Mrs Hinchcliffe's Memories of Old Arbury, Chesterton and Vicarage Terrace Part 10: The Monkey Walk, Bilious Attacks, 'The Beaky' of Gwydir Street, The Charleston and High in the Sky over Arbury...

Mrs Grace Hinchcliffe (1910-1998) was Andy's grandmother and shared many memories for the Arbury Archive in the 1980s. This is the tenth part of her recollections, spanning the mid-1920s to mid-1930s. The photograph above shows her, the young Grace Brett, in 1928.

Mrs Hinchcliffe remembered a Sunday afternoon ritual much enjoyed by local youngsters in the 1920s:

'The Monkey Walk! On nice Sunday afternoons, in the spring or summer, we'd put on our best dresses or suits and walk round and round Sidney Street, Petty Cury, Market Hill and Market Street - girls in one direction, boys in the other. We'd go in twos or threes and it was all very innocent and fun. We weren't really hoping to find our Mr or Miss Right - we were just being young peacocks!'

Mrs Hinchcliffe's cousin, Mrs Muriel Wiles, described a similar ritual at the bandstand on Christ's Pieces [here].

Back to Mrs Hinchcliffe's recollections:

'It was exciting being young. There were lots of dances to go to. When I was young, we went to the Beaconsfield Hall in Gwydir Street, we always called that "The Beaky", the Conservative Club, all round about - and then the Dorothy Ballroom opened up... it was all lovely.

'One problem was [cousin] Muriel. I used to call round [to Springfield Terrace] on the way to a dance, we'd always arrange to go together, and very often she'd answer the door and say: "Mum's having a bilious attack," and she'd beckon me into the front room and I'd hear Aunt Lou moaning and groaning in the back room. "I can't leave her," Muriel would whisper. 

'Now, Aunt Lou wasn't usually one for bilious attacks, but she often had one when Muriel was going to a dance. It made me cross, although Aunt Lou was my favourite auntie. But Muriel really was tied to her apron strings.' 

Mrs Wiles, cousin Muriel, saw things differently. She and Mrs Hinchcliffe were very close, 'more like sisters than cousins,' said Mrs Wiles in 1986, but of quite different characters, and Mrs Wiles explained: 'I know Grace and [cousin] Reg said I was tied to Mum's apron strings. They said it quite often and they both thought I should get out more. They did bring me out of myself and that was a good thing, but I wasn't a great one for dancing. I was quite happy to stay at home with Mum!'

'Cambridge Chronicle and University Journal', 1929.

Mrs Hinchcliffe attended dances, and also worked as a waitress at the Rendezvous cinema and ballroom in Magrath Avenue. She worked there during times when she was 'stood off' from Pye's, or at weekends.

'And then there was the Rendezvous. That was a lovely picture house and ballroom. Mr Richardson was the manager, a nice man. I worked there as a waitress - one of four. There were tea dances and evening dances, they had a lovely resident band and a lovely great mirror ball hanging from the ceiling which revolved and made lots of sparkly lights across the dance floor.  It was really... well, I thought it was really magical at the time. It made a lovely atmosphere. You can't beat a real band.

'We waitresses took it in turns to go upstairs and swing a big spotlight round so it shone on the people on the dance floor and, where we stopped it, the couple won a prize for their dancing. All sorts went, undergrads and townspeople and jockeys who were racing at Newmarket - they always used to tip well!

'It was at the Beaky in Gwydir Street I entered a Charleston dancing contest with Mick Kayzee [Mrs Hinchcliffe's pronunciation - possibly Casey?]. I was seventeen, I think. Might've been eighteen...

'The dance had been around for a couple of years or so by the time I'm talking about, but we were only young, and things were very exciting and new to us. They were lovely days...

'Well, it was the hardest dance I ever learnt - we practised and practised - and we won! I was shocked, because a few of us had gone in for the contest. I'd never expected to win, and I know Mick hadn't. The prize was really, really special - a turn round Cambridge in an aeroplane!

Of course, not everybody approved of the Charleston dance craze - 'Cambridge Daily News', 1927.

'Marshall's hadn't got going then and there was just a field on Newmarket Road. It was one of those open orange box planes I was going up in, with the double wings. It was early years in flying. I wasn't at all nervous - just very excited. I hadn't slept much the night before. Not many people flew in those days, certainly nobody I knew, and it was thrilling to think of.

'When I saw the plane I thought it looked a bit flimsy, but I said to myself, "Don't be silly - this is going to be marvellous!" But I had my doubts...

'Well, up I went and, what with the engine noise and the wind and everything, I was confused. I mean... well, I'd imagined being able to wave to Dad if we passed over his land at Arbury, but I couldn't see people clearly of course.

'I thought I'd be able to make out the colleges, but I couldn't place where they were. The only thing that really stood out was the gas works, with the big metal tubs and the chimney!

'Then I spotted Arbury Road and the Arbury fields, the fields all divided up into smallholdings, as we circled round the town - it was a town then. Well... the streets had just looked like a confusing maze to me. Arbury was recognisable simply because it was open land - the Hall, the Manor and the Arbury Camp Farms. I saw the big Manor Farmhouse with its chimneys and I suddenly thought: "What if the engine conks out?" and it suddenly occurred to me that, although it was lovely to be flying over the Arbury fields and I was very lucky to have won the prize, the only thing between the plane and the Arbury was fresh air and bird whistles...

'Well, I couldn't very well say, "Excuse me, I want to get off," so I tensed up and shut my eyes and didn't see anything else! I never opened my eyes again until we started descending back at Newmarket Road.

'Afterwards, Mum said, "Did you see Castle Hill? Did you see the market? Did you see the Corn Exchange? Did you see Manor Farm? Did you see our house? Did you see the colleges? Did you see Vicarage Terrace?" and on and on and on and I just said, "Well, I saw Arbury and I think I spotted St Luke's Church spire, and I certainly saw the gasworks - but I can't be sure about anything else!"

'I'd been alright going up in that plane - loved it - but I was green coming down! "That's it," I said to myself. "I'm never flying again!" And I never have!'

Young Grace Brett's flight round Cambridge in the late 1920s was something she never forgot. This is a view of the Manor Farmhouse and its surroundings. A similar - live - view proved very unnerving for young Grace with the realisation that there was nothing but 'fresh air and bird whistles' between the plane she was in and the Arbury during the flight!

At No 1, Arbury Road, Mabel Andrews's illness had continued until her death in 1926.

'Aunt May was ill for several years before she died. Sleeping Sickness was a terrible thing. I remember once being at Arbury Road visiting her and she could hardly talk. She was lying on the settee in the front room and she suddenly started calling: "Arrgh! Argh!" It was terrible - it frightened me and at the same time I was so sorry to see her like that. I think she was calling for Uncle Arthur [her brother]. 

'In the end, she couldn't stay at home any longer and was taken into Mill Road, where she passed away.'

Mabel Andrews died on 7 November, 1926, and was laid to rest in St Andrew's churchyard in Old Chesterton.

'Poor old Grandad Brett was like a lost soul. He stopped at Aunt Lou's [in Springfield Terrace] for a while. He'd lost his wife and then a daughter within a couple of years. And Uncle Alf had been killed in the War of course. It was awful. He seemed to shrink. He was never a big man, but he seemed to shrink and sort of... well... wizen up. I worried about him a lot and used to go with him over to Dad's land on the Arbury and round the old haunts there, and he'd have a chat with the old Manor Farm neighbours and the men working on the holdings.

'He loved to see how the Arbury crops were doing or the harvest or how people's pigs and livestock were doing. It always seemed to buck him up a bit and I was so glad. He spent a lot of time on Dad's land with Dad.

'After a few years he met a lady called Mrs Godfrey. Well, she was a widow and he was a widower, and they married for companionship in their old age. They lived at Landbeach and were good company for each other. But Grandad was never the same.'

In the late 1980s, Mrs Hinchcliffe's eldest daughter, Mrs Christine Badcock, moved from Verulam Way, in South Arbury, to Landbeach where she met two elderly gentlemen who recalled singing Christmas carols to Richard Brett outside his cottage, while he stood at the bedroom window during an illness, when they were children in the 1930s.

Richard died on 31 December, 1936.

'Grandad died after an old peoples' party for Old Year Out, New Year In at Landbeach,' said Mrs Hinchcliffe. 'He'd just sung To Be a Farmer's Boy, and went outside and collapsed. He was taken home but never regained consciousness.

'You know, if you love someone, it doesn't matter how old they are when they die. It's still heartbreaking for those who are left. It's a comfort to think they had a long life, but losing them is just as bad. It's different, of course, from losing somebody when they're young, somebody who hasn't had much chance to live, that's a terrible thing, but as people get older they often get wiser - well, hopefully! - they often seem to get more lovable, you can turn to them for advice and they can be supportive because they've seen a lot of life. And when they're gone... well, that's terrible too. Grandad was such a dear, lovely man - a wonderful grandfather. And the way he worked - and never complained...'

It seems very appropriate, given Richard Brett's tremendous capacity for work, which was often commented on by his grandchildren, that one of the hymns sung at his funeral at Landbeach was Now the labourer's task is o'er.

Richard Brett in the garden of his daughter Louisa's house in Springfield Terrace, 1920s.

The final part of Mrs Hinchcliffe's recollections is coming soon - the Second World War, and the building of modern Arbury.