
Cambridge Market Square
Open-air daily market on granite setts, centred on the base of a Victorian conduit-fed fountain.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Cambridge Market Square follows the water that once filled buckets in the middle of the market, from chalk springs south of town to a fountain that stood here for centuries. You'll meet a Peterhouse master with a sanitation problem, a college head who revived his plan, and the horse-hiring carrier whose name became a figure of speech. Stand by the granite base at the centre of the square, among the old paving stones.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Hobson's Conduit
Hexagonal stone conduit head from a 1614 fountain, marking a spring-fed watercourse still running.
Cambridge Museum of Technology
Victorian sewage pumping station once fuelled by burning rubbish, with working steam engines.
Sidney Sussex College
Elizabethan college raised on a Franciscan friary site, with medieval cellars beneath its cloister court.
Midsummer Common
Riverside common meadow hosting a centuries-old midsummer fair, bonfire night and grazing cattle.
Museum of Cambridge
Folk museum of everyday local life in a timber-framed former inn with a huge original chimney.