I just went to buy a ticket in advance for trip to London tonight (having queued for 30 minutes last time, which didn’t actually matter in the end because the train I wanted was cancelled). As I wasn’t in a rush this time, I contemplated the chaos, rather than just charging through it. Heaven only knows what visitors (including the potential students coming up for Open Days today) make of it.

The one undeveloped space (due soon to be a hotel, I think) is now visible behind a grill fence: demolition years ago has caused a reversion to nature, soon to be swept away.

The last wild tract…

Lovely, double, dark-pink poppies in this inadvertent ‘wild garden’.

Meanwhile, the only attractive buildings remaining on the left side as you leave the station are about to be demolished, to be replaced by – you’ve guessed it – high-rise slabs.

Wilton Terrace is empty and on the verge of demolition, despite heroic efforts by local residents to save it.

The high-rise slab just past the Tenison Road junction, put up in the 1980s (if I remember rightly) has just been knocked down and replaced by a marginally different high-rise slab. It is presumably only a matter of time before the Victorian villas beyond Tenison Road on the right are demolished and replaced with more high-rise slabs.

This band-new slab replaces an earlier one.

The surviving Victorian villas, now mostly language schools, but clearly a prime site for redevelopment!

On Tenison Road, the latest high-rise housing development is jammed up against the houses on Ravensworth Gardens (I bet the residents of this not unattractive little enclave are thrilled).

Meet the new neighbours!

And on the other side, some very expensive slabs are being crammed in to the long, thin triangle beyond George Pateman Court and behind Tenison Avenue.

The end house in the ‘millionaires’ row’ being constructed beyond George Pateman Court. Note the ‘vernacular’ but entirely functionless chimney.

Just round the corner, real chimneys, with added pigeons.

All this development is in aid of the ‘CB1 – see, be’ (geddit?) project. The next stage of the ‘improvements’ will be the banning private cars on Station Road past the Tenison Road junction, which combined with the dreaded ‘traffic calming’ measures proposed for Tenison Road itself, will mean that all the residential side roads in the area will become even more exciting rat runs than they are already.

On the plus side, the next edition of the wonderful Hideous Cambridge will not be short of new material!

Caroline