Wilberforce Road is a street in the western outskirts of

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

, England, which runs north–south for 550 metres, connecting

Madingley Road Madingley Road is a major arterial road linking central Cambridge, England with Junction 13 of the M11 motorway. It passes by West Cambridge, a major new site where some University of Cambridge departments are being relocated. The road is desig ...

with Adams Road, which runs eastwards to Grange Road. The road was built in 1933, although several of its buildings date from earlier in the 20th century. It was named for

William Wilberforce William Wilberforce (24 August 175929 July 1833) was a British politician, philanthropist and leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade. A native of Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire, he began his political career in 1780, eventually becom ...

, the anti-slavery campaigner. Wilberforce Road falls within the

conservation area Protected areas or conservation areas are locations which receive protection because of their recognized natural, ecological or cultural values. There are several kinds of protected areas, which vary by level of protection depending on the ena ...

of West Cambridge. As of 2022, the usage is a mix of private housing and buildings and sports facilities associated with the university and colleges, including the Centre for Mathematical Sciences. There are two

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

s, Emmanuel College's sports pavilion (1910) and the

Modernist Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, an ...

-style number 9 (1936–37).

History

A drift existed on the route, which connected St John's Grange Farm to Madingley Road, and a handful of agricultural cottages (dating from 1905) and bungalows (1926) pre-date the road construction. The local historian Philomena Guillebaud notes that the bungalows are the only working-class housing to be built on land belonging to St John's College in west Cambridge, other than those housing the college's own agricultural workers. St John's College sold of land now lying on the west of the road to Emmanuel College in 1907 for sports grounds, and a sports pavilion and adjoining groundsman's house and stable were constructed in 1910 for Emmanuel. Emmanuel College Sports Pavilion (geograph 3024687)

Emmanuel College Sports Pavilion (geograph 3024687)

Wilberforce Road was constructed in 1933 by the borough council, funded by St John's College, which owned the land and wished to develop it, with contribution from Emmanuel College. It was named for

, a student at John's, to mark the centenary of the abolition of slavery across the British Empire. It is connected to Grange Road, which runs broadly parallel to the east, by Clarkson Road, built at the same time, and Adams Road (1898). St John's College leased building plots of for 99 years on both Wilberforce and Clarkson Roads, with 17 plots having been taken up on the two streets by 1939. After the Second World War, a row of maisonettes was built at the northern end, on the west side, and a larger private residential development occurred at the southern end on the east side, also on Adams Road. In 1989, the university tried to build an athletics centre on a site off the road's southern end, but failed to gain planning permission; the plans were reduced to a pavilion and running track, which was started in 1993. Plans were initiated in 1997 to move the university's mathematical departments to a site off Wilberforce and Clarkson Roads, adjacent to the existing

Isaac Newton Institute The Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences is an international research institute for mathematics and its many applications at the University of Cambridge. It is named after one of the university's most illustrious figures, the mathema ...

. The original plans for three-storey buildings met with opposition from residents, and a new plans for partially underground buildings were substituted. Construction commenced in 1998, and the Centre for Mathematical Sciences was completed in around 2002.

Buildings and features

Wilberforce Road falls within the West Cambridge Conservation Area. Among the buildings that pre-date the road itself, the most notable is Emmanuel College's sports pavilion with its adjoining groundsman's house and stable (now number 38), completed in 1910. It was designed by the London architects Reginald Francis Wheatly and Edward Ford Duncanson, and is listed at

grade II In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

, as a rare example of a surviving Edwardian sports pavilion complete with ancillary buildings. The listing notes that its "complex roofscape of steep, sweeping pitches" lend it a "picturesque character". The road contains two of the eleven surviving

-style buildings to be built in Cambridge during the 1930s. The grade-II-listed number 9, by

Dora Cosens Doris Morley Cosens (27 April 1894 – 5 October 1945; née Fletcher), often referred to as Dora Cosens, was a British architect, particularly known for her Modernist house, 9 Wilberforce Road in Cambridge.Powers, pp. 25, 94–95 Along with Mary Cr ...

for the zoologist

William Homan Thorpe William Homan Thorpe FRS (1 April 1902 – 7 April 1986) was Professor of Animal Ethology at the University of Cambridge, and a significant British zoologist, ethologist and ornithologist.Alan Costall, ‘Thorpe, William Homan (1902–1986)’ T ...

(1936–1937), is constructed in rendered brick on a square plan. The concrete roof has a roof canopy. Number 19 by H. C. Hughes was built for the historian Zachary N. Brooke (1933–1934), but is considerably altered from its original state. Additionally 31 Madingley Road, a grade-II-listed Modernist red-brick house by

Marshall Sisson Marshall Arnott Sisson RA (14 February 1897 – 26 January 1978) was a British architect, active in 1928–70. Although his earliest buildings were modernist, after around 1935 he used only traditional styles and became known for his restoration wo ...

(1931–1932), stands on the east side of the junction. (Another cluster of pre-war Modernist houses is located on nearby Conduit Head Road, on the north side of Madingley Road.) In the interwar period substantial traditional-style houses such as number 7 (1937–1938) were also built on Wilberforce Road. Number 11 (1950–1951) was one of the first post-war Modernist buildings in Cambridge, and number 1 was built in 1965 by the architect John Youngman for himself.Bradley & Pevsner, p. 341 CMS Central Core 01

University facilities include the Centre for Mathematical Sciences on the east side, built to an unusual design by

Ted Cullinan Edward Horder Cullinan HonFRIAS (17 July 1931 – 11 November 2019) was an English architect. Life Born in central London to Joy, an artist mother, and Edward, a doctor, Cullinan was educated at Ampleforth College, Queens' College, Cambri ...

. It features a central hub building with a series of six individual pavilions. In ''

The Buildings of England ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...

'' series, Simon Bradley describes it as among Cullinan's best work, "at once wildly imaginative and tightly disciplined", and compares the pavilions to

pagoda A pagoda is an Asian tiered tower with multiple eaves common to Nepal, India, China, Japan, Korea, Myanmar, Vietnam, and other parts of Asia. Most pagodas were built to have a religious function, most often Buddhist but sometimes Taoist, ...

s or

stupa A stupa ( sa, स्तूप, lit=heap, ) is a mound-like or hemispherical structure containing relics (such as ''śarīra'' – typically the remains of Buddhist monks or nuns) that is used as a place of meditation. In Buddhism, circumamb ...

s.Bradley & Pevsner, p. 276 The Cambridge University Athletics Sportsground is off the south end of Wilberforce Road, and Emmanuel College's Sports Ground lies on the south-west side, with the Cambridge Lawn Tennis Club adjacent, on Stacey's Lane. The Adams Road Bird Sanctuary, a local wildlife sanctuary with an artificial lake and woodland, lies between Wilberforce Road and Grange Road, and can be seen from Wilberforce Road. The lake is fed by damming Coton Stream, a tributary of Bin Brook, which continues westwards to reach Wilberforce Road, turns north to run alongside the road for around half its length, and then crosses the road and flows westwards. The southern end of Wilberforce Road links to the Coton Footpath, a joint cycle path and footpath, which runs westwards to the village of Coton.Cambridge City Council, p. 13

References

Sources *Simon Bradley,

Nikolaus Pevsner Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner (30 January 1902 – 18 August 1983) was a German-British art historian and architectural historian best known for his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, ''The Buildings of England'' (1 ...

. ''Cambridgeshire'' (''

'' series) (Yale University Press; 2014) *Cambridge City Council (May 2011)
West Cambridge Conservation Area Appraisal
(accessed 18 October 2022) *

Alan Powers Alan Powers (born 1955) is a British teacher, researcher and writer on twentieth-century architecture and design. Early life Powers was raised on the borders of Hampstead Heath and in Suffolk. His father Michael was an architect member of the A ...

. ''Modern: The Modern Movement in Britain'' (Merrell; 2005) *

Tim Rawle Tim Rawle is an English architectural photographer and writer. He is best known for his photographs of buildings in Cambridge, England. Biography Tim Rawle was born in Ashford, Kent. After studying fine art and graphic design at St Martin's Scho ...

. ''Cambridge Architecture'' (2nd edn) (André Deutsch; 1993) {{isbn, 0-233-98818-1

External links

Wilberforce Road
photographs at Cambridge 2000 Streets in Cambridge