Arbury Through Time...

The Kingsway Flats in South Arbury, built in the mid-1960s, with their hills and silver birches. The hills were a popular destination for bored children in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s - along with the 'The Hump', 'The Seats' and 'The Block'.

The Arbury/Harborough Meadows, north of Arbury Road. 'Harborough' was a variation on the Arbury name. 

'Cambridge News', 1969: a Roman villa with underfloor heating (a 'hypercaust') has been discovered in the Arbury Meadows north of Arbury Road, soon to be followed by iron age finds. The villa was on the site of Northfield Avenue and King's Hedges School - which is in the city's most historic Arbury area, not King's Hedges, a small farm north of the guided busway.

Arbury, circa 1900. Note Arbury Camp and the Manor Farm field names. King's Hedges was a fifty eight acre farm, north of the railway line (guided busway) and King's Hedges Road, redirected and expanded across the Arbury Meadows into a highway in the 1970s as part of the A45/A14 motorway development, was then a dead end farm track. Arbury Road connected with Histon Road until the late 1970s.

Arbury is the prehistoric people and their settlement at Arbury Camp. It's Roman villas with flooring heated from underneath by fires, Roman life and Roman burial sites - the Roman community which sprang up beside the old Arbury Camp earthwork. It's the 1840 Enclosures and the quiet tempo of life at the Manor and Hall Farms.

The Manor Farm on Arbury 'Meadow' Road.

It's a mischievous small boy hiding in the hedgerow on Arbury 'Meadow' Road, startling the young women cycling home from work at Chiver's in Histon, with a lighted pumpkin face - just a few years before he was sent off to fight in World War One.

It's buying sandwich paste at Palmer's or Bishop's supermarket in Arbury Court, coping with power cuts and playing with Klackers by the 'block' near the Kingsway Flats and Rutland Close in the 1970s. 

It's the Manor School losing a Rubik's Cube contest, people grappling with Pac-Man and Space Invaders in the Carlton, Ship, Snow Cat and Jenny Wren, everybody calling the newly arrived mobile phones 'yuppie toys', and watching the Berlin Wall fall in the 1980s.

It's the wonderful Arbury Carnival.

It's 'Arbury 1980' and Arbury Is Where We Live! - the 1981 community booklet which put the area fully on record; it's the building of Orchard Park on the site of the original settlement; it's memories of 'Yarrer's' and 'Stopsiz'.

It's the schools which took part in the 'Arbury 1980' project and contributed to Arbury Is Where We Live! - Arbury, the Grove, St Laurence's and King's Hedges.

It's the Manor School/Community College, now the North Cambridge Academy.

It's the North Arbury Chapel, Arbury Court, Arbury Town Park and the Cambridge Gurdwara.

Nicholson Way as viewed from Arbury Town Park.

It's Arbury Kebab and fond recollections of the Arbury Adventure Playground.

If you like Arbury or are interested in its history, stick around.

We believe it's time Arbury had a bit more positive WWW. space.

Arbury Community Centre and Arbury Town Park in Campkin Road. The community centre opened in 1974.