More material from the Arbury Archive. Mrs Grace Hinchcliffe was the cousin of Mrs Muriel Wiles, whose memories have already featured in our archive series. Mrs Hinchcliffe's paternal grandparents, Richard and Amelia Brett, lived at the Manor Farm on Arbury Road. Her maternal grandparents, Andrew and Susan Prevett, in Vicarage Terrace. Mrs Hinchcliffe lived with her parents, Henry and Lydia Brett, in Milton Road. Andy had many conversations with Mrs Hinchcliffe, who was his grandmother, for the Arbury Archive in the 1980s. She was a year younger than Mrs Wiles, and although they grew up in the same era, they were very different personalities. Their contrasting attitudes and observations make for fascinating reading. As always, the emphasis here is on Arbury, but Andy has included material on Chesterton and Vicarage Terrace, which are of wider interest to Cambridge readers. 'When I was a kiddie Arbury was two farms, Hall and Manor Farm. Hall Farm was where Carlton Way is now, So...

     E-mail to Arbury Cambridge blog: Was a Roman villa found at King's Hedges? I recently saw an outside display in North Arbury/King's Hedges Ward called 'The Roman Landscape in King's Hedges' which claims there was one. And is King's Hedges Road Roman?  We've seen that display. Electoral wards are not historic areas and local historians really do need to be mindful of that fact. The answer to your questions regarding the Roman villa and King's Hedges Road is no. The Roman villa was found on the site of King's Hedges School, which is not part of the historic King's Hedges acres. Historically, King's Hedges was simply a named property, a farm, of fifty eight acres, and is now north of the guided busway. It was never a district. King's Hedges School is dearly loved by many of us and we treasure it, but those in the know accept it's not actually in any historically meaningful King's Hedges district, and the site it was built on ha...

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 ...

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...

  No doubt the best community-building publication in Arbury history (perhaps even in the whole of Cambridge!) Arbury Is Where We Live! - 1981. This section of the book features transcripts of talks older residents gave to the primary school children of Arbury, The Grove, King's Hedges, and St Laurence's about Arbury past. The children took their imaginations, beyond the ancient inhabitants of Arbury Camp and the Romans, to the rural era - life at the Manor and Hall Farms. And the development of King's Hedges Road from a farm track to a hugely extended and redirected highway. What was life like at the Manor Farm? Mr Reg Jones told children at the Grove School about his grandparents and how they lived, and about playing in rural Arbury as a child. Miss Evelyn Samuel, a fondly remembered art teacher at the Manor School, took the story onto the 1920s, '30s and '40s - and the night incendiaries were dropped across the Manor Farm's Park Meadow - later the site of Ma...