i8o The Growth of Cambridge 



Instrument Company now employs 700 hands and the Pye Radio Works 

 is a new and important industry.^ 



The laissez-faire development ot the nineteenth century has been taken 

 in hand. The Town Planning Department is in full working order, and 

 the Borough land has been tentatively allotted to various purposes. 

 Building schemes of twelve houses to the acre are a feature of the east and 

 north-east, to which area, with its good railway sites, it is hoped to confine 

 new and expanding industrial enterprises. In the west it is planned to 

 curtail the density of building to, at most, four houses to the acre. 



There was a proposal of the Town Council in 1841 to enclose portions of 

 the Commons for building sites and market gardens.^ Fortunately for the 

 beauty of Cambridge and the preservation of the individuahty of the old 

 town, this was turned down by a meeting of the townsmen "characterised 

 by extreme noise and tumult ".3 Medieval Cambridge is thus largely 

 separated from the expanding Cambridge of to-day by a ring of open 

 land formed by the Commons and the Backs. 



' See pp. 159-60 above. 



' Report read to a meeting of the Town Council, April 1841. Quoted by C. H. 

 Cooper, op. cit. iv, 633. 

 3 C. H. Cooper, op. cit. iv, 634. 



Bibliographical Note 



(i) C. H. Cooper, Annals of Cambridge, 5 vols. (1842-53). 



(2) R. "Willis and J. W. Clark, The Architectural History of the University of 



Cambridge, 4 vols. (1886). 



(3) J. B. MuUinger, The University of Cambridge, 3 vols. (1873-1911). 



(4) F. W. Maitland, Township and Borough (1898). 



(5) F. W. Maidand and M. Bateson, The Charters of the Borough of Cambridge 



(1901). 



(6) A. Gray, The Town of Cambridge (1925). 



(7) A. Gray, Cambridge University. An Episodical History (1926). 



