Richard and Amelia Brett with their dog, Nell, at the Manor Farm, Arbury Road, 1913. The photograph was taken in the farm's 'Park' meadow - later the site of Manor School/North Cambridge Academy. The Bretts usually had family photographs taken in the 'Park'. 'Arbury', 'Arbury Field' and the 'Stable Field' (on the other side of the Manor Farm 'Drive'/Campkin Road towards Arbury Camp Farm) were cultivated, but the 'Park' was a grassed meadow - often used for grazing. Looking back at how Christmas was celebrated at the Manor Farm on Arbury Road, over one hundred years ago...  The Bretts, Richard and Amelia, lived at the Foreman's/horse keeper's house at the Manor Farm from 1886 to the early 1920s. They had eleven children and many grandchildren.  Richard and Amelia were married at St Andrew's Church, Impington, on 19/10/1880, and moved to King's Hedges a couple of years later. King's Hedges was the name of a f...

Ordnance survey map from circa 1900 - with field names and some modern landmarks penned in. Spot King's Hedges! An email from Sam: 'I read recently that the hedges on the northern side of Arbury Road are the King's Hedges. Are they?' Hi, Sam! No. The hedges on the northern side of Arbury Road are perfectly ordinary hedges. Up until the late 1970s, King's Hedges Road led north of the guided busway to a fifty eight plot called King's Hedges and is nothing to do with Arbury Road. King's Hedges Road was redirected and hugely extended in the late 1970s as part of the A14 development and lopped off the original end of Arbury Road.  It is likely that the name 'King's Hedges' came from hunting in the days of the old royal manor of Chesterton. A warren of hedges around the site of the original King's Hedges was used to trap and kill animals as prey for royal hunting sport - and these were known as the 'King's Hedges'. King's Hedges Sch...

The Arbury Carnival mapped in historical context - the event takes place just a couple of fields away from the site of the ancient human settlement that gives the district its name, in the old Arbury/Harborough Meadows. Harborough was a variation on the Arbury name, and the names were interchangeable - derived from the ancient earthwork. A newspaper article from 1839 refers to 'Arbury Meadows' and t he 'Harborough' form was used for the 1840 Chesterton Enclosures map . An 1829 newspaper advertisement reveals the presence of a property near the Cambridge/Histon Road called 'Arbury Hedges'. Note Arbury Road connects Histon Road with Milton Road. This was so until the late 1970s, when an extension of the formerly dead-end King's Hedges Road redirected it across the Arbury Meadows and lopped off the original end of Arbury Road. The Arbury area after the 1840 Enclosures, which brought into existence the Hall and Manor Farms. We have marked on the Manor Farm field...

Back to the Arbury 1930s/40s harvest... The Arbury Part Three By Gordon Cardinal The carts used were the two wheeled tumbrel carts. The sheaves would be pitched onto the cart with a long handled pitching fork as the cart moved from one 'stook' to the next. Whoever was leading the horse had to call to the man on the cart 'HOLD TIGHT!' as the cart began to move to the next stook - so the cry of 'HOLD TIGHT!' could be heard all around the Arbury fields. After carting the corn, some fields would be gleaned with a spring tied horse rake and gathered up for the farm chickens. Gleanings were the ears of corn not picked up by the binder. If you didn't want anyone to glean your field, two sheaves of corn were left standing in the field.  That was the sign for 'No Gleaning'. Some of the Manor Farm corn was stacked in a field along Arbury Road, but most of the small holdings stacked their corn in the Rick Yard. All the stacks were built square. One man would be...

Glorious colour photograph of Arbury Road in 1955, showing the entrance to the Manor Farm, with Numbers 1 and 2 Manor Farm Cottages, part of the Manor Orchard, and, in the distance, Mr Ernest Sale's Manor Nurseries. Mr Sale lived at No 1, Manor Farm Cottages. In February 1955, work was underway on the original South Arbury, previously Hall Farm, with Stage One planned to include about 240 houses, flats and bungalows, two churches, a cinema, a pub and a shopping centre. The new primary school (Arbury) was underway.  In the end, South Arbury never got the cinema, but did get two pubs - the Carlton and the Snowcat. The Council was already considering the land north of Arbury Road (Manor Farm) for a northern counterpart estate. This would become North Arbury, with work beginning around 1958 on the Manor Schools (boys' and girls') - which opened in 1959. We have marked the photograph with items of interest, and also included our 1900 map for orientation - the red dot marks the ...

Back to the Cambridge Weekly News , 1987, to discover more of the story of an ordinary Arbury farming family from the 1880s to the 1920s. The 20th Century has begun, and Richard and Amelia Brett are concerned for their children in a rapidly changing world. The old order changes tremendously at the Manor Farm, as it is sold to Cambridgeshire County Council. But nobody can predict just how much the world is going to change, and 1918 finds the Brett family mourning a son lost in the trenches... The wedding of Louisa Brett to Walter Ashman on 12 September, 1908 (see Part 2), was a grand occasion. In 1986, their daughter, Mrs Muriel Wiles, told me: 'They looked as if they owned the Earth in the photograph! But they didn't. Grandad was a very hard worker and kept the family in as much comfort as he could.' This week's instalment. Click on the image for a readable view and download if wanted to keep. Cambridge Daily News, 1919: memoriam notice for Alfred Brett. Sales particula...

Inspired by the 1981 book, Arbury Is Where We Live! Andy Brett set out to research his Arbury family history. Andy's great grandfather, Henry Brett, was born at King's Hedges in 1886, north of what is now the guided busway (the modern and inappropriately named "King's Hedges" has an Arbury history and is not actually in King's Hedges), the same year his family moved to the Manor Farm on Arbury Road. 'I wasn't aware of the exact year when I wrote the articles,' says Andy. 'So the new information needs to be inserted in places against the information I had at the time. But the vast majority of the information is unchanged. The Brett family came from Histon and Impington. They lived at King's Hedges for a few years. It was a small farm of 58 acres. Then they moved to the Arbury Manor Farm, which was 245 acres. I have also since discovered that Richard Brett, my great-great grandfather, was definitely, not 'probably', horse keeper at t...

Miss Alice Brett of the Manor Farm, Arbury Meadow Road, circa 1913. There were smiles in one old Arbury family when Campkin Road, the first road in North Arbury, based on the route of the Manor Farm 'Drive', was named after Algernon Sidney Campkin, local businessman, magistrate, councillor, and one-time mayor. Why was that? Well, let's take a trip back to old Arbury... Miss Alice Brett, always known as Maud by her family and fiends, was a lively, kindly and fun young woman - she is remembered to this day for her kindness and good humour, and for being what one family member described as: 'The ideal sister, wife, mother and friend'. Being lively had its disadvantages when you lived out on the Arbury Meadow Road in the early 20th Century, and Alice, a daughter of Richard and Amelia Brett of the Manor Farm, suffered one night simply because of a missing bike lamp, her determination to enjoy some of the fun Cambridge activities of the time, the lack of buses, and the di...

  Arbury past... Taking you back to the days before North Arbury Estate , here's a view of North Cambridge Academy, Campkin Road and Arbury Town Park long before they existed. Find out what was there then - and what's there now. Following the Manor Farm 'Drive' to the left would bring you to Arbury Road, to the right to the future site of the Grove School. The fields at Manor Farm had names - 'Arbury', 'Arbury Field', 'Boys' Pit', etc. The Manor School/North Cambridge Academy site is part of the old 'Park' meadow. The circular shape of the old farmhouse garden was preserved in the Manor School's boundary fence, and two old garden trees, planted by Colonel Charles Bennett, a former County Land Agent and tenant of the house, remain. Copies of most of the prints featured on this blog are available to buy at the Cambridgeshire Collection, Cambridge Central Library. Many other prints and resources are also available there.

The highly distinctive 'Arbury Is Where We Live!' book cover - etched on many people's memories across Arbury. Back down the time tunnel we go, back, back, to 1981: The Rubik's Cube was Toy of the Year for the second year running, the illegal CB radio craze went OTT - and legalisation came in November, Charles and Diana married, riots raged in some inner city areas in England, and Arbury Is Where We Live! was published. This book was the result of a project involving all the Arbury primary schools - Arbury, St Laurence's, the Grove and King's Hedges. The project was called Arbury 1980 - and was a study of the area's history - going back to the Iron Age. The children wrote interesting prose about - and accounts of - Iron Age and Roman times, life at the old Manor and Hall Farms, the building of the estate and the establishment of the Arbury Community Centre and Arbury Adventure Playground, and finally about their lives in the Arbury of 1980. Older people ca...