Arbury Is Where We Live! Part 2

No doubt the best community-building publication in Arbury history (perhaps even in the whole of Cambridge!) Arbury Is Where We Live! - 1981.

This section of the book features transcripts of talks older residents gave to the primary school children of Arbury, The Grove, King's Hedges, and St Laurence's about Arbury past. The children took their imaginations, beyond the ancient inhabitants of Arbury Camp and the Romans, to the rural era - life at the Manor and Hall Farms. And the development of King's Hedges Road from a farm track to a hugely extended and redirected highway.

What was life like at the Manor Farm? Mr Reg Jones told children at the Grove School about his grandparents and how they lived, and about playing in rural Arbury as a child.

Miss Evelyn Samuel, a fondly remembered art teacher at the Manor School, took the story onto the 1920s, '30s and '40s - and the night incendiaries were dropped across the Manor Farm's Park Meadow - later the site of Manor School/North Cambridge Academy.

Mr Downham told the children about farming in Arbury...

... and the wonders of the mythical 'gas telly'!

The children stretched their imaginations and became trees in rural Arbury!

The photograph, bottom left, is of Numbers 1 and 2 Manor Farm Cottages, which stood at the junction of Arbury Road and what is now Campkin Road. Traffic now passes over the spot where the cottages stood.

Putting together two of the book's photographs is an interesting experience. They are both of the same location - in the 1930s and 1981. The cottages site is in the road - approximately where the car is in the photograph. The cottages' back gardens stretched across part of what is now the Arbury Town Park.

'King's Hedges Road was a dead end for all but pedestrians...' King's Hedges Road as it is today is a very modern innovation and was extended and redirected over the old Arbury/Harborough Meadows by the ancient Arbury Camp in the late 1970s - lopping off the original end of Arbury Road.

Shopping, heating, and the Second World War...

Part 3 is here.

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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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