WRITER
Cambridge
Pubs my dad might have known
My dad was brought up in Cambridge and from the age of four until he left home to get married he lived in a pub with his parents and brothers and sisters. The pub was the Portland Arms, and in a previous life it had been The Scales Hotel, named after the brewing family. I’ve […]
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The Scales Hotel… to the Portland Arms
The Scales Hotel, Cambridge … some time before 1920, which was rebuilt as the Portland Arms Hotel in the 1920’s In order to keep the license, when the rebuilding was taking place, one half was knocked down and my grandfather and the family lived in the other half, keeping the pub open while the rebuilding took […]
MoreCheers, grandpa
This glass must be nearly a hundred years old; it is always used as a champagne glass and that’s how I always think of it, although it’s not the traditional shape. The set I have belonged to my grandpa from when he had a pub called the Portland Arms in Cambridge. He died in 1950 […]
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Town not gown
Sometimes, when I say I was born and brought up in Cambridge people accuse me (yes accuse is not too strong a word!) accuse me of being posh. They associate Cambridge with the prestigious university which has been there for about eight hundred years, not the town which has been there for two thousand if […]
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Lois Elsden 