One of the local history displays at the Arbury Court shopping centre. The origins of Arbury, of course, pre-date those of Chesterton by centuries. The display also mentions the Roman finds in the old Arbury Meadows/Manor Farm fields, including a Roman villa. More were found last year, including a plesiosaur bone - perhaps a prized curiosity of a Roman resident. The original Arbury Road connected the Milton (or Ely) Road to the Histon/Cambridge Road until the late 1970s, when the dead end King's Hedges Road, which led north of the guided busway to King's Hedges, a fifty-eight acre farm (what we term here the REAL King's Hedges), was redirected and expanded across the old Arbury/Harborough Meadows/Manor Farm and lopped off the end of Arbury Road as part of the A14 motorway development. Before Manor Farm, much of the land north of Arbury Road was known as the Arbury/Harborough Meadows, North Arbury/Harborough Furlong, West Arbury/Harborough Furlong, etc. A swathe of land sout...

From the Cambridge Citizens' Guide, 'Cambridge Evening News', January 1980. Bus routes in the city way back then. The old Cambridge and St Ives Branch railway line, which ran between North Arbury to the south, and Impington Park, the original King's Hedges plot and Rectory/Trinity Farm to the north, had been closed to passenger trains in the Beeching era of the late 1960s. Today, of course, it is the Guided Busway. It may surprise some that buses on the tracks were being mooted by local ecologists as far back as 1981... The Arbury area in 1900, with the Cambridge & St Ives Branch railway line - now the guided busway. 'Cambridge Evening News', 15/5/1981: Cambridge ecologists are planning a demonstration to prove that a bus which can run on railway lines is the solution to transport problems in 15 local villages. The aim is to borrow the prototype bus in early July, and run it from Cambridge's city centre to Huntingdon - and use British Rail's tracks b...

We've superimposed the old Arbury Meadows, Furlongs and Corner onto a 1904 map. Remember, the Manor Farm, which covered most of North Arbury (or the Council's inappropriately named 'King's Hedges Ward'), did not exist before the 1840s. Our 1900 map also features the details from the 1840 enclosures map. The names Arbury and Harborough were variations on each other and interchangeable. Whilst the 1840 enclosures map used the 'Harborough' form, an 1839 newspaper article (featured) used the 'Arbury' form. During the late 1800s, the 'Harborough' form all but disappeared. The Arbury name is derived from the Old English for 'earthwork', the earthwork surrounding the iron age settlement at Arbury Camp Farm (now Orchard Park, originally Arbury Park). The earthwork, or at least part of it, was a landscape feature for around 2000 years, and the part of the outline seen on this map is incorporated into the design of Ring Fort Road. Arbury was. f...

The Manor Boys' School nearing completion in 1959. At this point, some of the Manor Farm buildings remained. Part Five of Mrs Wiles's 1986 recollections of life in Old Arbury and Chesterton: From The Manor School in the 1970s To Christ's Pieces in the 1920s... 'I've only been to the Manor School once. It was a fete a few years back, with my friend, Mrs Royston. Well, it was a lovely day and I was telling Mrs Royston about the Manor Farm and Gran and Grandad and everything, and we were looking at that big tall block and wondering what the view was like from the top. We met one of the teachers, I think it was the headmaster, and he was lovely, we were chatting to him, just ordinary, about it all. He was very interested. He asked if we'd like to see the view from the top and we said, "Oh, yes, please!" and he got the caretaker and we went in. 'Now, wasn't that nice of him? 'It was better inside than out because there were a lot of windows and ...

1908: The Park Pasture at Manor Farm (later the site of the Manor School and North Cambridge Academy) was the scene for this happy wedding photograph, taken by Starr and Rignall Photographers of Cambridge and Ely - Thomas Walter Ashman and Louisa Brett were the happy couple. I have marked on the names of the main family members (the bride and groom are self explanatory!) - all who feature in Mrs Wiles's recollections. One of the Manor Farmhouse ('Manor House') chimneys can be seen in the background. Lydia Prevett was then in service there. She was a bridesmaid at the wedding and married Henry 'Harry' Brett in 1910.  The third part of Mrs Muriel Wiles's memories of the Arbury and Chesterton district during her youth. Mrs Wiles (1909-1987) contributed these recollections to the Arbury Archive in 1986. 'Mum and Dad met while Mum was working in Newmarket,' said Mrs Wiles. 'Dad would often cycle all the way from Newmarket to Arbury to visit Mum at Manor F...

Mrs Wiles at home in Springfield Terrace in 1986. The curtain to the left prevented draughts from the stairs door. The stairs ran up through the middle of the house. Andy remembers very well a wall over the stairs on which you could easily bang your head if you didn't remember it was there. 'I saw stars on those stairs many times!' he says. Mrs Muriel Wiles, née Ashman, is a fondly remembered family member to Andy. By the early 1980s, her family consisted entirely of cousins - first, second, third, fourth - as she'd never had children of her own. She had married late in life, and her husband had died suddenly after only three years of marriage. It must be said, that in the Brett family and its various branches, modern sociological notions of 'nuclear' and 'extended' family were totally unknown. Family was family, people related to you by blood, adoption or marriage, and this was the case well into Andy's life time.  'Extended family was close fri...

Sundays in South Arbury - minus the open shops, mobile phones, the World Wide Web, etc, etc, etc... the 1970s were rather different to today. Sundays used to be very quiet days back in the 1970s.  In South Arbury, the estate seemed to go to sleep. And, as a kid back then, I was often bored to death. The day would sometimes start with a couple of the family's adult members feeling rather... er... fragile - after a night out at the Labour Club in Romsey Town the night before. Saturday nights were always the main weekly 'night out' for the 'night outers' amongst the elders of my tribe. Over-imbibing was not usually a problem, but sometimes a head or two did throb the next day. I used to wonder why adults bothered with alcohol. Until I left school and disappeared into the nearest boozer (the Snowcat) to celebrate. Klackers weren't really as interesting as the World Wide Web - and they could be pretty hard on your knuckles. Great Nana lived in a flat in Brackley Clos...

                        Alfred Brett was a quiet, studious young man. On leaving St Andrew's School in Chesterton, he got a job as an assistant at an antiques shop in Cambridge and joined the Territorial Army. A postcard to Miss Lily Brett, Manor Farm, Arbury Road, Chesterton, Cambridge. The card came from Claude (Skinner) of the 3rd Norfolk Regiment (then in Felixstowe), a young friend of Lily:  Dear Lilly [sic] , Just a line hoping to find you and all quite safe as it leaves me at present. Tell Jimmy [?] he is a long time writing that letter. I expect Alf is alright. Give my love to all. Glad to hear that your father is better, from yours truly, Claude. Lance Corporal Alfred Brett, son of Richard and Amelia Brett of the Manor Farm, Arbury Road, 'Old Chesterton', was killed in the trenches of World War 1 not long before VE Day. The family - Richard, Amelia, and their ten remaining children - staggered under the blow, and...