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Arbury Archaeology and History: Part 1

Imagine an iron age settlement. It is surrounded by a circular earthwork. People live here. There are houses, and pens for animals within the enclosure. Until recent years, it was not believed to be a fort. The settlement is larger than some, but believed to be very much the equivalent of what we now call a village - the earthwork simply to defend it from wolves and animal thieves. The earthwork is filled with water, and reeds and rushes grow there. Despite the naming of the Arbury earthwork as 'Ring Fort Road' in the Arbury Camp Farm Arbury/Orchard Park development, the original height of the earthwork and its enclosed area were not believed to indicate that Arbury was a fort (compare to Wandlebury), and the findings of archaeologists from Cambridge and London from the early 1960s to 1970 discounted the notion. Comment from Arbury Camp, Cambridge, A Preliminary Report on Excavations - by John Alexander and David Trump, 1970: The excavations therefore tend to confirm earlier s...
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Arbury Court - Part Of The 'Centre' Of The Original Arbury Estate...

A view across Arbury Court, looking towards Arbury Road, in 1976. Arbury Court is part of the 'centre' of the original Arbury Estate in Cambridge. The Court, with its pub, supermarket, hardware store and post office, chip shop, newsagent, TV shop, greengrocer, hairdresser, chemist, supermarket and branch library, is part of the 'hub' of the estate. The historic Arbury district. The Arbury or Harborough (the names were variations on each other and interchangeable, although the Arbury form was more common) Meadows and Furlongs covered land north of Arbury Road, and included a swathe of land south of the road. Arbury Road ran from Milton Road to the Histon/Cambridge Road until the late 1970s. The Manor Farm was formed in the years following the 1840 Chesterton Enclosures. Orchard Park (originally Arbury Park and, before that, Arbury Camp Farm and, before that Arbury Meadows) features the outline of part of the Arbury prehistoric settlement at Ring Fort Road. We've inse...
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Things Called Arbury In Cambridge...

How many things that are, or have been, called 'Arbury' in Cambridge and its immediate environs can you think of over the years? Most 'Arbury' things are clustered north of Arbury Road - one of the most historic Arbury areas in Cambridge, although, nonsensically, part of the "King's Hedges" electoral ward. Check out King's Hedges on the map. That's right. It's north of the guided busway/railway line and was a fifty eight acre plot. A lot of the land north of Arbury Road, and a swathe of land to the south, were known as the Arbury or Harborough Meadows, North Arbury/Harborough Furlong, etc. Harborough is a variation on the Arbury name.  We put our thinking caps on, and came up with: 1) Arbury Road: This road connected the Milton/Ely Road with the Histon/Cambridge Road until the late 1970s when a new road was built across the Arbury Meadows/Manor Farm by the iron age Arbury Camp at the time of the A14 development. The new road linked the formerly...
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Mrs Hinchcliffe's Memories of Old Arbury, Chesterton and Vicarage Terrace Part 11: St Kilda Avenue, Judy Garland, The Vicarage Terrace Bombing...

On at the Rendezvous - 1927! More changing times in the eleventh part of our serialisations of Arbury Archive transcripts from the 1980s. Mrs Hinchcliffe (1910-1998) was Andy's grandmother and his interviews with her are some of our favourites here. The family bond led to some very warm and natural reminisces. As this era includes the beginning of World War II, Andy had assembled various dates at the Cambridgeshire Collection concerning the Cambridge war time events to aid Mrs Hinchcliffe in presenting events in chronological order, something she was very keen to do. So, from the late 1920s to 1940, ushering in the Second World War...  'Mum and Dad moved from Milton Road to Hertford Street. Beautiful house, with a bathroom, though the toilet was outside - they rented the house, of course. The house had a garage with a flat roof that fronted Magrath Avenue, and I remember something really funny. 'There used to be... well, I suppose you might call it university police - Bull...
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