Mill Lane Memories
Money
Readers should stand by for the latest instalment from the Mill Lane Library filing cabinet. It concerns the timeless subject of money…
Letter from W.H. Plommer [Faculty Librarian] to ‘Bob’ [Robert Coleman] dated 9.7.65:
You’ll have received, no doubt, the list of current accessions which we sent out a week or two ago to all senior members of the Faculty. On my return from Scotland, I find that the duplicating of this list has cost the Library more than I had bargained for. We have received a bill for £15.7.4 for the duplicating, and have had in addition to spend 2 gns. on a box of special envelopes (which I gather will last us for another list too, later on).
W.H. (Hugh) Plommer (1922-1983) expounded Greek and Roman architecture to generations of undergraduates in the semi-circular lecture theatre in the Old Ark. Robin Osborne remembers that a breathless style of delivery imparted a certain drama to his lecturing performance! Dorothy Thompson recalls that Dr Plommer would occasionally (and inadvertently) fling his wooden pointer across the stage when using the slide projector, whereupon an obliging member of the audience would scramble to retrieve it.
Hugh Plommer’s correspondent, Robert (Bob) Coleman (1929-2001), was latterly Professor of Comparative Philology in the Faculty of Classics. A guinea was 21 shillings, or £1.1s. The guinea was a pre-decimal monetary unit occasionally applied (until February 1971) to goods with ‘snob value’. Nowadays, it is only used to denominate horse-racing prizes. They must have been rather special envelopes…
Letter from W.H. Plommer to Joyce Reynolds [Secretary to the Classical Faculty Board] dated July 5th 1966:
As our Library becomes more popular, so we have inevitably to make good more wear and tear. For instance, we have lately replaced 50 Loebs, a few of them lost but most of them just worn, at a cost of £47. I am sorry to confess to this sordid expenditure, and indeed I’m always advising students to buy their own Loebs, if they must use them. The fact remains that this merely humdrum side of the Library costs us at least £100 p.a., even allowing for the petty cash that we collect in fines from students.
Joyce Reynolds to L.M. Harvey [Deputy Secretary-General of the Faculties], 4th July 1967:
Dear Mr Harvey
I am afraid that in a rush of work at the end of Term I failed to observe and to let you know that the Librarian of the Classical Faculty has already overspent again this year…by several hundred pounds on books…
…I know from earlier discussion that books on order from a long time back have a habit of turning up and throwing out a librarian’s budget.
From L.M. Harvey to Joyce Reynolds, 5th July 1967:
We must await the Faculty Librarian’s reasons for the overspending but one might say now that, although the unexpected arrival of books long on order may cause overspending one year, one cannot play that card very well in a number of successive years!
Truly waspish!
The displeasure of Mr Harvey.
Joyce to Hugh, 6th July 1967:
Dear Hugh
I discover to my horror that you are overspent by small amounts on binding and periodicals and by several hundred pounds on books. I have written to tell the General Board – I don’t suppose they will be very pleased!
Hugh to Joyce, 10/7/67:
This is written on headed paper, upon which the name ‘F.R.D. Goodyear’ [the previous Faculty Librarian] has been crossed out in pen and replaced by ‘Hugh Plommer’, who adds: You see how economical I have been with the stationery!
He continues as follows:
During this year I have often been surprised by the excessive price of foreign books (£74, for instance, for Voigt’s Ius Naturale), which has definitely upset my estimates. Inflation in Europe seems as bad as inflation in Britain.
There were also at least £80 of back orders, dating from Frank Goodyear’s time, which arrived in the course of the year. I suppose I should have adjusted my current orders to allow for these unexpected excesses. But I was under heavy pressure, with all kinds of suggestions for books; nor am I conscious that I ordered anything frivolous or unnecessary, except, perhaps, a 16/- reprint of Kepler’s delightful Latin treatise on the six-cornered snowflake.
Dr Plommer is economical with the stationery.
Dr Plommer stepped down as Faculty Librarian soon afterwards, and Dorothy Thompson took office at the beginning of September 1967. Dorothy would go on to enjoy an eight-year run as Faculty Librarian, greatly assisted in her labours by the long-serving Senior Library Assistant Miss June Ethridge, who would herself continue in post until the 1980s.
All’s well that ends well? Letter from Joyce Reynolds to Dorothy Crawford [i.e. Dorothy Thompson] dated 31st October 1967:
It appears now certain, though it has not been confirmed in writing, that we shall be allowed to charge last year’s overspending in the Library to accumulated balances, so that you will start with money to spend as originally estimated…
Professor Emerita Joyce Reynolds FBA (1918-2022) was the doyenne of Roman historical epigraphy, a Fellow of Newnham College from 1951 onwards, and a University lecturer from 1957 until her ‘retirement’ in 1984. F.R.D. Goodyear (1936-1987) was Fellow and Director of Studies in Classics at Queens’ College from 1960 until 1966, when he was elected to the Chair of Latin at Bedford College, London.
Library Report for 1966-67:
The library’s financial problems are known to the Board and are our main worry at present. It seems that a ‘period of restraint and financial stringency’ must follow and we are awaiting for the decision of the General Board. The increasing cost of books is daunting and cannot be obviated even by the most careful selection. The costs of book-binding and chair-covering have also increased.
And: Library Report for 1967-68:
Just over £400 was gained by the library from the sale of duplicate periodicals and books. But this is not a recurring source of income and with the effects of devaluation and in spite of various periodicals cancelled it seems that we must cut down still further in the purchase of books.
The Labour Government’s devaluation of November 1967 reduced the value of the pound against the US dollar from $2.80 to $2.40. Prime Minister Harold Wilson appeared on television to assure viewers that the value of the ‘pound in your pocket’ was unchanged. The devaluation boosted exports at a time when the UK’s manufacturing base was more important than it is today. However, devaluation also raised the cost of imported items (including of course foreign books and periodicals) by around 16%. Nor did the Library’s financial tribulations end there…
Letter from Dorothy Crawford to Dr Peck dated 7th August 1970:
Just over £30 for the telephone should, we now learn, have been taken from the Faculty telephone account. The main reason for our debit on this account was the enormous increase in the cost of repairing the library chairs. Although only those in danger of collapse were repaired £127 was spent on chair repairs which is £67 over our allowance. Printing costs have also risen and the increased use of the library following its rearrangement and also the institution of the common room has been reflected in the number of books borrowed and the number of slips required. The photo-copying machine is a further expensive item on the sundries account.
The overall picture is unremittingly black and I apologise in advance to the Faculty Board…
Until 1986, borrowing for undergraduates was overnight only. And prior to computerisation in the 1980s, borrowing necessitated the printing of borrowing slips by a local firm. We also note that the volunteers who toiled in 1969 to decorate the orange common room did not labour in vain: not only was the Mill Lane common room a popular innovation, it also enhanced the popularity of the Mill Lane Library as well!
Bruce Logan Remembers Mill Lane
The Mill Lane ‘Dorothy Thompson Special’, which went live in October 2024, prompted Bruce Logan (Fitzwilliam 1959-62) to write in with his memories of his time as a Classics undergraduate. To place Bruce in the grand scheme of things, he was one year below Dorothy Walbank (as she then was), and one year above Malcolm Schofield. The photograph of the interior of the Mill Lane Library which we use to introduce each Mill Lane episode is the only one in our possession - it was taken some years ago when the space was occupied by the Land Economy Library. Bruce remarks that in the photograph the Library is: …looking so smart and beautifully designed for its purpose. What a shame that it has been destroyed. I used to sit there every day after morning lectures downstairs between visits to the Anchor for coffee.
The Mill Lane Lecture Rooms were (alas) demolished in 2022, and their site is now occupied by a new residential court built by Pembroke College. However, the Anchor is still in business, and indeed its rear elevation (with weatherboarding) on Laundress Lane continues to look convincingly old-Cambridge, provided one turns a blind eye to the conspicuous trade-waste bins.
The Anchor and Laundress Lane.
One fellow Classicist and regular Library user that Bruce particularly remembers was (John) Michael Brearley (St. John’s, 1960), now Mike Brearley OBE, psychoanalyst and former England cricket captain, who read Part I of the Classical Tripos, but who (like Malcolm Schofield) switched to Part II of the Moral Sciences Tripos.
Of the teaching in those days (the days when giants walked the corridors of Mill Lane), Bruce says: My best memories of the learning process were sitting at the feet of wonderful teachers like Moses Finley, a particular favourite, RM Cook, Jocelyn Toynbee, John Chadwick et al and especially that wonderful and eccentric Hugh Plommer, who was a bit of an iconoclast when it came to challenging other expert opinions on Graeco Roman architecture.
Dr Plommer invited a select group of students to his house (82 Oxford Road) on one memorable Shrove Tuesday to make pancakes… Coincidentally, John Killen has compared Hugh Plommer’s homeward progress on a push-bike up Castle Hill to that of Sisyphus pushing his boulder uphill. However, Professor Killen hastens to assure us that Dr Plommer did (unlike Sisyphus) eventually reach the top.
Doric pilasters: Dr Plommer makes a pronouncement.
The Faculty’s most recent print newsletter (Autumn 2024) featured the inaugural Brian Leech Memorial Fund student trip to Athens. Bruce and three other Cambridge Classicists also travelled to Athens, in the long-ago summer of 1961. They went by train, a marathon three-day journey (with several changes) viaMunich, Belgrade and Skopje.
Long-distance railway travel could offer perils which are unknown to our present-day devotees of EasyJet and Ryanair. At Belgrade, Bruce got off to stretch his legs, returned 30 minutes later, and found the train had disappeared! (Luckily, it had merely moved to another platform). The group (which numbered eight students in all) were accidentally booked into a first-class compartment for the return journey, but on crossing the Yugoslav border, the guard tried to eject them. The British contingent barricaded themselves inside the compartment, and another official arrived with a pistol, but happily this international incident fizzled out. Two members of the party who unwisely sought refreshment were left behind in a café on Munich station when the scheduled 50-minute stop was shortened to 10 minutes so that the train could punctually make up time. (The remaining six were instructed by officials to leave their compatriots’ bags and passports at the Franco-German border). And Bruce made the cardinal error of jumping out of the luggage rack in which he had been sleeping in order to pursue a railway employee with a coffee urn along the train corridor.
Bruce was barefoot, and attired only in jeans and T-shirt, without wallet or passport. Not only did Bruce fail to catch up with the fast-moving coffee vendor, but he discovered to his horror that he was unable to return to his shared compartment, because the train had stopped, and the rear carriages had been uncoupled. What was left of the train was not destined for Boulogne and dear old Blighty, but rather for…Copenhagen! Presently, the truncated train drew into Amiens station, and Bruce was running barefoot for the stationmaster’s office, when (an answer to prayer!) Bruce’s ‘real’ train pulled in at an adjacent platform, the rest of his party uttering effusive cheers, not least because Bruce was holding the principal group ticket.
That first encounter with Greece had included visits to Delphi and Olympia, and then an overnight voyage on the ferry from the Piraeus to Heraklion [Crete] in order to visit Knossos.
Bruce subsequently lost his bearings in the back streets of Heraklion, and asked a passing army officer for directions. The latter was unaccountably cold and formal: ‘Γερμανός?’ [i.e. was Bruce German?] (In those days, Bruce had a good head of blond hair, and Greece had been invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany in 1941-44). When Bruce explained that he was Scottish: ‘Είμαι Σκωτσέζος!’ the officer shouted: Ah, the Black Watch! [Soldiers of the famous Black Watch, or Royal Highland Regiment, had taken part in the defence of Crete in May 1941]. The officer hugged our young friend, and carried him off to a restaurant for a free dinner, washed down with much retsina. On another visit, Bruce and several friends travelled by ferry to the island of Samos, and ventured inside the aqueduct-tunnel described by Herodotus which is commonly attributed to the sixth-century Greek tyrant Polycrates. But then, as Bruce himself says: The stories of those times in Greece are endless. Perhaps other alumni would like to write in with their own stories of the days when the world was young?
An earlier traveller to Greece. View of the Plain of Olympia, drawn by Edward Dodwell, and printed in his book ‘Views in Greece’, which was published in two volumes in London by Rodwell and Martin in 1821. Book held by: Classical Faculty Library, Cambridge. ©Museum of Classical Archaeology, Cambridge.