History of weather observing sites in the Cambridge area from the mid‐nine-teenth century to the present‐day.

The Cambridge Observatory began reporting temperature data in 1873, and rainfall from 1839, while the main observing site transferred to the Cambridge University Botanic Garden (CUBG) in 1904. In this collection, temperature data for the Cambridge Observatory was gathered for 1847/1848, for Saffron Walden in 1848/1849 (20km south of Cambridge), and for Royston from 1852 to 1892 (18km southwest of Cambridge). The history of observing sites in and near Cambridge is outlined here from nineteenth century, to the present day; more specifically for the Cambridge Observatory from 1873, and University Botanic Garden from 1904. However, comments in Symons's I Meteorological Magazine i in 1881 state that maximum temperatures at Cambridge Observatory (91°F, 32.8°C) and Merton Villa (92°F, 33.3°C) were recorded '... I from Stands of other or unknown patterns i ', that is, it was not known by Symons which type of screen was in use at the Observatory at that time. [Extracted from the article]