The Kingsway Flats and a Rubik's Cube. What's the link? Read on! A little post to say hello, share some more Arbury history, answer some queries and apologise for our slowness in updates. Andy has been in hospital but he's out now, and working on our Grovebury Ladies and Arbury in wartime articles. Welcome back, Andy!  We're also working on our 'big hug' to Arbury School article, as it celebrates 70 years. Meanwhile, we've had quite a few queries which we've answered personally - via email - or on here - via the comments section. So, this little post will cover a bit of Rubikian "fun" (!) at the Kingsway in 1982, and a few queries we'd like to highlight. So, here we go! Anonymous asks: When did Tesco arrive in Campkin Road? I remember when there was a Stop's newsagent in both North and South Arbury, one in Campkin Road, one in Carlton Way. Ah yes, 'Stopsiz' as we pronounced it! Nice pic below of the Campkin Road shops from the A...

      The Cambridge and St Ives Branch railway line is now the Cambridgeshire 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/King's Hedges Estate (AKA North Arbury) - 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 Furlongs and the Arbury fields of Manor Farm.  It has absolutely nothing to do with...

From ' Cambridge Street Names -Their Origins And Associations' by Ronald Gray and Derek Stubbings, 2010:  The only street-name in Cambridge that has connections with prehistoric times is ARBURY Road. The name is spelled Herburg, Ertburg and similar in thirteenth-century documents, and means earthwork. It used to be thought that Arbury Camp, at the north end of the road, was a fort like the one at Wandlebury or the War Ditches at LIME KILN Hill, south of the reservoir (now destroyed) but it is today regarded as an undefended site. A low circular bank and ditch about 100 metres in diameter, it was almost certainly an iron age enclosure for keeping animals safe from wolves and robbers. (See Alison Taylor: 'Prehistoric Cambridgeshire', 1977, and Sallie Purkis, 'Arbury Is Where We Live!', EARO, The Resource Centre, Back Hill, Ely, 1981.)  The book is highly recommended for anybody interested in Cambridge history. Times change, and modern archaeological digs have ...

'John of Ely' asks: 'What's the link between Arbury Road and King Henry VIII? I heard a modern folk song recently referring to it and the old Snowcat pub?' As far as we know, King Henry VIII never had any links to the Cambridge Arbury Road, John. The song writer/s may have got mixed up with Arbury in Nuneaton - which did have history with a couple of kings of that name: Arbury Hall, like so many other great country houses, was founded in Henry II’s reign as a monastery but suffered dissolution and confiscation at the hands of Henry VIII in 1536.   -  https://arburyestate.co.uk/history/ The 'King's Hedges' thing in Arbury comes from the inappropriately named 'King's Hedges' electoral ward/estate. King's Hedges was historically north of what is now the guided busway (see map) and the most likely source of the name is a hunting warren, a warren of hedges, planted to trap and kill animals for hunting 'sport'. The Royal Manor of Cheste...

Bizarrely, in recent decades, efforts at building a sense of community in Arbury have been replaced by rejecting the name as something beyond redemption and replacing it with 'North Cambridge'. People try to sell their houses under this name, and the Manor School, named after the Manor Farm, which carried the Arbury name within its boundaries in the form of two large fields - 'Arbury' and 'Arbury Field' - has also been eradicated and replaced by the 'North Cambridge Academy'.  Much of this former farm land, which forms what is logically and historically North Arbury, was lumped into the new King's Hedges electoral ward (formed out of the northern part of the original Arbury ward) in the mid-1970s by the city council and a new County Council electoral division in 1985, although King's Hedges -  a fifty eight acre farm - was on the northern side of King's Hedges Road - and the original road simply led to it.  The land north of Arbury Road, plu...