Perhaps the largest and most prestigious grocer’s in eighteenth-century Cambridge was Woollard’s, located just off Market Hill, at 6 Trinity Street. Popularly known as ‘The Fortnum’s of Cambridge’, Woollard’s sold a wide range of goods. Many of the well-heeled shoppers shown browsing and buying from the stalls and shops in Market Hill in MacKenzie’s watercolour (displayed nearby) may well have gone up the road to Woollard’s to stock up on other luxury groceries such as tea and sugar. The pages shown here, dated 15 November to 11 December 1788, record the sale of sugar and seeds as well as candles, basins, and ‘fountains’.

Private collection