Core Team
Find out more about our core team of staff and a board of trustees
David Parr House is an ordinary terraced house with an extraordinary, hand-painted interior. Home to the Victorian working-class artist, David Parr and his family, the house is an example of Arts and Crafts workmanship layered with 20th-century social history.
Founded in 2014, David Parr House CIO preserves, shares and sustains the house for future generations. We present a dynamic programme of house tours, workshops, events and exhibitions and work with our research partners to uncover overlooked aspects of decorative arts history.
David Parr House is located at 184/186 Gwydir Street, Cambridge, CB1 2LW.
The House is open for visits on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. The Shop and Welcome Space is open Wednesday to Saturday, 10.00am to 5.00pm.
Visit the house, see what’s on, browse the shop, read our FAQS.
Image Credit: Matthew Smith
Our Programme
Our programme platforms creative practice across diverse and expansive disciplines. The House’s rich history, unique context, and closely held values of creativity, care, and integrity create opportunities for audiences and artists alike.
Each year, we explore a theme inspired by the house and its collections, engaging artists, designers, and makers in meaningful conversations beyond its walls. Through exhibitions, collaborations, and artistic interventions, we demonstrate how the themes and values of David Parr House remain as relevant today as they were to those who lived here from the 1880s.
Tadek Beutlich, Two Insects (c.1963). Courtesy of Emma Mason Gallery.
2025
Mansi Shouche Rooted in the land. 2025 Credit: David Parr House
This year, our focus turns to the natural world, inspired by the motifs and values of David Parr and the wider Arts and Crafts Movement. In the face of an urgent climate crisis, we explore how art can educate, inform, and reimagine our relationship with nature. From commissioning climate-resilient garden design from Anna’s Flower Farm made possible with support from The Wolfson Foundation to Freddie Yauner’s Pollen Paintings, we examine new ways to engage with and find refuge in the natural environment, embedding Arts and Crafts values in daily life.
2024
Bettina Furnée, New Rules For A Fair Society (from Reality Rules 2012). Movable typesetting and printing with Caroline Wendling
Last year ‘Letter, Word & Text’ honoured David Parr’s painted schemes and Cambridge’s rich tradition of sign painting and text decoration. The programme featured an exhibition of selected works from The Rampant Lions Press, exploring its use of blackletter typefaces and connections to Parr’s designs. House Guests: Words to Live By; Words to Live With invited artists to reflect on the enduring power of words and consider the texts they would choose to live with and by.
2023
Fiona Curran, How The Data Arrange Themselves (2017)
The programme launched in 2023 with Textiles as the central theme, drawing inspiration from Mary Jane Parr, David’s wife, who worked as a ‘doubler’—a textile worker spinning cotton threads from home to create new yarns. This theme launched House Guests, an annual series of artistic interventions where contemporary creatives respond to the house’s heritage. Through textile-based works, we explored themes of making, domesticity, and the stories woven into the fabric of the house.
Future Programme
Going forward the programme will explore themes around journeys, maps and travel beginning with Richard Hopkins Leach 1814 walk from Windsor to Cornwall noting crafts and trades as he went, looking to the legacy of F R Leach & Sons and their work across the UK and untold story of the travelling artworkman. This reflections and explorations will be accompanied by personal, conceptual and creative journeys.
Support us
As an independent charity with no statutory funding, we rely on volunteers and generous donations from individuals, trusts, foundations and corporations to continue our work. Help us continue to care for this extraordinary house, deliver our unique artistic programme and support our ongoing research.
