Some of the Brett family in the Park Meadow at the Manor Farm on Arbury Road, 12 September, 1908. This became the site of the Manor School. Mrs Grace Hinchcliffe's grandparents, Richard and Amelia Brett, lived at the Manor Farm on Arbury Road and her father, Henry, farmed a five acre smallholding there all his life. Mrs Hinchcliffe was interviewed several times for the Arbury Archive. She had great wit, warmth and a wonderful memory and provided us with a wealth of information about Arbury in the days of the old farms. She was a schoolgirl from the mid-1910s until the early 1920s. On one occasion in 1986, we asked her about Arbury Camp: She said: 'Well, I knew of it and Arbury Camp Farm, up the end of Arbury Meadow Road by Histon Road. I knew there had been archaeologists there because my Dad told me and I knew it was very old and I thought it had ancient tents. You know, it was an ancient campsite. Well, I ask you, daft, wasn't I? I asked my Dad what they made the tents ou...

The Manor Farm - Arbury Road. Most of us with an ounce of nounce about Arbury history know that the estate had a long history of 'Manors'.  The Manor School - Arbury Road. There were at least two in Arbury Road - Manor Farm and Manor School/Community College/Academy. And the Arbury land was once part of the Royal Manor of Chesterton, William The Conqueror having taken a fancy to it all. Campkin Road, the Arbury Road end, was once the Manor Farm drive. Now, there are no vestiges of the Manor link to Arbury (a bit sad as at least Hall Farm, the site of the original South Arbury, is commemorated with a road name) but that's life. Far fewer people know that Arbury Road had a third Manor. Manor Nurseries, a business started by Mr Ernest Sale of No 1, Manor Farm Cottages, after the First World War. Mr Sale had been gassed in the trenches, which permanently affected his health, and had been advised to seek outdoor work. He rented part of the Manor Farm  from the County Council and...

Back to the Cambridge Weekly News articles of January 1987 for the final part of Andy Brett's Arbury Story of Farming Folk . The early 1920s - and bad times have come with a vengeance. Mabel has sleeping sickness and Amelia has tuberculosis. Richard is still holding down multiple jobs to support the family.  The Bretts come to realise that their time at Manor Farm is at an end... The article. Please click on the image for a readable view and download if required to keep. In response to the articles, Professor Muriel Bradbrook wrote a tribute to Arthur Brett, who was a maintenance man at Girton College for many years. In 1987, his niece, Mrs Hinchcliffe, commented: 'Well fancy that! She's met all sorts of high-up people, like the Queen Mother, and yet she remembers Uncle Arthur and wrote in. That's lovely!'

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...

Please click on the image for a readable view, and download if required. Part two of the 1987 Cambridge Weekly News series, written by Andy Brett, one of our blog contributors, way back then! What was the Pumpkin Trick? Rumours mounted after an archaeological dig at Arbury Camp in the early 1900s that Arbury Road was haunted. Was it really Ancient Britons and Romans? Or did The Pumpkin Trick have anything to do with it? Here's our trusty old map of Arbury revealing some of the locations featured in this week's instalment.                                 This photograph of Henry and an Addenbrooke's nurse was taken by Ralph Lord, photographer, of Market Street, Cambridge. The nurse had inscribed it: 'To Mrs Brett, from her boy's friend.' 12 September, 1908 - the future site of the Manor School/ North Cambridge Academy, the Park Meadow at Manor Farm, was the location for Walter and Louisa's wedding photograph...

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...

Louisa Brett - part of a school group photograph taken at St Andrew's School, High Street, Chesterton, c. 1894. What was it like to be an Arbury child in the 1890s? Well, thanks to the long ago recollections of some people who were actually there, we can get an idea... Mrs Louisa Ashman, née Brett, lived in Springfield Terrace, West Chesterton (or New Chesterton), from around 1916 to her death in 1968. She was full of memories of her childhood at the Manor Farm on Arbury Meadow Road, and many of these were recorded on paper as interest in Arbury grew with the building of the original Arbury Estate in the 1950s and 1960s. Louisa's daughter, Mrs Muriel Wiles, passed much of this information on to her cousin's grandson in the 1980s and we are very lucky to have it. Louisa was the third child of Richard and Amelia Brett and born in 1884. Richard was a labourer and also the horse keeper at Manor Farm.  Louisa remembered being given a black hair ribbon to wear as a young woman, a...

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...

                        The two large trees seen here on Campkin Road (opposite Arbury Town Park) were planted in the Manor Farmhouse garden circa the 1930s. There were three of them until recent times. The Manor Farm covered much of North Arbury, with boundaries at Milton Road, Arbury Road, Arbury Camp Farm, the railway tracks, the original (dead end) King's Hedges farm track, which was a private road, and land under separate ownership. One of the farm fields was called 'Arbury' and  another 'Arbury Field'. The Manor Farm was established in the years following the 1840 Chesterton Enclosures. Before that, the land north of Arbury Road was known as the Arbury or Harborough (a variation on the Arbury name) Meadows - which probably explains why Arbury Road was known locally as Arbury Meadow Road for many years. The position of the old Arbury/Harborough Meadows, north of Arbury Road. We've marked on Arbury Court and the Guided...

The Kingsway Flats in South Arbury, built in the mid-1960s, with their hills and silver birches. The hills were a popular destination for bored children in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s - along with the 'The Hump', 'The Seats' and 'The Block'. The Arbury/Harborough Meadows, furlongs and Corner, north of Arbury Road. 'Harborough' was a variation on the Arbury name.  'Cambridge News', 1969: a Roman villa with underfloor heating (a 'hypercaust') has been discovered in the Arbury Meadows north of Arbury Road, soon to be followed by iron age finds. The villa was on the site of Northfield Avenue and King's Hedges School - which is in the city's most historic Arbury area, not King's Hedges, a small farm north of the guided busway. Arbury, circa 1900. Note Arbury Camp and the Manor Farm field names. King's Hedges was a fifty eight acre farm, north of the railway line (guided busway) and King's Hedges Road, redirected and expanded...