Coming Soon - Arbury Is Where We Live!

The two large trees seen here on Campkin Road (opposite Arbury Town Park) were planted in the Manor Farmhouse garden circa the 1930s. There were three of them until recent times. The Manor Farm covered 245 acres of North Arbury. One of the farm fields were called 'Arbury' and another 'Arbury Field' - which may account for the fact that Arbury Road was known by locals back then as 'Arbury Meadow Road'.

As 2021 marks the 40th anniversary of the Arbury Is Where We Live! book - which followed the highly successful Arbury 1980 schools' project, we thought it would be good to revisit the book on the blog - and will be featuring the whole publication during the coming weeks in the run-up to Christmas.

The Arbury 1980 project was participated in by all the Arbury primary schools - including Arbury, The Grove, and King's Hedges - and culminated in an exhibition of pupils' work at the Manor School on Arbury Road.

The idea behind the project was to put the Arbury Estate properly on the map and encourage a sense of community - already quite vibrant with the Voice of Arbury newsletter, the Arbury Carnival, Arbury Community Centre, and the Arbury Adventure Playground.

Arbury Is Where We Live! took us from the beginnings of Arbury history at Arbury Camp in ancient times - and the arrival of the Romans, to the Arbury Community Centre and Arbury Town Park in Campkin Road and the Arbury Adventure Playground in Wagstaff Close; the book whirled us through around two thousand years of history as local children wrote fascinating and imaginative prose about the ancient times, life at the Manor and Hall Farms, and in (then) modern day Arbury.

Local people visited the schools and spoke to the children, sharing their memories of the early years of Arbury Estate and the days of the old farms in oral history sessions, transcribed by local teachers for posterity.

One of the main creative forces behind Arbury Is Where We Live! was the late Sallie Purkis - a wonderful person - who believed in Arbury as a location - and the importance of recording its history.

She was very encouraging of my own work on the subject and very informative. I remember her fondly and with gratitude.

So, watch this space...

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What Did The Romans Ever Do for Arbury? Jim Smith

Our trusty old Arbury map showing location details before the Manor Farm was established. The red line, inserted by Jim Smith, indicates the course of the Roman road - Akeman Street or the Mere Way. The land north of Arbury Road was the Arbury or Harborough Meadows, Arbury/Harborough furlongs and Arbury Camp, King's Hedges was in its original position, north of the railway (now guided busway) and Arbury Road ran from the Ely/Milton Road to the Histon/Cambridge Road - as it did until the late 1970s. Introduction - by the Arbury Archivists Jim Smith is a local history researcher and a good friend of the Arbury Cambridge Blog. He has been researching Roman finds in the historic Arbury area and has written this article for us. We are most grateful! He follows the adventures of those who scraped away centuries of soil to reveal ancient findings beneath. Of course, as always, we deal with historic Arbury here, not council planners' estates or electoral wards, which are both prone to

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 Down Your Street 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. 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 contributed to t

Exploring The REAL King's Hedges...

The Cambridge and St Ives Branch railway line is now the Guided Busway. Where was King's Hedges historically? How did the name come about? Why is the majority of King's Hedges Road no more historic than late 1970s - and nothing to do with the course of the original road? What have council planners of the 1960s and 1970s and the needs of motorists got to do with the King's Hedges presence in the historic Arbury district? All will be revealed... We're going to leave Arbury briefly and go to King's Hedges. No, not King's Hedges Ward - that area is, in reality, one of the most Arbury of Arbury areas in Cambridge historically, but the REAL King's Hedges. North of the Guided Busway. You see, the land north of Arbury Road is the site of the Arbury Camp, the Arbury/Harborough (a variation on the Arbury name) Meadows and the Arbury fields of Manor Farm. It has absolutely nothing to do with King's Hedges at all. And King's Hedges was never a district. Land no

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