So, having missed out on the archaeological digs at Arbury Camp, we're busy digging up artefacts from the Arbury Estate and the three Arbury farms of yore  - Arbury Camp, Hall, and Manor. For our new selection, we begin with the religious text above, which used to hang in Mrs Amelia Brett's bedroom at the Manor Farm on Arbury 'Meadow' Road. The text was apparently obtained from a seed catalogue, about 120 years ago and framed between glass and board with a paper tape called 'passe partout'. If you applied water to this, it stuck like crazy, and came in a range of colours and finishes to give an attractive framed effect in the days before easily affordable mass-produced frames. Amelia's place of religious worship was the Wesley Chapel, in High Street, Chesterton, and she was also a member of the Mothers' Union at the village's St Andrew's Church, where she was laid to rest in 1924. We have several pages of complete transcripts of conversations of ...

Over to South Arbury to the Arbury Court Library for a brief hymn of praise. The Library was officially opened by the Mayor of Cambridge on 28 January 1966. The building has a lovely cosy feel for browsing and study. A reassuring constant in a changing world, as children we took out Magic Roundabout books , and we still use 'our' library today. And about those Magic Roundabout books: Eric Thompson narrated the English version of the show and created his own characters to go with the wonderful French visuals of Serge Danot. A legend was created. Boing! Zebedee arrived. Mr Thompson wrote a series of books based on the series and his characterisations - and they contain stories with the same child/adult crossover humour appeal of the TV series. If you liked the 1960s/70s series and you haven't read these books, they have since been republished and turn up on eBay. A treat awaits. The pic below is the cover from the early 1970s edition of the first volume, eagerly sought for ...