In front of you is the frame that makes King’s Parade look like Cambridge in a postcard: William Wilkins’s screen, designed between eighteen twenty-two and eighteen twenty-eight. It is not just decoration. It is a formal street front, with a central gateway and porters’ lodges... little rooms for the college gatekeepers. Across the road, the university’s other great need got stitched, hemmed, and sold.
At number twenty-two, Ryder and Amies supplied Cambridge for more than a century and a half. Joseph Ryder founded the business in eighteen sixty-four. Edward William Amies joined him as partner in eighteen ninety-six, and later served as Mayor of Cambridge in nineteen twenty-seven to nineteen twenty-eight. A directory in nineteen thirteen described the firm with admirable thoroughness: tailors, robe makers, hosiers, hatters, shirtmakers, and clerical outfitters... meaning they could dress a don, a student, or a clergyman without breaking stride. Cambridge does love a specialist. For years, robes and scarves were made in workrooms above the shop; only in the nineteen eighties did production move out to a Fenland workshop.
Now cast your eye north to number one Trinity Street, where King’s Parade meets it. William Scarlett was already running a bookshop there in fifteen eighty-one. Daniel and Alexander Macmillan took over in eighteen forty-six. Alexander moved the publishing side to London in eighteen sixty-three, leaving Robert Bowes to carry on. By nineteen oh seven it traded as Bowes and Bowes; since nineteen ninety-two, it has been the Cambridge University Press bookshop.
When you’re ready, walk north up King’s Parade. After about a hundred metres, just where King’s Parade meets Trinity Street, the narrow cobbled alley on your right, beside the Senate House and under the Caius - pronounced Keys - ceremonial gates, is Senate House Passage - the next stop.
