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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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Arbury Summer 2026 Update: A Rubikian Puzzle at the Kingsway Flats, Tesco's Arrival in Campkin Road, An Enquiry from The Meadows, 'You Can't Call Arbury Arbury!' and the Etymologically Incorrect Albrach...

The Kingsway Flats and a Rubik's Cube. What's the link? Read on! A little post to say hello, share some more Arbury history, answer some queries and apologise for our slowness in updates. Andy has been in hospital but he's out now, and working on our Grovebury Ladies and Arbury in wartime articles. Welcome back, Andy!  We're also working on our 'big hug' to Arbury School article, as it celebrates 70 years. Meanwhile, we've had quite a few queries which we've answered personally - via email - or on here - via the comments section. So, this little post will cover a bit of Rubikian "fun" (!) at the Kingsway in 1982, and a few queries we'd like to highlight. So, here we go! Anonymous asks: When did Tesco arrive in Campkin Road? I remember when there was a Stop's newsagent in both North and South Arbury, one in Campkin Road, one in Carlton Way. Ah yes, 'Stopsiz' as we pronounced it! Nice pic below of the Campkin Road shops from the A...
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Arbury's 1980s: Manor 1981 - Rubik's, Rubik's Nuts Are We, We're All Rubik's Loopy...

The Rubik's Cube was Lord of the Manor in 1981. I'm adapting the 1986 song  Snooker Loopy  for the blog post title here, and Rubik's Loopy  was certainly very descriptive of the Manor, the forerunner of the North Cambridge Academy, in 1981. The Rubik's Cube was quite an amazing thing in those days. It penetrated the Iron Curtain and made its way into the Western World - and that was really something! It was in January/February 1980 that Erno Rubik demonstrated his invention at toy trade fairs in London, Paris, Nuremberg and New York. This was the original 'Buvos Kocka' - 'Magic Cube'. The first test batches of the Magic Cube had been released in its native Hungary just before Christmas 1977, and there had been a small seepage across Hungarian borders in 1978, 1979 and early 1980, including a few into the UK. But the Magic Cube existed in only very small numbers and there were nowhere near enough to break the major pop culture barrier in the UK or the re...
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Old Arbury: Manor Farm/Manor School...

Two photographs: the Manor Girls' School's first lunchtime in 1960 and the Manor Farm's 'Park' Meadow with a grazing cow in the 1940s. The house in both pics is the same - the Manor Farm's foreman/horse keeper's house! Work had begun on North Arbury , but several of the old farm buildings still stood in 1960. The foreman/horse keeper's house features extensively in Andy's 1987 Cambridge Weekly News An Arbury Story of Farming Folk articles - here , and the memories of Mrs Hinchcliffe - here - and Mrs Wiles - here - recorded in the 1980s and detailing Arbury life in the early 20th Century. Copies of many of the prints featured on this blog are available to buy at the Cambridgeshire Collection, Cambridge Central Library. Many other prints and resources are also available there.
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Arbury Carnival 2026 - A Great Day!

We had cloud! We had sun! But most of all at the 2026 Arbury Carnival we had FUN! WONDERFUL! That's our verdict on the latest Arbury Carnival, marking forty-nine years since the very first! Take a look at the pics above for glimpses of just a few of the highlights. Many thanks, as always, to the organisers, helpers, participants and anybody else involved in bringing us our 'once a year day'. We've always loved the Carnival (our oldest Archivist was at the very first in 1977!) and we love the way the name connects us to the oldest known human habitation in the area - Arbury Camp, and the Arbury fields adjacent, north of Arbury Road. Our vibrant, modern community carries a prehistoric link with that association - over 2,000 years old! The procession began for a long time from the Nuns Way playing field, site of the Arbury Adventure Playground for over twenty-five years (more about the playground here ), but has had a different route for the past couple of years, up Campki...
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We Love The Arbury!

The official 2026 Arbury Carnival poster, all the work of Shruti, a student at North Cambridge Academy. Well, this year marks forty-nine years since the first Arbury Carnival. It's concrete proof of the area's great community spirit - which also went a long way to providing us with the Arbury Town Park, Arbury Community Centre and the Arbury Adventure Playground on the Nuns Way Playing Field.  From Councillor Janet Jones threatening to cut down the very tall weeds on the Arbury Town Park site herself if the council didn't (those were hard-pressed times financially), to the social club formed by residents at the Kingsway Flats in the early 1970s, from fund raising for community facilities, to the Arbury 1980 primary schools' project and the 1981 Arbury is where we live! book, and much, much more, the district is a place we love! From the 'Cambridge Evening News', August, 1972. Our annual Arbury Carnival whip-round this year raised far more than we expected - a t...
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Main Streets of Arbury: Campkin Road - Part 1

Left: work begins on Campkin Road in 1961. Numbers 1 and 2 Manor Farm Cottages have been demolished, but the intention is to preserve the old trees lining the old Manor Farm Drive. Right: a similar view in more modern times, with the Arbury Town Park and Campkin Road. In 1982, Campkin Road was described as the 'Hauptstrasse of North Arbury' by local journalist Sara Payne. Ms Payne's local history articles in the Cambridge Weekly News were hugely popular and, for each one, Ms Payne visited a street in Cambridge and talked to the residents, collecting their memories for publication and producing a fascinating series of 'Then and Now' style articles. 'Cambridge Weekly News', 1982. Down Your Street followed in the footsteps of a similar series in the local press in the early 1960s - by Erica Dimmock - and both now make fascinating reading. We're starting our look at Campkin Road with material from the 'Arbury 1980' project and accounts from locals...
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Old Arbury - The Arbury Road Dough Monster and the Chickens with a Safe Billet...

Richard and Amelia Brett with their dog, Nell, in the Park Meadow at Manor Farm - later the site of Manor School/North Cambridge Academy. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, it was common for housewives to prepare dough for bread at home and then take it to the local baker to be baked. This was exactly what Mrs Amelia Brett of the Manor Farm on Arbury 'Meadow' Road, did. The dough would be wrapped in a sheet and placed in a pram to be taken to Chesterton village. The task of transporting the dough was entrusted to one or two of her eleven children. One hot summer's day, in the early 1890s, Amelia entrusted her daughters Elizabeth and Louisa with the task. They had never done it before - and so were rather pleased. But not for long. The large amount of dough in the pram kept causing it to tip from side to side, and as the girls pushed the sheet-wrapped bundle back into the carriage, something very odd began to happen. It began to swell. The sheet began to fill and overflow th...
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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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