the war memorial in Great St Mary’s. His brother, Nicholas, was killed in the Second World War.
This history trail audio is narrated by the poet Michael Rosen, with script researched by Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks. This recording is part of a series of Cambridge history trails which have lyrics inspired by 'history beneath our feat' performed by local schoolchildren, with poems by the top poet Michael Rosen and songs by the funny team at CBBC's songwriters commissioned by Historyworks. To find more trails and further information, go to http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails
Ever since she was a child, Rosalind had a very logical and determined mind. She hated dolls and any game that would involve pretending. She loved practical activities like Meccano and carpentry, which she learned from her brothers. Already in primary school, she knew she would be a scientist. Franklin grew up in Notting Hill in London and attended St Paul’s Girl’s School. She was accepted into Newnham College at the University of Cambridge in 1938. One year later the Second World War started. Although Cambridge was a relatively safe city during this time it was still a frightening experience! During her time in Cambridge Franklin made friends with Adrienne Weil, the student of prominent scientist Marie Curie who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. This friendship led Franklin to continue her research in Paris and improve her skills as a crystallographer - a person who studies the structure of molecules and atoms, the smallest things in the universe! Although she loved her life in Paris, in 1951 she decided to move back to London to work in a new laboratory at King’s College. But it was at times a difficult experience for Rosalind. Women were not allowed in certain parts of the university. Her research partner, Maurice Wilkins, treated her like an assistant rather than the head of her own project. It was a very different environment, with more discrimination, than she experienced in France. Using sophisticated X-Ray techniques Franklin made a series of crucial discoveries. Amongst other discoveries she proved that phosphates (the ‘backbone’ of DNA) were on the outside of the DNA structure, rather than on the inside as most other biologists thought at the time. Without Franklin’s knowledge, Wilkins showed her picture of DNA, known as Photo 51, to colleagues Watson and Crick. Crick and Watson published their work before Franklin, and had their findings published as the main article in the journal Nature with Franklin’s work a mere accompaniment. For their work on DNA Watson, Crick and Wilkins all received the prestigious Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1962. But Franklin had died of cancer aged 37, four years earlier, possibly due to her exposure to X-Rays. Although Rosalind Franklin did not receive the Nobel Prize it is important to recognise the importance of her work. In a letter to an undergraduate student before her death, Franklin wrote: “My main aim is to do my best to improve the lot of mankind, present and future”. Through her significant research on the building blocks of life she undoubtedly achieved her life’s goal.
For more details visit http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails/from-abbey-meadows-to-market-square/
The Headly family was one of the major iron-founding families in Cambridge, and was casting iron in the town longer than anyone else. The Headly iron works foundry was located on Market Hill on the site that is currently being occupied by Marks & Spencer. By the 1840s, the foundry had passed through two generations to two brothers, James and Edward. During the 1840s, their business grew extensively expanding backwards from the street to Trinity churchyard. A devastating fire struck the foundry on 28 February 1846 and destroyed part of Market Hill and consequently they moved the foundry to a site by the railway on Mill Road. The brother’s partnership ended after an argument in 1852. James remained at the foundry teaming up with John Manning, an ironmonger from Mill Road and up until 1858 they produced a pump which used to stand on Peas Hill and is now in the Folk Museum, the railings around Great St Marys Churchyard and the first steam engine, The Eagle at Messrs Gurteens in Haverhill. James continued running the foundry on his own after Manning’s departure and built a horizontal engine which worked Evans Tannery at Sawston and has now been restored and is in full working order at the Museum of Technology in Cambridge. From the 1860s onwards, James contributed to the flourishing coprolite industry with the assistance of relatives in Coton whose land was dug for coprolite. Coprolite is fossilised faeces and it became an important source of phosphate to be used as fertiliser in the mid-1800s. The Headley business continued from the 1880s making weather vanes, radiators and agricultural tools. By 1907, however, there were no longer any Headley’s involved in the company and it went into liquidation in 1932.
This history trail audio is narrated by the poet Michael Rosen, with script researched by Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks. This recording is part of a series of Cambridge history trails which have lyrics inspired by 'history beneath our feat' performed by local schoolchildren, with poems by the top poet Michael Rosen and songs by the funny team at CBBC's songwriters commissioned by Historyworks. To find more trails and further information, go to http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails
In the middle ages, Cambridge was a very smelly place. The college’s toilets emptied into the river, and the dirty water spread diseases. To help clean up the city, the Town and University had a substantial donation from a local man named Thomas Hobson to build a waterway that would bring in fresh water from the countryside. It was known as Hobson’s Conduit, and you can still see a small section of it today, running in ditches on either side of Trumpington Street, outside the Fitzwilliam Museum. Thomas Hobson and his son made lots of money by running an inn, a horse rental business, and were the official couriers for the University in Tudor and Stuart times. A fountain was built in 1614 to give clean drinking water to the people of Cambridge and marked the end point of Hobson’s Conduit in Market Square. After a huge fire devastated the Square in 1849, the fountain was moved to the corner of Lensfield Road where you can see a reconstructed conduit from 1953. Today, you can find the pieces of the original Hobson fountain from Market Square on display in the courtyard at the Museum of Cambridge.
We have a funny song and a round written by Dave Cohen, the CBBC’s Horrible Histories Songwriter, which you can listen to on the website.
For more details visit http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails/from-abbey-meadows-to-market-square/
What many people don’t know is that Great St Mary’s is the official centre of Cambridge and has been so since 1725. Nationally, maps were printed as engravings and became popular in small pocket forms in the 1600s, with Ogilby’s “Road Maps of England and Wales” published in 1675 becoming the best seller because it illustrated main routes with distances and landmarks, the app maps of their day! In Cambridge mapping distances became more accurate in the 1720s when a Dr William Warren began measuring the roads out of Cambridge with a sixty-six-foot surveyor’s chain and setting up milestones to guide travellers. During World War Two, when German invasion became a threat, the markers were hidden in roadside ditches. Warren chose the door of Great St Mary’s as his milestone starting point which is why today there is a datum disc set up in the wall. It is claimed that the Warren milestones were the first ‘true’ milestones erected in Britain since Roman times! We’ve chosen this disc as an emblem of our project, “Clicking to Connectivity” bringing in communities from outside the centre of the city, to learn local history, share knowledge and their creativity, inspired by their experiences of their routes to the centre.
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Oliver Cromwell grew up in Huntingdon near Cambridge, and went to Sidney Sussex College, starting as a student just before his seventeenth birthday. He worked in and around Cambridge for the next 20 years, becoming MP and joined the Parliamentarian side during the English Civil War. When King Charles I was executed in 1649 England became a Republic, so there was no King or Queen of England, and instead Cromwell took the title “Protector” and he was the ruler until he died in 1658. When the monarchy was restored in 1660 Cromwell’s body was dug up and his head put on a spike above Westminster. One day it blew off in a storm and his family had his remains returned. To this day nobody knows the exact location of Cromwell’s head! A true mystery, it was placed in an unmarked grave in Sidney Sussex College. Even those who claim to know will never tell ...
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Cambridge was once home to two of the most prominent campaigners against the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797), who was an African, campaigned alongside Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846), from Wisbech. They were both early activists, just as important as William Wilberforce. They devoted their lives to the cause and were pivotal in the Bill of 1807, which abolished the Slave Trade in Britain and British territories. Equiano was an ardent campaigner. He was important to Wilberforce and Clarkson, as a former enslaved African, being a source of eye-witness accounts about the horrific experience of being kidnapped as a child in Africa and trafficked to the Americas. Equiano was bought and sold many times, buying his freedom from a sympathetic Quaker, when he became literate, moved to England. Equiano married a local woman in Soham, and lived for a while with his family in Chesterton. His daughter, Anna Maria, was buried there in St Andrews Churchyard in 1797. Equiano wrote a Memoir to publicize his story and to raise money for the abolitionist cause. However, it took longer to abolish slavery and trafficking. Owning another human was not made illegal until 1837.
This history trail audio is narrated by the poet Michael Rosen, with script researched by Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks. This recording is part of a series of Cambridge history trails which have lyrics inspired by 'history beneath our feat' performed by local schoolchildren, with poems by the top poet Michael Rosen and songs by the funny team at CBBC's songwriters commissioned by Historyworks. To find more trails and further information, go to http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails/from-abbey-meadows-to-market-square/
During Roman times, the River Cam was fully navigable from the Wash as far as Cambridge and was the northernmost point where transport from East Anglia to the Midlands was practicable. Therefore, Magdalene Bridge marks the site of an important Roman era river crossing. It used to be known as “Great Bridge”. All routes, both local and long- distance, had to converge on this crossing point, giving it strategic importance. From 1118 to 1845, when the opening of the railway to London dealt the river trade its death-blow, the River Cam was the essential travel and trading route by which Cambridge was fed and built with boats bringing fish and grain, meat and salt, coal and reeds, timber and stone.
For more details visit http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails/from-abbey-meadows-to-market-square/
If you look up in Cambridge you can spot the Coat of Arms on bridges, signs, and above the door of the Guildhall. The Coat of Arms of Cambridge shows the River Cam with three ships on the water to demonstrate the important role the river played in the development of the city as a market town, with boats bringing wares to sell in Cambridge. The red roses and gold Fleur de Lys (which means lily flower in french) are Royal symbols to show the status given to Cambridge by monarchs across the centuries, and specifically the charter granting this Coat of Arms by Elizabeth I in 1575. There is a bridge with fortifications to represent the “Great Bridge of Cambridge” which is the present Magdalene Bridge. Most noticeable are the two red monsters either side of the Coat of Arms which are special mythical horses belonging to Neptune, called “Hippocampi”. These seahorses are symbols of the sea emphasizing the importance of Cambridge’s access to London and the World via the river route to the Wash and sea beyond!
For more details visit http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails/from-abbey-meadows-to-market-square/
Marshall of Cambridge was established in 1909 by David Gregory Marshall as a car vehicle business, specialising as a chauffeur drive company. It was located in a small lock-up garage in Brunswick Gardens. Marshall’s first involvement in aviation dates back to 1912, when its mechanics helped repair the engine of a British Army airship, the Beta II, which had made an emergency landing on Jesus Green, just behind the Marshall garage. The family purchased the house and land of Whitehall Farm and in 1937 the new Cambridge Airport opened. With the Second World War in 1939, the aerodrome soon became involved in war work; training pilots and repairing airplanes. Whitehall Farm was sold to build houses for Whitehall Estate and Peverel Estate, but the Marshall aerodrome buildings and runways expanded to become a complex at the top of Newmarket Road.
For more details visit http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails/from-abbey-meadows-to-market-square/
Barnwell Priory was founded in 1092 and is the Abbey for which Abbey ward is named! It hosted numerous medieval kings and even a Parliament. But it was not always popular. It survived a revolt launched by angry locals in 1381, and150 years later it became the target of a more powerful foe, King Henry VIII. Most of the Abbey was dismantled, standing as a ruin from 1538 to 1810. Hardly anything now remains of this medieval landmark, except for the storehouse called the Exchequer (for coins fish and grain), which you can see on Beche Road. The Abbey is now memorialized by the naming of Abbey Meadows School and by the street names which are named after Priors from 800 years ago, as in Thorleye Road, Rayson Way, Stanesfield Road, Gerard Road, Rawlyn Road and Peverel Road.
For more details visit http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails/from-abbey-meadows-to-market-square/
There were kilns with very tall chimneys, used to make bricks and tiles in the 1800s and 1900s. They were located in buildings stretching across a vast area on both sides of the Newmarket Road and all the way over to Coldham’s Lane, now known as Cambridge Retail Park. This means that there used to be chimneys everywhere and smoke-filled air. Abbey became a very industrial area of iron works and timber merchants, brick and tile factories which provided materials for Cambridge buildings in the 19th and 20th centuries. These factories grew in number after 1845 when the railway line was built for Cambridge.
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Prior to the mid-1820s there were no streetlights in Cambridge so gas pioneer, John Grafton was employed by the Cambridge Improvement Commissioners to light the streets with gas made from burning coal in vessels called ‘retorts’. The coal was brought to Cambridge by river using boats called ‘lighters’ from Kings Lynn. Grafton’s company was taken over by the Cambridge University and Town Gas Light Co. in 1834 which had a contract until 1868. As the time came nearer, a new company called the Cambridge Consumers Gas Company offered to supply gas at a much cheaper price and was awarded the contract. The old company did not accept the decision which led to a legal battle during the 1860s. Due to a failure in coordination, both companies lit the oil lamps one night which resulted in some of them being smashed by a group of men. The contract with the old company was reinstated and they continued to produce gas until the gas industry was nationalised in 1949. The plant was no longer required in the 1970s when natural gas was first brought to Cambridge and it was finally demolished in 2000 to be replaced by Tesco’s and the Riverside flats. The Gas Works was affected by both of the World Wars and the names of the honourable 22 men who died in the conflicts are recorded on a memorial which faces onto Newmarket Road opposite Tesco’s. The dead included Urban Chapman who was a lamplighter and 19 year old Stanley Wilkinson from Garden Walk who died in WW1 and 20 year old Leonard East from Cherry Hinton who passed in WW2. During the wars, women replaced men as stokers at the gas works.
For more details visit http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails/from-abbey-meadows-to-market-square/
As the population of Cambridge surged with businesses and housing, plus the University growing, there was a problem with sewage and smells in the River Cam. Not only did this cause discomfort to breathing and health problems, it also spread diseases, such as typhoid. The terrible stench and state of the river was noticed alike by poor and rich, worker and monarch. On a visit to Cambridge in 1843, Queen Victoria asked, “What are those pieces of paper floating in the river?” Rather than saying they were book and newspaper pages used as toilet paper, the tactful answer was, “Those Ma’am are notices that bathing is forbidden!”. Eglantyne Jebb was a campaigner for improved living conditions. She wrote an important policy report advocating proper piping from toilets to sewage pipes, and a sewage treatment facility. Her work resulted in the pumping station built on Riverside in 1894 through which the sewage from the city was pumped out to the village of Milton, powered by steam pressure. It was closed down in 1968, but volunteers maintain the steam engines, which are now on display as part of the museum
This history trail audio is narrated by the poet Michael Rosen, with script researched by Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks. This recording is part of a series of Cambridge history trails which have lyrics inspired by 'history beneath our feat' performed by local schoolchildren, with poems by the top poet Michael Rosen and songs by the funny team at CBBC's songwriters commissioned by Historyworks. To find more trails and further information, go to http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails
The chapel was a key building for a leper hospital during the Middle Ages, earning income from the annual Stourbridge Fair, which they were allowed by a grant from King John of Magna Carta fame! The victims of the skin condition called leprosy were not allowed to live with their families and so there was a chapel adjacent to a farm and living quarters for those with leprosy, which was incurable at that time. But the main income support was raised by holding an annual fair on the land behind the chapel on the Common called Stourbridge, and Stourbridge Fair was so popular that the chapel became immensely wealthy. However, towards the end of the 13th century, the leper colony closed and so the chapel was handed to Cambridge town. During the 18th century, the chapel was used as a pub for a while but come the mid 19th century, it was restored to the original chapel. This unique structure (at over 800 years old) is the oldest building in Cambridge, almost over a century older than the more famous King’s Chapel in the historic centre, so a building which Abbey is very proud of!
For more details visit http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails/from-abbey-meadows-to-market-square/
The industry began in the mid 19th century, when shortage of food after the Napoleonic Wars caused an influx in demand for fertilizers. The coprolite itself is fossilized dinosaur faeces which, when ground up, can be mixed with acid or water to make fertilizer. This fertilizer was discovered when a brick kiln using local clay exploded. One of the first areas in Cambridge to undergo coprolite mining was Coldham’s Common between the 1850s and 1890s. Wages were far higher in mining than agriculture so there was a ‘coprolite mine rush’ with huge pits dug on the common. The making of fertilizer and mining of dinosaur poo began to decline when international competition kicked in from America. But the industry was revived during the First World War when imported goods became unreliable and England needed to grow more food.
For more details visit http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails/from-abbey-meadows-to-market-square/
The team was established in 1912 and initially named “Abbey United”, after the Abbey area where it was set up. The team settled in the Abbey Stadium and after years of playing local amateur leagues, became professional in 1949. Cambridge United Football Club entered the promised land of the Football League in 1970 for the first time. It was the latest twist in the tale of Cambridge football because people had already been playing the beautiful game in the city for centuries. It all started with the Roman game of harpastum that was an early form of football. The next landmark moments were in 1579 when there was a town against gown match that ended in a brawl. Then in 1848 the teams in the area met to establish one uniform set of rules as a way of preventing fights and disagreements. These football rules were written on papers fixed to the trees on Parker’s Piece and, later, when the Football Association was founded in 1863, they used the Cambridge rules. This history shows that Football has been at the centre of Cambridge’s culture for generations.
For more details visit http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails/from-abbey-meadows-to-market-square/
Back in the mid 19th Century coprolite mining took place on Coldham’s Common, it was discovered that flying reptiles used to live around Coldham’s Common millions of years ago! The coprolite itself is fossilised faeces which, when ground up, can be mixed with acid or water to make fertiliser. The fertiliser was discovered when a brick kiln using local clay exploded!
The fossils of flying reptile and dinosaur poo were found in the ‘Cambridge Greensand’ and date from about 110 million years ago. The fossils that were found were mostly from Pterosaurs (Greek for flying lizard); fish-eating reptiles, including the Ornithocherius species and also Ichthyosaurs (Greek for fish lizard); large marine reptiles, fish specimens and a variety of poorly preserved dinosaurs.
The remains from the Ornithocherius showed them to have a wing span of approximately 2.5 meters (8.2 ft.), an unusual curved snout and straight jaw that narrowed towards the tip. It had fewer teeth than other related species and its teeth were mainly vertical rather than pointing outwards.
Although many people would generally categorise all these species as dinosaurs, Ptersaurs and Ichthyosaurs are not actually dinosaurs as technically they do not have the correct attributes to fit into this category of pre-historic animal. They did however exist at the same time as dinosaurs and they would all have been living in this same area of Cambridge Greensands, where Coldham’s Common is now!
You can see these remains at the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences: www.sedgwickmuseum.org
For more details visit http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails/from-abbey-meadows-to-market-square/
Coldham’s Common is one of twelve commons in Cambridge. In the Middle Ages the area of Abbey was rural with farms and the work done by peasants. They had strips of land where they grew their own food. Peasants had to work on their lord’s land growing the lord’s food. Cows and sheep and horses owned by the people of the community, were grazed on their commons for free. Over time, these strips of land and the commons were reorganized into fields, and surrounded by fences. This change was known as ‘enclosure’. Cambridge people, called ‘commoners’, were against losing their common land and so in 1594 they rose up against local landowners. Under the leadership of a commoner, Jake of the Style, they resisted enclosure and as a result the land is still for all the commoners today and is naturally grazed by cows and managed as a nature reserve for everyone to enjoy! A time that Coldham’s Common changed was when there was a rifle range made for training in WW1 and WW2, and the remains are known as “chalk hill”. A century earlier the Common became industrial for a while when dinosaur poo, (called coprolite), was discovered and huge holes were dug including the pond that is known locally as “dead man’s lake”.
For more details visit http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails/from-abbey-meadows-to-market-square/
Cambridge is growing! The number of people living in the city is already 123,000, with nearly 30,000 more expected by 2020. People need homes and flats and new buildings are springing up all around the city. But this isn’t the first time builders have been busy. In 1801 there were just 252 people living in the Abbey ward, but by 1851 there were almost 12,000. In the 19th century new homes were needed for growing numbers of railway workers, craftsmen and shopkeepers. In the 20th century east Cambridge was newly built, including Abbey Meadows School in the 1950s & new estates nearby for families, with the adults working in firms such as Marshall’s Aerospace and Pye Electronics. There was a Co-op supermarket on Whitehill Road with flats above. Stories of people’s work and homes tell the story of Cambridge!
WRITTEN BY SUE HARRIS (Natural Voice Practitioners’ Network) Recorded in rehearsal with St Matthew's Choir KS2
It's the water of life The stuff that you're made of It's the water of life The stuff that we drink It's the water of life Pure and simple - H2 O Don't let it all go - down the sink!
WRITTEN BY SUE HARRIS (Natural Voice Practitioners’ Network) Recorded in rehearsal with St Matthew's Choir KS2
It's the water of life The stuff that you're made of It's the water of life The stuff that we drink It's the water of life Pure and simple - H2 O Don't let it all go - down the sink!
WRITTEN BY SUE HARRIS (Natural Voice Practitioners’ Network) Recorded in rehearsal with St Matthew's Choir KS2
It's the water of life The stuff that you're made of It's the water of life The stuff that we drink It's the water of life Pure and simple - H2 O Don't let it all go - down the sink!
Based on the story of Cambridge's Tudor Postie and Innkeeper, Thomas Hobson, with lyrics by Dave Cohen, chief songerwriter of CBBC's Horrible Histories, written in collaboration with Helen Weinstein who commissioned the song at Historyworks for children, families, teachers schools to enjoy! Lyrics below:
LYRICS Hobson's Choice is Hobson's Choice is For a speedy horse Very best of course Faster faster! Faster faster He replied 'I decide'
WRITTEN BY SUE HARRIS (Natural Voice Practitioners’ Network) Recorded in rehearsal with St Matthew's Choir KS2
It's the water of life The stuff that you're made of It's the water of life The stuff that we drink It's the water of life Pure and simple - H2 O Don't let it all go - down the sink!
Based on the story of Cambridge's Tudor Postie and Innkeeper, Thomas Hobson, with lyrics by Dave Cohen, chief songerwriter of CBBC's Horrible Histories, written in collaboration with Helen Weinstein who commissioned the song at Historyworks for children, families, teachers schools to enjoy! Lyrics below:
LYRICS Hobson's Choice is Hobson's Choice is For a speedy horse Very best of course Faster faster! Faster faster He replied 'I decide'
Song Performed by St Philip's CoE Primary School Year 5 Pupils - based on the story of Cambridge's Tudor Postie and Innkeeper, Thomas Hobson, with lyrics by Dave Cohen, chief songerwriter of CBBC's Horrible Histories, written in collaboration with Helen Weinstein who commissioned the song at Historyworks for children, families, teachers schools to enjoy! Lyrics below:
LYRICS Hobson's Horses Hobson's Horses Take your choice In your voice Ask him for another one Ask him for the other one He will say 'Not today'.
Song Performed by St Philip's CoE Primary School Year 5 Pupils - based on the story of Cambridge's Tudor Postie and Innkeeper, Thomas Hobson, with lyrics by Dave Cohen, chief songerwriter of CBBC's Horrible Histories, written in collaboration with Helen Weinstein who commissioned the song at Historyworks for children, families, teachers schools to enjoy! Lyrics below:
LYRICS Hobson's Choice is Hobson's Choice is For a speedy horse Very best of course Faster faster! Faster faster He replied 'I decide'
Seahorses Song Performed By Spinney Primary School Choir with lyrics by Dave Cohen, chief songerwriter of CBBC's Horrible Histories, written in collaboration with Helen Weinstein who commissioned the song at Historyworks for children, families, teachers schools to enjoy! Lyrics below:
To the tune of Three Blind Mice
LYRICS Sea hors-es, See them on, Cambridge Coat of Arms, Why? What are their charms? It dates from hund-reds of years ago When so many diff-er-ent riv-ers flow Around the town, so now you know Why sea hors-es.
Song Performed by the Spinney Primary School Choir Song - based on the story of Cambridge's Isaac Newton, with lyrics by Dave Cohen, chief songerwriter of CBBC's Horrible Histories, written in collaboration with Helen Weinstein who commissioned the song at Historyworks for children, families, teachers schools to enjoy! Lyrics below:
LYRICS One red apple falling to the ground This was something Isaac Newton found And he said if apples, fall straight down to the ground Then it must be gravity pulling them southbound.
Song Performed by Ridgefield Primary School Choir - based on the story of Cambridge's connection to the Wash via the River Cam - with lyrics by Dave Cohen, chief songerwriter of CBBC's Horrible Histories - written in collaboration with Helen Weinstein who commissioned the song at Historyworks for children, families, teachers schools to enjoy! Lyrics below:
LYRICS Row row row your boat Gently up the Cam Linking the city to the Wash Where it first began
Row row row your boat Gliding with your sail Major route for goods to come Until the birth of rail
Row row row your boat To the Bridge of Magdalene Home in time for tea as long As you stop your dawdling.
Song Performed by Ridgefield Primary School Choir - based on the story of Cambridge's connection to the Wash via the River Cam - with lyrics by Dave Cohen, chief songerwriter of CBBC's Horrible Histories - written in collaboration with Helen Weinstein who commissioned the song at Historyworks for children, families, teachers schools to enjoy! Lyrics below:
LYRICS Row row row your boat Gently up the Cam Linking the city to the Wash Where it first began
Row row row your boat Gliding with your sail Major route for goods to come Until the birth of rail
Row row row your boat To the Bridge of Magdalene Home in time for tea as long As you stop your dawdling.