Patrick Comerford
Portugal Place is a narrow picturesque street off Bridge Street in Cambridge, squeezed between Saint Clement’s Church on the north side and the Baron of Beef and the Mitre pub restaurants on the south side.
Portugal Place is so narrow at this point that it is almost impossible for two people to pass each other. At the east end of the lane, the vista is framed by Nos 8 and 9 Portugal Place, with a small open space and a twisted corner, that then takes Portugal Place across Park Street into Portugal Street and on to Jesus Green and the Backs.
These are streets I have known for many years, but they often go unnoticed by the throngs of tourists in Cambridge in the summer months.
I found myself in Portugal Place again by accident earlier this month when the bus I was on stopped on Bridge Street and asked all passengers to leave because there was a house fire in Portugal Place.
I have often wondered whether Portugal Place took its name from the Portuguese and Spanish Jews or Sephardim who first began to return to Cambridge after the 1650s. But the name is usually attributed to the Peninsular War and houses built for officers returning from the Peninsular War or the discovery of some Portuguese coins when the houses were built in the 19th century.
I learned this month that Portugal Place was once known as Saint Clement’s Place, and that Nos 8 and 9, which frame the view of Portugal Place from Bridge Street were once church-owned properties with a chantry house once linked to Saint Clement’s Church and a house of the nuns of Saint Radegund, whose property later passed to Jesus College.
The pre-Reformation chantry house on the site of No 9 Portugal Place was attached to the chantry dedicated to Saint Mary in Saint Clement’s Church. It was founded before 1279 by Magister Robert Aunger, with an income of 5 marks derived from properties in the parish left to Robert by his father.
A woman named Alice, widow of Alan Seghyn, passed on her rights to property in an adjacent meadow in favour of Walter de Poswyke, the Vicar of Saint Clement’s, in 1311. A second chantry was founded in 1323, although its location is not clear.
The two chantries struggled in the 14th century to find the means to maintain the number of clergy they both required. There was still only one priest for the two chantries in 1472, even though at least three had been the initial intention at their founding. The priest, Robert Blakamore, had been granted a tenement and garden, and in his will in 1503 he is described as perpetual chaplain of the [united] chantry.
Robert’s successor was Thomas Paris. He was then followed by Robert Massye, who died in 1528. He had become quite a wealthy man and ensured a good attendance at his funeral by leaving 8 pence to the vicar for the funeral and 6 pence to every priest who attended, 4 pence to every scholar of Clement Hostel present, and 2 pence to every sizer. He left most of his pewter to the young maidens in the parishes of Saint Clement and the Holy Sepulchre, and left 16s 8d to Saint Clement’s Church.
Thomas Aldreth was the last chantry priest before the suppression of the religious houses at the Tudor Reformation. The estates of most of the chantries in and around Cambridge were sold in 1548 to Sir Thomas Wendy and John Barton.
By 1557, Thomas Ventris was paying rent to Jesus College for Saint Clement’s chantry house at what is now 9 Portugal Place. From this point on, the ownership of the house is the same as that of 8 Portugal Place.
Thomas Ventris died in 1609. The whole area was bought by Thomas Nutting by 1739, and the east end of Portugal Place was developed in 1835.
No 9 had a variety of owners through the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, including a cabinet maker, wine vaults, bookmakers, a tailor’s, and a seamstress.
Until recent years, No 9 was a dress wear hire service run by Jack Carter. But when I was in Portugal Place this month the building looked vacant and unoccupied.
No 8 Portugal Place next door was once numbered as 14 Clement Lane, was once owned by the nuns of Saint Radegund, and for some decades in the 15th century it was the vicarage for Saint Clement’s Church. It too was built on a plot of ground by the churchyard known as the Jesus Plot in Saint Clement’s Parish.
The Nunnery of Saint Radegund was founded in 1133. The chapel of Jesus College, which dates from 1157 and was completed in 1245, was was part of the Benedictine Convent of Saint Mary and Saint Radegund and is believed to be the oldest university building in Cambridge still in use.
Jesus College was established in 1496, and its full, formal name is the College of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint John the Evangelist and the glorious Virgin Saint Radegund, near Cambridge. When Jesus College acquired the convent and its precincts, the parish was renamed after the college as Jesus Parish, later absorbed into All Saints’ Parish.
An undated charter from the mid-13th century records a gift of several rents to the nuns of Saint Radegund by William Corde, including 3 shillings ‘from land in the which [William de Furcis] holds in the parish of Saint Clement which lies between land of Geoffrey Gybon and land of Hareflet and extends from the road as far as he king’s ditch.’
Two 14th century leases granted by the nuns of Saint Radegund refer to property in this area. The first lease ca 1373 was to Richard Milde capellanus, John de Kelesseye, cooper and his wife Avisia; the second lease was granted in 1377 to John and Avisia only, and it describes both the house that stood on the site opening into the churchyard and a new house John and Avisia agreed to build.
Adam de Walsoken complained in 1401 that there was no house for the Vicar of Saint Clement’s to live in, and in 1402 the nuns granted Adam and his successors as vicar the old house on the site as a parsonage. The parsonage had fallen into decay by 1471, when the lease was granted to ‘William Dack clericus’.
Jesus College was established in 1496 and acquired all the properties once owned by the nuns of Saint Radegund. By 1557, Thomas Ventris was paying rent to Jesus College for Saint Clement’s chantry house at what is now 9 Portugal Place, and by 1566 he owned what is now No 8. From then on, Nos 8 and 9 shared the same ownership.
Thomas Ventris died in 1609, and the residents of No 8 later included Hugh Jones a tailor; the Trott family; Thomas Nutting a merchant; Thomas Willett a gardener; the Sussum family, who had a greengrocery business on Bridge Street; Juner Perry Lawrence, a wine merchant; and Harry Godwin Legge, a painter and paperhanger.
The neighbouring cottages at 5 to 7a Portugal Place were sold at auction in 1933, and bought by the publisher Gordon Fraser. He demolished numbers 5, 6 and 7 in 1935-1936 and he had established a bookshop in 1939, when he moved into 9 Clement Place. Meanwhile, No 10 was demolished in 1937.
However, World War II broke out in 1939, and Gordon Fraser’s bookshop became a white elephant. During the war the bookshop became premises for NAAFI, the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes, a company that ran shops and recreational facilities for the armed forces. No 5-7 Portugal Place is now a two-storey modern office building, built in 1979.
Most of the other houses on Portugal Place date from around 1830s. But the former chantry house and the former Vicarage, side by side at No 9 and No 8m are alone in having survived from the late mediaeval period in this charming, quiet and almost hidden corner of Cambridge.
