Readers of the Fitzwilliam Hall Magazine of May 1908 were delighted with the news that a field, on the north side of a new residential street off Huntingdon Road, had been acquired for the purpose of playing sports.  It was a mere seven-minute cycle ride from Fitzwilliam Hall on Trumpington Street and lay “just outside the town on the highest and healthiest part of Cambridge, and anyone who has walked up Castle Hill must be struck with the bracing effect which one meets with on the top, compared with the airless atmosphere of the town below”. 

The 6 ½ acre field had been purchased by W.F. Reddaway, Fitzwilliam Hall’s Censor (the precursor to a Master), very generously with £650 of his own money. A keen sportsman himself, he wished to bolster the community spirit and communal identity of Fitzwilliam students,  who were “very hungry for land”. After “wandering in the desert for three university generations looking for grounds and pitches” to rent, they were to have their own home.

The field was not yet a playing field, however. It was waste ground covered in weeds and rubble from the construction of Oxford Road and neighbouring streets. Paid labourers were brought in for some of the heavy work, but Reddaway organised gangs of students to complete the transformation. By November Reddaway could claim that “steady progress has been made with the task of turning a meadow, originally self-sown and for twenty-five years uncared for, into a ground of the class which Cambridge now expects”. In fact it was a long process, slowly achieved by Fitzwilliam men over a number of years, and eventually resulting in tennis courts, pitches and a fives court.

The most arduous task, according to the Magazine of November 1908, was the creation of the football pitch in only four weeks. On 2nd November 1908 the football team was able to host a home match, and the first ever goal at Oxford Road was scored by Fitzwilliam against Kings. The final result, 3-2 to the home side, was an unexpected triumph at a time when Fitz’s footballing prowess left a good deal to be desired. As the Magazine reported, the previous season “has passed, we regret to say, without a single victory being recorded….In this unbroken series of defeats almost our sole aim has necessarily been to render the aggregate of goals against us as small as possible”.

Reddaway’s next aspiration, again at his own expense, was for a groundsman’s house. Constructed in 1910, Red Cottage was designed by one of the Hall’s Theology students who doubled as an architect. The pavilion, however, was an old wooden affair, that had literally been picked up and carried to Oxford Road by a party of students. 

On 2nd August 1914, as Reddaway celebrated his birthday in Hunstanton, news came through that Germany had declared war on Russia. When he returned to Cambridge a few weeks later he found that many students had volunteered to fight, and that the city  had become “a hive inhabited by successive swarms of soldiers”.  Oxford Road ground was swiftly put to use as a drilling ground for a squad of dons and students, and bayonet practice by members of the Cheshire Regiment billeted nearby. An unexpected reduction in sporting activity was an opportunity to make further improvements to the playing field, especially the cricket pitch. It was hoped that its partial re-laying would “prevent the southern end from again becoming fiery”.  But as the war dragged on priorities on the Home Front changed. The groundsman was called up for military service in 1916 and his donkey was purchased by Reddaway and the Chaplain, who presented it to the Red Cross. 

Student enrolments naturally plummeted across the University, and the financial viability of Fitzwilliam Hall was in doubt. Oxford Road proved a valuable asset, providing much-needed income from letting for sheep-grazing. Those few Fitzwilliam students who remained in Cambridge found a further novel use for the playing field, planting it with potatoes. This became not only a source of food for members of Fitzwilliam, but also a money-spinner and a time-consuming passion. In December 1917 it was reported in the Magazine that “Potatoes are our only love. Personally we always raise our cap on passing a potato”. Sheep and potatoes undid the many hours of work that had gone into creating the pitches, and as late as December 1923 Reddaway wrote that “the weeds are slow to relinquish the hold that they gained between 1916 and 1919, but the turf is approaching its prewar state”. 

The tragic legacy of the Great War left a more permanent mark on Oxford Road. An appeal was launched to raise the funds to buy the ground from Reddaway, who retired as Censor in 1924. Characteristically he accepted the original purchase price, foregoing any capital gain that he could have claimed. A memorial stone, still visible on Red Cottage, marked the successful dedication of the playing fields and the groundsman’s house, “TO THE FORTY THREE FROM FITZWILLIAM HALL WHO FELL IN THE GREAT WAR”.  Donations were also sought for a much-needed brick pavilion, finally constructed in 1927.

As we approach the Pavilion’s centenary, the JMA and College are working to upgrade the sporting facilities of Oxford Road. The Edwardian students who levelled the ditches, dug out the weeds and created the pitches would have been astonished and gratified to learn that their labour still underpins the ‘Billy’ spirit that has defined generations of Fitz men, and of course, women. Pride in Fitzwilliam’s sporting achievements and the pure pleasure of running up and down a piece of turf, are shared by thousands of Fitzwilliam members, all of whom might recognise a rye comment from the Fitzwilliam Hall Magazine of February 1909 that “Oxford Road in wintry weather can be very nearly the wintriest-feeling part of Cambridge”.  A sentiment as resonant today as it ever was.

Dr Helen Bettinson (The Journal 2024)