Terminalia 2024: The Cherry Hinton-Fulbourn Interzone

I carried out a preliminary excursion a few days in advance of Terminalia. I wanted to check if there was any safe and legal route I could take from the Beech Woods to Fulbourn Road. The Beech Woods are immediately South of the Worts Causeway, a road which sits on the boundary of the City and South Cambs District, at the Southern extremity of Cherry Hinton City Council Ward. But this is well outside the 'village' of Cherry Hinton which is located the other side of the Lime Kiln Hill to the North. The Beech Woods mark the beginning of an area containing the Roman Road, Wandlebury Ring and the Gog Magog Hills.  I had not been to the woods for sometime. I was looking to find a particular feature, a carved tree with the face of an old man, possibly a wizard, set into its trunk.

A friend of mine had tipped me off about the tree. It had featured on the front cover of the first album by the local psych combo Psychic Lemon. The existence of the wizard-like face was confirmed on a forum dedicated to tree carving from several years ago. I had intended to start the walk from the tree, which seems to have some significance as a marker, signifying the threshold between the ends of the peripheral agricultural land between Lime Kiln Hill and Cherry Hinton in one direction and Fulbourn in the other, as well as the beginning of the Gog Magog Hills and Wandlebury Ring to the South East; an area associated with ancient burial mounds, hillforts and numerous myths and legends.  I imagined the carving in the tree as an avatar of Terminus and suitable place to begin a walk for Terminalia.

But I never found the tree, nor a pedestrian way across from the Beech Woods that joined them to Cherry Hinton. No paths with public right of way existed across the fields that separated the Beech Woods from Fulbourn Road and the Robin Hood pub. I knew it was possible to walk along the edge of a field up to the back of the chalk pits having done it it once before, unplanned. But the route was unofficial, and I couldn't quite work out where I had emerged from on that occasion, having come from the other direction on a walk during lockdown. The only other option was Lime Kiln Hill, which has no pedestrian footpaths alongside the road which is bendy and contains random fast cars. I made an attempt to walk up, but aborted when the rough grass verge ran out just as it approached a sharp bend. It seemed foolish to carry on. I reflected that they used to make us do cross country running here and I used to cycle up the hill with my mates often when I was probably at junior school without much worry. This made me feel a bit less intrepid and bold in my perambulation, but I quickly decided that psychogeography was best done based on the avoidance of known danger, rather than walking directly into it on purpose.

I abandoned the idea of starting my Terminalian drift at the Beech Woods and settled for a less ambitious and less hazardous walk beginning in the car park of the Robin Hood pub, located on the edge of Cherry Hinton 'village' and at the end of the Fulbourn Road.

On the morning of Terminalia, Friday 23rd February, I placed my foot into the depression in the stone that sits in the Robin Hood car park, now unceremoniously wedged between a post and a fence. The stone has existed in the car park for as long as I can recall. It is said variously to be glacial erratic, a base of a cross or post of some kind, a kingship stone and, most appropriately for today, a 'marching'  stone used by Romans. It is said that such stones were used by the Romans before setting off on a long march. Placing the foot in the depression at the beginning and end of a journey was said to bring good luck. 'pro itu et reditu'  ('For the journey, and the return') was apparently inscribed into such stones (but not this one as far as I could see). I wasn't planning a regimented march, or necessarily a return back to this spot, but the sentiment still seemed to fit. There was an element of the unknown ahead and setting the foot into the stone seemed an appropriate way to mark the start of the journey. The stone in its own way also marked a threshold to both Cherry Hinton village and into the pub. But I didn't cross the threshold into either.

Instead, I headed across Fulbourn Road and to the small 1970s housing estate based around two cul-de-sacs named Tweedale and Ainsdale. This area sits behind a row of brown council houses that date probably from the late 1930s that set back from the main Fulbourn Road. 'Tweedale' was the name I'd always associated with the whole area, although my actual associations with it were tenuous. The last time I could recall visiting the estate was the day of the Royal Wedding in 1981. There was a disco on a tent on a small green, they played the Specials and Madness.  But I couldn't place where the tent had been located, there seemed no suitable spot. I wondered if the event had actually taken place. Behind Tweedale is one of the fields that I was hoping to emerge from. But from this end it was confirmed that no obvious way into the field exists, even to get to the back of the Spinney which sits next to Tweedale. Instead, immediately behind the estate in 'the land West of Peterhouse Technology Park', a large new office or more likely lab space is being built overlooking the Tweedale residents car park.

I left Tweeddale and continued along Fulbourn Road, bordering the Southern extremity of Cherry Hinton. I passed the building now occupied by Cambridge Water on the North side. This was once the headquarters of Acorn computers, makers of the BBC B computer which proliferated in schools in a time before 'windows' or the internet. Acorn were part of the Cambridge Phenomena and in the early 1980s the building sat alone in its peripheral location. But now it has been engulfed by the Peterhouse Business Park next door, home of Arm, a company that Acorn morphed into in the 1990s.

Peterhouse College owns the land the business park sits on and has been a major land owner in the area for some time. St Thomas's Hospital also owns land in the area, notably to the North, where the residential areas bifurcated by Queen Edith's Way are located and which are linked  to the Beech Woods by Worts Causeway.  Queen Edith's way refers to Edith Swan-Neck, hand fast wife of King Harold, who owned the land in the Saxon period. Although it is thought the road was originally mistakenly named after the other Queen Edith, the wife of Edward the Confessor, who had no connection with the area at all.

I was tempted to have a meander around the business park but I could sense an atmosphere of 'not quite public' space about it, despite the apparently open access. Also it looked quite a dull prospect. Both aspects were mildly repellant and encouraged me to stay on the other side of the road. 

Almost immediately opposite I soon reached a significant threshold. The path pictured below below marks the border between the post war council Bridewell Road estate that sits at the end of Cherry Hinton proper. On the other side of the path, and the City administrative boundary, is the newer residential area that developed in the late 1980s and 1990s, creeping towards Fulbourn and administratively sits in South Cambs. This more recent residential zone sits at the edge of a peripheral space that exists between Fulbourn and Cherry Hinton. The two villages (Cherry Hinton is barely that these days) are being drawn ever closer together by increasing development and may become a single suburb in the fullness of time. At that point the peripheral zone between them will disappear into (imperfect) memory..

Marking this threshold from old to new Cherry Hinton was a green utilities box, featuring the Cambridge Heron, further out of town that I'd seen it before and with less of an air of 'official' street art about it than it has in most places these days. Accompanying it was a monkey face and the 'Poxy' tag, both of which seemed much more fitting with Cherry Hinton. The faces of the Heron and Monkey both faced East, towards Fulbourn as if they were pioneers, occupying frontier territory. 

A road sign showed the approach of the roundabout, the left turn leading into the peripheral zone and towards somewhere called Springstead Village, a place I had never heard of before.

Across the street a truncated bus stop stood more or less on the border, resembling an abandoned checkpoint. 

I looked back from the border path along the grassy barrier between the Bridewell Road Estate and Fulbourn Road. I couldn't remember it looking like this when I was a child, and in fact had no real memory of what it was like at all although I used to have friends on the Estate when I was growing up. In the other direction the grass continued but appeared more manicured and less 'common' like. Maybe the newer area on the South Cambs side sought to distance itself and present a more aspirational image. But I preferred the 'common' side to the tidier and golf course like Western counterpart.

I continued towards the roundabout, along the the shared cycle path which was devoid of people.

The left turn took me into Yarrow Road, which is one half of a sort of 'main' road that skirts around the edge of the periphery of  'New Cherry Hinton'. The streets in the residential area next to this half of the road all seem to be named after plants; Speedwell Close, and Teesal Way for example. No doubt a reference to things that grew in fields here before the houses were developed. On the other side was a manicured area of green behind a fence, which seemed devoid of such things although did have some trees.

Behind the trees the 'tower' of Fulbourn Hospital loomed up. This spectral sight was something I could see from my bedroom window when I was a child in Cherry Hinton. Sporadically a siren would go off at the hospital. It was believed by the children of  'Hinton  (and probably some of the adults) that the siren signalled the escape of a patient from the hospital. The siren and image of the tower were intertwined in my mind as symbolising something sinister happening in a place that seemed distant enough to feel strange but close enough to bring unease. Years later, when I was older, the myths of escapees was born out when my Dad discovered an old lady in our shed who seemed happy enough but obviously troubled. She had swapped her reasonably nice boots for my Dads old gardening shoes. The hospital confirmed she was 'one of theirs' when my Dad called to check and they came and gave her a lift back. Any ghostly and sinister connotations the tower had been forgotten by that point.  But as I walked past on Terminalia, probably 35 years later, the feeling partially returned.

The view of the hospital was soon replaced with the more mundane Tescos car park. This Tescos is referred to as Fulbourn Tescos although it is not really in Fulbourn. Its closest neighbour is the hospital and Capital Park behind it and the closest houses are just across the road in 'new' Cherry Hinton.

At the pedestrian threshold of Tescos car park was a chipboard advertising hoarding. This seemed unofficial and contained adverts for fringe businesses. On offer today were mattresses, on a sign that seems to occasionally spring up on the lamp posts of Cambridge, and a landscaping service that was 'working in your area'.  The notice was another avatar of Terminus, this one marking the threshold into a world of golf course style landscaped shopping mundanity. I did not cross.

The railway line separates the two halves of the road, marking the point where Yarrow Road turns into   'Gazelle Way'. The grey fence marked a threshold, not just one of changing road names but a more sorrowful one. Flowers and soft toys were placed at various points, up against and hanging from the grey spiky fences next to the railway crossing, among the police warning signs and one for the samaritans. Before the development of Tescos and 'new' Cherry Hinton, the railway crossing was slightly nearer the hospital and featured a telephone where the distressed could call for help. But it wasn't always used. The proximity to the hospital of the crossing and the siren were of course connected. The flowery shrines confirmed that the crossing still took some people to the 'other side'.  

The location of the crossing was named 'Cherry Hinton By Pass' which seemed ominously  pertinent.

I did not cross the threshold into Gazelle Way at this point, but took the path leading along the railway towards the hospital and Fulbourn beyond that. I passed another shrine, a white bear sitting on top of a concrete sewage marker post with flowers on its head. A mournful avatar of Terminus. 

Through the trees I could see the 'spire' of Tescos. They all have them, but due to its proximity this one reminded me of the tower nearby. The building appeared sinister and institutional from this angle.

I emerged into the grassy grounds of the hospital and followed a barely visible 'desire' path through some posts.

This lead me to a small collection of gravestones. Three of them close to each other.

The end two 'belonged' to particular people. The middle one to a multitude of former patients of the hospital buried in the cemetery from 1862 to 1955. The memorial stone marks the site of the former chapel. 

There was another newer lone gravestone standing next to the fence at the boundary of the site, a few feet away.

After loitering among the graves for a few minutes, I moved on, leaving the zone of memorials and the interface between life and death.

A section of wall, presumably a remnant of a larger one that used to surround the Victorian asylum, was festooned with street art/graffiti. The difference between the two is often marginal. That the wall is never cleaned indicated the art work was at least semi-official.  The wall seemed a bit out of place, as if  part of a more urban or suburban environment had somehow materialised into the space from somewhere else. The wall was an early adopter, an indicator of the development to come that will most likely see an increasing suburbanisation and filling in of the Cherry Hinton/Fulbourn interzone. The green face a symbol of both the interzone itself and the change to come, another avatar of Terminus.

 

The path turned into a road, Fulbourn Old Drift, split by the railway.  Since the reconfiguration of the crossing,  the original course of the road from Cherry Hinton to Fulbourn had been disrupted. Previously, the railway crossing had split the otherwise continuous  road which joined up Cherry Hinton with Fulbourn. The hospital at the time seemed very much within the Fulbourn side of the border, even though it existed its own space somewhere in between both villages.

Now the 'drift' had been split and disputed. It was no longer possible to cross at this point and each side was effectively a dead end. The path I had just come along the only route between both sides of Fulbourn Old Drift. A new block of flats or maybe offices stood near this point, signifying the gradual infilling between the places the border had previously kept apart much more clearly.   

As I walked up the hill in the direction of Fulbourn, the land separating me from the railway line consisted of a wide area that resembled a nature reserve. Except that the signage on the gate  made it clear access was not permitted. It would have been quite an easy bunk over the gate, even for me, but I resisted the urge. I suspect others have been less restrained.

A bus stop on the hill seemed a bit out of place. The 'name' attributed to it, 'Rising Bollards' seemed even stranger. There were no rising bollards in the vicinity that I could see. Although I suppose I was rising up the hill. This got me wondering who is responsible for naming bus stops and in this case had a rogue prankster somehow managed to evade whatever bureaucracy is normally involved, ensuring that the normal conventions were bypassed unnoticed.

The view from the hill showed that there is still sufficient countryside between Cherry Hinton/Cambridge and Fulbourn for both to be separate. But I wondered how long this state of affairs would last.

I was distracted from dwelling on the likelihood of both places eventually joining up by a car that had seemingly been abandoned in a field to my right. The car resembled a Vauxhall Astra, not that new and looked stuck in the mud. I assumed it had been stolen and abandoned there. But on my return up the hill about 20 minutes later, the driver was talking to a man in a truck who had come to tow him out. He must have been sitting in the car all along, cursing his satellite navigation device for giving him premature directions to turn right.

On my decent, the scrubby nature reserve/railway land to my left began to change and soon it was clear a new development was taking place. This was adjacent to and partly on the site of the Ida Darwin hospital. The view of diggers and workmen through the bushes was replaced with hoardings which presumably doubled up as security fences. These confirmed that the development was for 'an exclusive collection of luxury 2,3,4 and 5 bedroom homes'. Further down, in a zone where the remaining parts of the Ida Darwin and a marketing suite and car park for the development seemed to intermingle, the offer was reiterated and the name of the development revealed. 'The Orchards' were depicted in a computer mock up of lawn, road and houses. The image was not one I could not easily reconcile with the growing of apples.

After returning up the Hill, past the driver and his rescuers, I diverted into the grounds of Fulbourn Hospital. This is now known as 'Capital Park', or at least some of it is. There certainly did not seem to be any particular dividing line between the newer buildings that housed mostly scientific industries and the old victorian asylum building and later single storey 1930s looking prefab type buildings. The latter at least are still used for patients. The main building is at least in part NHS and UK Health Protection Agency Offices and retained an air of  the 'institutional'. The Tower closer up seemed smaller but was still imposing.

 

I wandered through the grounds, following the 'main' road that emerged onto Fulbourn Road. On one side of the entrance a tall modern looking sign advertised 'Camlife. Capital park Cambridge' and ' and and Innovation Focussed Environment'. On the other side was the Victorian Gatehouse, which mimicked the tower like a younger sibling.

 

The entrance to the sight was a threshold between two worlds, signified by these boundary markers that stood opposite each other. But somehow 21st century life sciences and Victorian asylum seemed to compliment each other and represent nodes on the same continuum. The methods employed in the asylum would probably have been new and experimental when it was founded-although its hard not to think of gruesome images of Bedlam when passing the imposing Tower. In the 1960s the hospital was recognised for its pioneering therapeutic community. The main difference between these temporal zones was probably symbolised by the new name. Capital Park indicates a shift something  less social and more business orientated than the more public and benevolent sounding 'asylum' or 'hospital'.

Just inside the gate, off the main route a sign offered tour booking for Cambridge Grove Tertiary Care Home.   A little further inside 'Capital park' was a sculpture of the DNA double helix symbolic of life, set among leafy green spinach like plants. This conjunction seemed to mark a threshold from the prime of life to the tertiary  stage. A similar helix sculptures can be seen on the DNA cycle path between Addenbrokes Hospital and Shelford, another village on the edge of Cambridge, not far South of Fulbourn. Another has recently appeared at the new Franklin Gardens Barret Housing development on the edge of Northern Cambridge, opposite Orchard Park and next to one if a pair of terminal pylons in the vicinity.  

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Back near to where I first entered the hospital/Capital Park grounds, the way out was marked by a signed for the 'TESCO Path'. I supposed the name was logical given that the path led to a Tesco but it was by far the only destination. I suppose Tesco may have sponsored the path or had some responsibility for its upkeep. Nonetheless, I was disturbed at the idea of public byways and passages been corporately branded. How long before the Tins is rebranded 'Sainsburys path' or Vera's Way' is renamed 'Asda Way'? A future where all paths are branded such, in a similar way to music venues or football stadiums, seemed an all too likely dystopian prospect as I navigated my way through.

 

Just at the threshold of the hospital grounds was a notice reminiscent of the work of Barmy Art. But not up to his usual standard. I wondered if he had been visiting when unwell or if it was just a poor imitation by an imposter. The message was even more cryptic than usual.

 

Back at the railway crossing, I crossed to the other side where a power station and terminal pylon stood. This power station was one I passed as a child on occasion, the first one I had seen in real life and around about the time of the famous TV public information films where kites get accidently flown into pylons and frisbees into power stations, resulting in death and injury. The adverts and this site have been intertwined in my mind ever since. As far as I know, no kite of frisby episodes ever  actually took place here. But during power cuts in Cherry Hinton in the 1970s and 1980s there were often rumours of cats  entering the station and accidently getting electrocuted and causing the outages. 

The road alongside the power station led back to where the original railway crossing and telephone used to be, just past a mobile home site. The mobile home site used to be owned and run by the mum of a boy I was at school with. She lived in a bungalow on the site and had a frightening  black dog on a long chain. To my young mind it resembled  Zoltan Hound of Dracula or Black Shuck and was a creature not to be trifled with. I'd seen the hammer film 'Zoltan' on Horror Double Bill and had read of Black Shuck, probably in one of those Usbourne 'world of the unknown' books that were  prevalent at the time. Now the caravans that used to be on the site had been replaced with posher looking park homes and there was no sign of a black dog. But the place still had a strange liminal feel about it. The location at the end of the road,  now completely a dead end with grey spiky fences, piles of leaves and a utility box of some kind with the view of the hospital beyond, enhanced this feeling.

I retraced my steps and crossed over Yarrow Road onto what used to be a continuation of the road I was just on. Here the path and fence now blocked cars continuing along Fulbourn Old Drift. This was another boundary/barrier that had been inserted onto this road, interrupting the old continuous link between Fulbourn and Cherry Hinton. There are other 'drifts' not far away, or were. Long Drift  and Trumpington Drift  are now Cherry Hinton Road and Queen Edith's Way. These roads existed in agricultural landscape prior to the inclosure in 1810. The word 'drift' brought to mind long slow meandering along the track, unhindered by cars, joggers and other forms of modern busyness. But Fulbourn Old Drift now offered a more disrupted and built up journey. 

 

The bungalows along this stretch used to feel much more cut off and peripheral than they did as I approached. I recalled the scene as something like what might be out in the fens, the only street in a far flung hamlet in the periphery of Ely or March. But now it felt a bit more like a continuation of Cherry Hinton. Although not quite. One building contained a largish car park and was clearly not entirely (or possibly at all) residential. It was unclear what went on there. 

The bungalows gave way to the newer 1970s council estate and opposite my former Junior School. In the early 1980's it was known as the Cherry Hinton Community Junior School. Now it's branded 'Berwick Bridge Community Primary School'. Berwick Bridge was a vicar of the parish and fellow of Peterhouse College.  The school had to change it's name when it and the infants school on the high street both became 'primary' schools. The children were given the task of finding a new name, based on history and geography of the area. Berwick Bridge was chosen, due to the obvious connections. Another suggestion  was 'Fizzy Pop School', but although the governing body were 'delighted' by this idea it was discarded. I wondered if the suggestion was a reference to the provision of fizzy drinks and other junk food in vending machines in schools. A phenomena that hadn't materialised when I was at the school. The Vicarage up the road, meanwhile, has been demolished and the site developed for housing.

I took the path alongside the school, which separated it from a green area which was part of the the 'New Cherry Hinton', on the Gazelle Way side of the railway line. Gazelle Way contains the estate, beyond which agricultural land separate it from the village of Teversham. I realised I had never walked down this path of into the estate, at least as far as I could recall, despite it's existence since probably the 1990s. The green area to my right has been a farmers field , which separated the school from the electricity sub-station and caravan park beyond, and was part of the borderlands between Cherry Hinton and Fulbourn. Now it felt more amorphous and fluid. Although there was still a boundary feel, it was much less defined and more of a continuation than a sudden stop.

I saw few people as I passed through various passages, cul de sacs and bits of green that made up the estate. An unoccupied bench summed up the feel of the place, with the view beyond towards Teversham. The extensive municipal green area puzzlingly unused, was a reminder that not so long ago, green space provision on new build estates was much more generous than it seems to be now. I enjoyed a respite from the walk on the bench for ten minutes,  enjoying the expanse of the space in solitude. I saw no other people. Time stood still as I rested and rehydrated. 

I reached Gazelle Way and followed it North towards the outskirts of Cherry Hinton High Street, where it becomes Airport Way. The road felt very much a border. Beyond the hedge, the field the other side did not belong to Cherry Hinton. Not yet anyway.

Across Airport way a new development was in progress. This was 'Springstead Village', the place referred to on the yellow sign I'd seen earlier. The first phase of new development around or on Marshalls Airfield. Marshalls are due to vacate the  Airfield in the coming years after which it will be fully developed for housing as 'Cambridge East'.

Marketing boards proliferated near the marketing suite. 'Be a part of Cambridge's newest quarter'. 'Scale, Vision, Legacy' and 'Creating a vibrant new destination in Cambridge '. Cherry Hinton was not mentioned,  perhaps a confirmation that it has been fully swallowed up into Cambridge not worthy of consideration by marketeers.  'Cambridge' is presumably more sellable. 'Destination' seemed a bit of a stretch. Shops and facilities like schools are apparently going to be provided, but what will attract  people not living there to visit from far and wide was unexplained.

Access to the walkways between the houses was limited due to ongoing development. I took the path around the water feature. This was similar to those seen at other new developments like Marleigh. An apparent trench dug and filled with water to make a rectangular sort of mini lake/large pond. Presumably deep enough to drown in given the lifebuoy located alongside.

 

The name Springstead Village was presumably entirely derived by marketing exectutives. There is no spring here. No natural watercourse passes anywhere nearby. The spring in Cherry Hinton at the Giants Grave is at the other end of the high street, opposite the Robin Hood where I started the walk. 'Village' is I suppose estate agent talk for 'housing estate' in this context. But who knows, maybe the aspiration to create a 'village' atmosphere might come off. This seemed a challenge given the scale of planned scale of the aforementioned Cambridge East, a development which will rival the Kings Hedges estate in the North of the city in terms of scale.

After a wander around the artificial water feature, I took leave of the estate. I realised that I had come full semi circle, through the outlying Western edge of Cherry Hinton and the  Fulbourn borderland. I noted that Springfield village straddled over the Country Parish boundary into South Cambs, Northwards, extending the reach of Cherry Hinton and by extension Cambridge. The border itself seemed temporary. The administrative boundary, which presently cuts diagonally across the airfield. would surely have to be redrawn. This seemed a natural end to the walk. The ancient Giants Grave and foot stone where I started the walk seemed a world away. The walk had taken me across a temporal boundary into the near future, and to a conjunction of boundaries both administrative and physical. 

As I was about to leave the same friend who had alerted me to the carved face in the Beechwoods and the Psychic Lemon connection called. He lived nearby, close to the Cherry Hinton/Fulbourn border. I wandered with him back through the Gazelle Way estate and into the older council estate that I used to walk through to get to Community Junior School. The estate was how I remembered, a larger version of the one we lived in across the railway line, with more passages and random green spaces to explore. Though the walls were beige, it was not the same beige at that found in modern estates. The houses seemed somehow more human. I put this down to the fact they and the streets around them had been lived in for around 50 years. They had been properly worn in and unusual human touches could be found in randoms spots.

At the back of the estate a passage runs between Cherry Hinton High Street and the railway crossing near the big Tesco I had passed earlier. Fences separate the path from back gardens on one side and the railway line and its surrounding scrubland on the other. Across the fence I could see the smaller estate I grew up in. 

We headed to the High Street and the point where the path meets the site where the Green Hut stood until recently. One of the last features that came from a time when Chery Hinton was still recognisable as a village had been demolished some months earlier. The building had been left to decay and had stood empty for some time, the ghosts of jumble sales, club meetings, nursery classes and 1980s mod revival discos almost tangible in its fabric. It was being replaced with what looked like some raised beds and features that indicated the coming of a community garden, or possibly one that would be enclosed within the site of the infants school. Either way,  with even the smallest parcel of land being snatched up for 'development opportunities' throughout the city, this was a more welcome sight than what I had imagined might have been. The long standing liminal space was moving into a new phase, crossing the temporal boundary to an uncertain near future.