Oliver Cromwell grew up in Huntingdon near Cambridge, and went to Sidney Sussex College, starting as a student just before his seventeenth birthday. He worked in and around Cambridge for the next 20 years, becoming MP and joined the Parliamentarian side during the English Civil War. When King Charles I was executed in 1649 England became a Republic, so there was no King or Queen of England, and instead Cromwell took the title “Protector” and he was the ruler until he died in 1658. When the monarchy was restored in 1660 Cromwell’s body was dug up and his head put on a spike above Westminster. One day it blew off in a storm and his family had his remains returned. To this day nobody knows the exact location of Cromwell’s head! A true mystery, it was placed in an unmarked grave in Sidney Sussex College. Even those who claim to know will never tell ...

Equiano

Cambridge was once home to two of the most prominent campaigners against the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797), who was an African, campaigned alongside Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846), from Wisbech. They were both early activists, just as important as William Wilberforce. They devoted their lives to the cause and were pivotal in the Bill of 1807, which abolished the Slave Trade in Britain and British territories.  Equiano was an ardent campaigner.  He was important to Wilberforce and Clarkson, as a former enslaved African, being a source of eye-witness accounts about the horrific experience of being kidnapped as a child in Africa and trafficked to the Americas. Equiano was bought and sold many times, buying his freedom from a sympathetic Quaker, when he became literate, moved to England. Equiano married a local woman in Soham, and lived for a while with his family in Chesterton. His daughter, Anna Maria, was buried there in St Andrews Churchyard in 1797. Equiano wrote a Memoir to publicize his story and to raise money for the abolitionist cause. However, it took longer to abolish slavery and trafficking.  Owning another human was not made illegal until 1837.