Cambridge Corn Exchange
A Grade II listed Victorian trading hall that now hosts gigs, comedy and graduations.
The Corn Exchange is a central venue for touring gigs, comedy and talks, housed in a Grade II listed Gothic Revival building on Wheeler Street. It stands directly behind the Cambridge Guildhall, which overlooks Market Hill.
From grain trade to gigs
The city's earliest corn exchange dated from 1842 and stood on St Andrew's Hill; by the late 1860s officials thought it too cramped. The replacement went up on the former site of the Black Bear Inn. Its foundation stone was laid on 26 May 1874, and the architect Richard Reynolds Rowe gave it bricks cast in a range of colours. It opened on 6 November 1875. Corn trading dwindled, and by 1965 it had ceased altogether once the Cattle Market site offered an alternative.
The hall then found other uses: motor shows, balls, boxing, wrestling and roller skating, and from the 1970s pop concerts. It shut in 1981 after surveyors judged the roof dangerous. Public pressure, grants and donations paid for a refit, and the first concert in the restored hall took place on 3 December 1986, with an official reopening the following February. Among the acts recorded as playing there in earlier decades was David Bowie in 1966.
Today
The venue is run by Cambridge City Council on a not-for-profit basis. It marked its 150th anniversary with a National Lottery Heritage funded digital exhibition, "A Stage in Time". Anglia Ruskin University also holds its graduation ceremonies here.
Practical notes
The venue's bag policy allows one small bag per person, smaller than A4. Grand Arcade car park is across the road, and its cycle park has covered space for more than 200 bikes, closing at 23:30. The railway station is about twenty minutes on foot and Drummer Street bus station about six.
Nearby
Within a few minutes' walk
