New Cherry Hinton Community Hub

The Community Cafe is a local project that is being planned by local residents with the involvement of the community. Over May and June 2021 we sent out a survey, asking the Cherry Hinton community to tell us about the cafe they would like and, alongside that, we held a competition to come up with a name for it.

We were delighted to receive over 300 entries! It wasn’t surprising that many of the names suggested had common themes but we were amazed by how many variations there were within the themes and how imaginative the suggestions were.

We now have a list of 11 names that we will be asking residents to help us reduce to a short list. We will be posting a poll on our website and our social media pages on FRIDAY 27th August 2021. The names with the highest number of votes will go through to a second round of voting, after which we will have our winner!

It was a really hard task to choose between so many brilliant entries. Below are the selections that we eventually made. We’ve also mentioned some of the of the ‘runners up’ so that you can see how good they were! The full list of names is available on request.

Names that featured Cherry Hinton’s trees and their blossom were the most popular choices. We were impressed by ‘Prunus Cafe‘ (which is the genus that includes cherry trees, apparently) and ‘Sakura‘, which we now know is the Japanese word for cherry blossom. We very much liked ‘Under the Cherry Tree‘ and ‘A Tree for All Seasons Cafe‘. In the end, out of the tree-themed entries, we chose two that linked well with the aims of the Hub:

1. The Cherry Branch – As well as conjuring a lovely image, we think that this can also be interpreted as reaching out.
2. Blossoms – As one person (of many) who suggested this name said, “it both celebrates Cherry Hinton’s lovely tree blossoms and (hopefully) will be where other things blossom like friendships and ideas to help better our community”.

There were a lot of fun cherry-related names. To give you a few examples, we had ‘Cherry Basket‘, Cherrypot‘, ‘Cherry Pie‘ ‘Cherry Cake‘ (yum), ‘Cherry on the Cake‘ and ‘Cherry on Top‘! We learned that ‘Cereza‘ is Spanish for cherry and ‘Cerises‘ means cherries in French. We’d like to give special mention to ‘Cherry Teas Cafe‘ and ‘Mon Cheri‘ but in the end we chose:

3. Cherries – both for it’s simplicity and it’s popularity
4. The Cherry Pit Stop – because it suggests taking a break and finding refreshment
5. The Cherry Drop – because it brings ‘drop-in’ to mind as well as sounding very tasty!
6. Cherry Bakewell – which we will certainly try our best to do 🙂

Several other local features appeared in the names that were suggested including the chalk pits, the old orchards, the Beechwoods, the church bells, the trains and our mythical giants. Of these, we eventually chose:

7. The Springhead Cafe – As well as a local landmark, a springhead is a place of refreshment and a source or starting point.
8. The Giant’s Kitchen – because why not?!

There were also several clever references to the library and the new Hub and some very inventive names using Hinton or Chinton. We especially liked ‘Hinton’s Hive‘, ‘The Chapter‘ and ‘Hubbub Cafe‘ and we think that an honourable mention should be given to: ‘Brioche‘ – short for Brilliant Cherry Hinton, ‘CHiC‘ – short for Cherry Hinton Cafe and ‘Thirst!‘ – as in drinks and knowledge. Our final choices were:

9. Chinton Chatter – which is fun and also nicely sums up engagement in our community
10. The Wheel – We liked this for it’s image of a central hub with connecting spokes (groups and activities).
11. Food for Thought – chosen because it suggests both physical and mental nourishment

The idea of a welcoming community featured in quite a few of the names. Some of our favourites included ‘Community Spirit‘, ‘Everyone’s Community Cafe‘ and ‘The Welcome Cafe‘. We also enjoyed ‘Don’t tell the neighbours‘!

We were particularly taken with the suggestions that we received to name the cafe after local residents, many of whom are no longer with us. Until we read about them, we hadn’t known much about their achievements and the contributions they made to local life. It would have been very difficult to choose between them so, instead, we decided that we would like to honour them all in some way and to make their stories better known. We will be thinking how we can do that once the cafe is open. In the meantime, if there are other local residents that you would like to tell us about, we would be very pleased to hear from you.

And finally, of course, it wouldn’t be a naming competition without someone suggesting ‘Cafe McCafe-Face‘. Tempting… but no.

You can vote for the community cafe name between Friday 27th August and Friday 3rd September.

We always welcome offers of help. If you’d like to join our team of volunteers please email us at hello@cherryhintonhub.org