Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
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The Petty Cury. The derivation of the name of this street, so well known to all Cambridge men, is a matter of much dispute among antiquaries. (See “Notes and Queries.”) The most probable meaning of it is the Parva Cokeria, or little cury, where the cooks of the town lived, just as “The Poultry,” where the Poulters (now Poulterers) had their shops. “The Forme of Cury,” a Roll of Antient English Cookery, was compiled by the principal cooks of that “best and royalest viander of all Christian Kings,” Richard the Second, and edited with a copious Index and Glossary by Dr. Samuel Pegge, 1780.—M. B.
Many of the buildings in Petty Cury and the surrounding streets were demolished in the 1960s to build a typically ugly shopping centre.