It’s so…beige!
You can have a browse of the landing page here
It looks very much like an ‘Apart-hotel’ rather than the boutique hotel some of us were talking about almost a decade ago when the Tories decided to ‘dispose of the asset’ and move to Alconbury – a few years before the electorate voted to dispose of their leadership of the county council which is now being abolished.
Above – from the landing page. If it were an actual hotel they would be talking about number of rooms, not numbers of keys.
It remains to be seen which unitary council gets the freehold of the site – even though it was the old county council based on the boundaries of ‘Greater Cambridge’ plus the southern half of East Cambs District Council (the old Newmarket Rural District).
Above – what do you think of the 1970s-style new top floor?
Above – looks like they want an outdoor market where the car park is (and where the old early Victorian Courthouse was
Above – from the Museum of Cambridge’s photo archive – the significance of this photograph is that it was one of the images that got me interested in local history and the story of my home town.
“I still think It’s a tragedy that the statues from the old court house were not saved – representing Justice, Liberty, Power and Truth. I’d love to see them back up there.”
Above – The past and future of (old) Shire Hall on Castle Hill in Lost Cambridge, 03 Feb 2024
This follows from the blogpost I wrote in June 2025 (the above paragraphs and photograph taken from that blogpost).
“Cambridge Apartment Hotels Ltd, a subsidiary of the Lamington Group, exchanged contracts on a 250-year lease for Shire Hall in Cambridge with Cambridgeshire County Council and expect to complete within the next 18 months.”
Above – BBC Cambridgeshire, 12 June 2025
Cambridge Apartment Hotels Ltd is now on Companies House, registered by one of the three executive directors on the Lamington Group’s website here.
My hope was that the site would be able to incorporate an expansion to the Museum of Cambridge to create a facility – ideally a rebuilt and improved court house building, to tell the story of the city
But let’s face it, that won’t happen.
The CGI of the new building next to it tells me they are not interested in applying the findings from the pioneering field of neuroarchitecture. If they were, they wouldn’t have the bland repeating patterns as seen below.
Above – CGI from Lost Gardens Cambridge
I hope the building and site turns out to be far better than my pessimistic tones above
…because I want my city to do well. I’ve just not seen enough evidence in the built environment to reflect this, and the new top floor on the old Shire Hall building, and the proposed new building next to it, reflect this for me.
Anyway, watch their website for the first public events
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The Cambridge Town Owl 