Before the presiding brains of the time got the idea to knock down our version of York's Shambles or Brighton's and Norwich's Lanes, there was a fantastically (unhealthy) higgledy-piggleday collection of streets and yards called Petty Cury where the hideous and cookie-cutter Lion Yard now stands. Demolishing those destroyed one of the most atmospheric and intriguing city centres in the country and left us open to virtual clone-town status. Even sadder, several ancient inns were demolished as part of the development, most notably the Falcon. Queen Mary (Tudor) watched a play held in the yard there (and enjoyed it greatly, so the story goes, so presumably it involved killing Protestants). Much more recently a party in the Falcon to launch a poetry magazine was the meeting place of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath (he had just left Pembroke, she was on a scholarship to Newnham). Plath planned a novel based on her time in Cambridge, to be called Falcon Yard, but it was still unfinished when she had her tragic appointment with a gas oven. Luckily my camera has a time travel facility...
