Low Temperature Research Station

The Food Investigation Board (FIB), under the directorship of William Bate Hardy, established the Low Temperature Research Station (LTRS) in Cambridge in 1921. The station was run by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR), but was overseen by a committee of management from the University of Cambridge and was housed on a site on Downing Street supplied by the University and in close proximity to other biological and physiologicalsciences. The station researched the properties and behaviour of foodstuffs, specifically the preservation and distribution of meat, eggs and poultry. A number of refrigerated rooms were maintained to monitor foodstuffs over long periods of time and to investigate controlled atmosphere storage. Similar research on fruit and vegetables was carried out concurrently at the Ditton Laboratory in Kent. Early superintendents of the LTRS included Hardy, Franklin Kidd and Edgar Bate-Smith. The lease of the Downing Street site was terminated by the University in 1956, and by the mid-1960s the LTRS and the Ditton Laboratory had been subsumed into the Institute of Food Research based in Norwich. The Institute in turn became the Quadram Institute in 2017, with the opening of a new centre for food and health research based at Norwich Research Park. The former LTRS building in Cambridge is now known as the William Hardy Building and forms part of the University’s Geography Department.