Arbury Snippets 8: The Jackdaw Visitor at the Arbury Adventure Playground, the Arbury Carnival. King's Hedges School Memories, A Brain Teasing Map and a Question...

THIS IS THE GREATEST SHOW! The 2025 Arbury Carnival has a circus theme and will take place at Arbury Town Park, Campkin Road, on 14 June.

For this spring edition of Arbury Snippets, we focus on the approaching Arbury Carnival, the return of our Arbury Guru, a winged 1970s visitor at the Arbury Adventure Playground, an early 1980s visit to King's Hedges School, and insights into local life from other long ago Arbury children. We also answer a question and feature a little brain teaser...

Lovely account of a feathered visitor to the Arbury Adventure Playground on the Nun's Way recreation ground from August 1974 .

The Arbury Adventure Playground, which opened in 1973 on the Nuns Way Recreation Ground, was a much appreciated feature of local life for many years. Schoolboy Nicky Wright gave his views on the playground in 1980 for the 'Arbury 1980' project of the district's schools - Arbury, King's Hedges, St Laurence's and the Grove:

I like it because you can play 'Tig' on the towers and have a game of pool or go on the mattresses and have fights on them. Or you can stroke the rabbits or make dens. I like the rabbits and chickens and the goat and ducks. I like it because I feed them with my brother. I have a den and the roof of it is carpets and I have foam cushions in my den and I play with Marcus and Sid and Mark and Neil and Andy. There are ropes to swing on and there is a big boat to go and play on it. There is a sandpit and climbing frame in the hut and you can go on it and they are going to build another tower on the top of it. On Tuesday night we can go over the Youth Club and to get in is only 10p.

ARBURY CARNIVAL 2025

Spring has sprung, and our Arbury Carnival Whip Round has been at full tilt. Phones and computer keyboards have been red hot as we gathered up some financial support for this brilliant community event. 

We're part of quite a collective of Arbury and ex-Arbury folk and we have to say a great big THANK YOU to all those who have answered our call so far. You're all brilliant.

Anybody who would like to donate to this wonderful event, for the community and by the community since 1977, will find the Go Fund Me page HERE.

The mythical kracken makes its way to Arbury Town Park for the 2023 Carnival. The Arbury Carnival links our modern community to the oldest known human habitations in the area.

The Arbury name links back to something even more ancient than Chesterton, what was once believed to have been the equivalent of an Iron Age village but is now believed to have been at Iron Age fort, at Orchard Park (formerly Arbury Park and, before that, Arbury Camp Farm) and with all the ancient remains found across the old Arbury Meadows, Furlongs and Corner, including a Roman villa, it's wonderful that the Carnival links our modern, vibrant 21st Century community to the oldest known human habitations in the area.

Life in the historic Arbury district is over two thousand years ago, it's today, it's the future, it's wonderful!

          

One of the local history displays at Arbury Court.

Until 1977, Arbury Camp Farm was on the original Arbury Road, a road theorised to be based on the alignment of an ancient track linking Arbury Camp to the river in what is now Chesterton. The new "King's Hedges Road" across the Arbury Meadows, lopping off the original Arbury Road at the Histon/Cambridge Road junction, is a late 1970s creation, dating back to the building of the local stretch of the A14.

Memories of early Arbury Carnivals from the 2017 exhibition, celebrating forty years of this wonderful community event.

HISTORIC ARBURY BRAIN TEASER!

Our brain teaser is here! The Arbury district in 1904, with the earlier positions of the Arbury/ Harborough Meadows, Furlongs, etc, marked on. Harborough was a variation on the Arbury name and the two were interchangeable. The Arbury form appears on the maps we have seen, apart from the 1840 Chesterton Enclosures map. 'Arbury' was also favoured by local newspapers. 

The Manor Farm, which contained two large fields north of Arbury Road called 'Arbury' and 'Arbury Field' was formed in the years following the 1840 Chesterton Enclosures. See map below. 

Now for our brain teaser: looking at the map above and taking Arbury Road, Arbury Town Park and the Guided Busway site as your guide, can you spot the approximate sites of Arbury, St Laurence's, the Grove and King's Hedges schools? This may be trickier than you think - remember King's Hedges School is not in the historic King's Hedges acres! 

We won't provide the answers but, using our orientation points, you should be able to find them if you are interested. We will, of course be covering the subject again in future articles!

The Manor Farm was formed in the years following the 1840 Chesterton Enclosures. The farm's field names are featured on the map above. Use Arbury Road, Arbury Court, the site of Arbury/Orchard Park, Arbury Town Park and the Guided Busway site for orientation.

The Arbury Carnival does not organise itself of course, and every year we give thanks to the Committee which works very hard for us to make it reality.

Many thanks this year to Stephen Doel, Chair of the Arbury Carnival Committee, who has been in touch and has reminded us that 2027 will mark the Carnival's 50th anniversary - and to Jack, the Publicity Officer, who has also been in touch - and to everybody else involved. Thanks so much - you are all brilliant! 

Leading the Arbury Carnival parade in 2019.

The Return of Our Arbury Guru...

Andy, our 'Arbury Guru' is now writing again, completing the tenth part of his grandmother's recollections from the original Arbury Archive (which include her flying through the air above Arbury with the greatest of unease in the 1920s). This is still an incredibly difficult time for him, and Debbie's loss is felt by all of us. We hugely appreciate the effort he is putting in for the Arbury Blog.

Andy writes:

Thank you very much for all the kind messages and offers of help. This is a season of renewal and I know Debs would want me to go on. I'm sitting at the computer now, with a large photograph of her smiling at me from the corner cabinet! I often talk to that photograph. It's a funny thing: the photograph was taken outside Boots in Bury St Edmunds. It's hardly a pretty location and I have lots of wonderful photos of Debs taken in all sorts of lovely places on our holidays, but that particular photo somehow captures the quintessential Debbie for me - her humour, her kindness, her love. I'm very glad I took the photo - though it only happened because we were larking about with the camera while having a rest at a bus stop!

Thanks to the Arbury Archivists and all other family, friends and well-wishers for their tremendous kindness to me. There might be a lot wrong with the world but there is also a lot right with it. 

WE ARBURY ARCHIVISTS SAY... WELCOME BACK, ANDY!

A VISIT TO 1980S ARBURY...

Back to Arbury is where we live! for some more quotes from children during the 'Arbury 1980' project. Alison said:

I live at 10 Ashcroft Court, Arbury, Cambridge. I like Cambridge and I like it all over except for one thing. I hate to go to town, for one reason, that you get pushed about.

Good point. In our modern day, there's a lot to be said for online shopping when it comes to the City Centre, we thinks! Hard to imagine online shopping in 1980...

Jennie Thulborn wrote about Mr White, the headmaster of King's Hedges School:

Mr White is the headmaster of King's Hedges School. He is a very nice person and he wears glasses. He nearly always smiles and I like him very much. I like Miss Quigley best and Mr White the second best. When we go into the hall he nearly always has a blue box standing next to him. Most of the time he wears a grey suit and a white shirt and brown tie.

Louise Carpenter also liked Miss Quigley:

Miss Quigley is a teacher in our school. As well as just teaching us to read and write she teaches music to us. Miss Quigley has got dark brown hair and hazel eyes and she has a middle sized mouth. She is very pretty and very nice indeed. Her nose is quite small. Her character is quite calm but some of the other teachers are not. I think Miss Quigley looks like a ballerina. She is very kind to all of us.

Can you imagine being a child in Carlton Way in South Arbury in 1980?

An anonymous child gave insights into his life:

I live in a terraced house which is twenty-five years old at 46 Carlton Way, Cambridge. We keep the biscuits and all the teapots in the kitchen cupboard. I put some toy sharks in my Mummy's cup of tea and when she picked it up the sharks opened their mouths and closed them. Mummy nearly fainted but Daddy laughed. There is a bird's nest inside my loft. The bird chewed the inside of my scalectrix.

'Scalectrix'? If you've never heard of it, try Googling or Duck-Duck-Going it!

We had an e-mail enquiry from Sonia:

Please can we have more about the Grove and King's Hedges schools? They are part of the historic Arbury area too.

Thanks for writing, Sonia, and yes, you can. They have always been part of our area focus, already feature in our Arbury is where we live! coverage, and we have lots more fascinating material to share. So much to write! We've featured some of our material here. There will be lots more about the Grove, Arbury, King's Hedges and St Laurence's schools as we continue. Lots more about the Manor/North Cambridge Academy too!

Pupils at the Grove School in 1982, with their chestnut tree - a longstanding resident on the school's site from the days of the old Manor Farm. An attempt was made to preserve a similar tree in the farm's old Park Meadow when it became the site of the Manor Girls and Boys' Schools (now North Cambridge Academy), but sadly it died.

From 'Arbury is where we live!' - 1981: Young Nicky Watts of King's Hedges School presented some reasons why ARBURY RULES, including the Roman villa discovered in the old Arbury fields - now under his school, Stop Shops for buying sweets, and boxes at the back of Bishops Supermarket in Arbury Court. In the years before the World Wide Web and home computer games, cardboard boxes could present some pretty serious fun. Andy made a Tardis out of one. It once transported him from Cunningham Close to the planetary outer limits of the Arbury Adventure Playground on the Nuns Way playing field. Or so he says.

Happy Spring Time - and we'll be back soon!