Henry Tribe

In August 1995 I was taking photographs of ‘Cambridge buildings as I know them’ for my elder daughter who was born here and now lives in London. I came across a most interesting building in Mill Road. Although I had been resident in Cambridge on and off for 44 years I had never really looked at it before and was impressed with its rather neglected grandeur. I found that it was a library, under serious threat of closure, and making enquiries, shortly became associated with the Friends of Mill Road Library as a ‘Distant Friend’. I attended their Grand Pageant of 9 December 1995 and was subsequently appalled when the library really did close.

During the War, in 1940, I had been evacuated from London to Ilfracombe in North Devon, and as a schoolboy I regularly used the small library there. I discovered reading for pleasure, remembering as two items the many books of G.A.Henty, and the fascination of a very large volume of Scott’s travels in the Antarctic. The Librarian was Mervyn G.Palmer FRGS, a friendly man and a naturalist, who was also the Curator of the local Museum, another source of wonders. Much later my own daughters enjoyed the books they found when they went by push-chair, foot and bicycle to Arbury Court Library, a distance of just over 3/4 mile from our home in Cambridge.

To me, the closure, in these prosperous days, of Mill Road Library, a local library like Ilfracombe, and Arbury Court, was an act of cultural sabotage, and I decided to find how this had happened. This led me to look into the history of this striking building, and to this book. I found, to my astonishment, what was being done to the library system in the name of the public by those that our present system has put in charge. I am quite sure that when we elected these representatives we did not authorise them to spend our taxes undertaking exercises with business consultants whose purpose was to justify non-provision of library services and to put twenty libraries on a closure list. I found that the Listed Building provided by our forefathers on land dedicated “for ever” which the County Council inherited in 1974 has been steadily neglected and wonder whether those in charge of our Environment and Heritage in Cambridgeshire know what the word ‘heritage’ means. I hope this book will strengthen the resolve of all citizens of Cambridge to insist that Mill Road Library be reinstated and the grand building be prepared for its second century of service.

Henry Tribe, Foreword, “A History of Mill Road Branch Library, Cambridge, from 1897 up to the present minute“, 1997.

The photographs above were taken by Henry in 1995 and sent to me [Henry’s daughter Andrea] as the “August” page of a calendar.