Join us for a playful, hands-on exploration of the chalk landscapes of Cherry Hinton.

Local historian Michelle Bullivant will share Grounded in Chalk: Roots, Quarries and Growth in Cherry Hinton, an illustrated talk exploring how Cherry Hinton’s chalk landscape has shaped its people, its quarries, and its growth into new suburban areas.

From ancient geology and dramatic chalk pits to orchards, market gardening, and modern developments, discover the landscape story beneath the village, and how it continues to evolve today.

Together, we’ll delve into the geological story of chalk: how it formed, its unique properties, and what it looks like under a microscope. We’ll explore deep time, the composition of chalk, and the hidden layers beneath our feet in this remarkable local landscape.

Using chalk sourced from the area, we’ll experiment with making paints, forms, and small sculptures as we uncover the world beneath us.

About the Workshop

This workshop brings together architecture, landscape history, and creative making to explore the hidden stories of place.

We begin with an illustrated talk by local historian and landscape archaeologist Michelle Bullivant. Grounded in Chalk introduces Cherry Hinton’s distinctive chalk landscape, revealing the deep connections between geology, quarrying, water, and the growth of settlement.

From the dramatic chalk pits of Lime Kiln Hill and the bubbling springs that sustained early communities, to orchards, market gardening, and the spread of suburban development across former fields, the talk uncovers the layered histories beneath Cherry Hinton’s surface — and how these layers continue to shape the landscape today.

Following the talk, participants will examine chalk under the microscope, viewing striking imagery from researchers at the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences. We’ll explore how flint forms within chalk and experiment with chalk as an artist’s material, creating images and forms inspired by its cellular structures and patterns.

No previous art experience is needed — just curiosity. All materials are provided.

Children under 16 are to be accompanied by a parent or guardian.

Delivered in partnership with the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences, Cambridge, and Michelle Bullivant, with thanks to The Natural History Museum archive and Mikrotax for the microfossil and chalk microscopy imagery.

This free public workshop is part of In Every Piece of Land, the Soil Has a Memory, a project by artists Eleanor Goulding (Denman+Gould) and Abi Wheeler. The project forms part of the Public Art Commission for Fanshawe Road, Cambridge, within Resonance–Cambridge — a programme connecting people to place alongside the new homes created by the Cambridge Investment Partnership (CIP).