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Trumpington Inclosure
The houses Nos. 172-176 Hills Road are not and never were part of the Station Estate. A piece of land of approximately 20 acres was allotted to the College by the Trumpington Inclosure Commissioners in 1801. This replaced land in the Trumpington fields which was part of the field land of the Vine Estate purchased by the College in 1509.
The land was let in one lease with the houses in St Andrew's Street (now Bradwell's Court) on a lease of 21 years until 1795, when at the request of the lessee the lease was divided into two, one of 40 years for the houses and one of 21 years for the land. The reason was doubtless in order to obtain a longer lease for the house property, as Colleges were not permitted to lease lands for a longer period than 21 years.
The allotment made by the Trumpington Inclosure Commissioners in 1801 consisted entirely of agricultural land in Brooklands field. It was the plot nearest to the northern boundary of the Trumpington land and ran from the brook leading from Nine Wells to Cambridge on the west to the Hills Road on the east, but the frontage on the Hills Road was very short being only about half of the width of the plot at its western end. When Barnwell Fields were enclosed in 1807, 5A. 2R. 2P. adjoining this strip on the north were allotted to the College in lieu of the field land belonging to the Vine Estate in Barnwell fields, but this plot adjoined only the western half of the Trumpington allotment, and had no frontage on the Hills Road.
About 2/3rds of the land was severed from the portion with the road frontage by the construction of the Eastern Counties Railway in 1850 and a further strip was later acquired by the Great Northern Railway. Henceforward the access from the road was only by two separate private level crossings, and so the land was not very profitable. In 1896 the College agreed to sell it to Trinity College, the owners of the land adjoining it to the south and west.
Proposals for building on the road frontage began as early as 1877, but the houses were not actually built until 1887
[taken from notes by Freda Jones]