Take a look at this map of North Cambridge from the late 1950s. We've used it to indicate all the Arbury-named locations we could find in the city and its environs, past and present. Most of the locations are north of Arbury Road in the fields by the Arbury Iron Age settlement or fort, once known as the Arbury Meadows. This area, with the fields south of Arbury Road, is historically the most Arbury area in Cambridge - and, for new readers, not King's Hedges at all, not even King's Hedges School. Importing the 'King's Hedges' name into the historic Arbury area was, apparently, the council planners' whim of the 1960s and 1970s.  Read all about the real King's Hedges here .  The Arbury name is derived from the ancient earthwork at Arbury Camp, the oldest human landmark in the area. In the Arbury Meadows/Furlongs/Corner beside it (see map at top of post) were found many iron age and Roman structures and artefacts (more were discovered last year, including a ...

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...

1960s advertisement: New Chesterton Window Cleaning, Stretten Avenue, Cambridge. Lovely e-mail from Sarah, who lives in Stretten Avenue in the Arbury electoral ward: Your site is very interesting indeed. I do know that the Arbury Estate exists outside of electoral wards, and have always seen the original estate, Carlton Way to King's Hedges Road, as the genuine article when it comes to Arbury. Of course, here in my area, we have French's Chesterton Mill and Chesterton School and it is plainly not Arbury, just as King's Hedges Ward has nothing to do with the original King's Hedges (I have enjoyed your posts on the subject) and has everything to do with Arbury - Arbury Community Centre, North Arbury Chapel and the Arbury Town Park included. As you say, the Stretten Avenue district has its own history which dates back to the 1930s. I would like to know its history a little. On this side of Cambridge, historically we have Chesterton village and its surrounds (East Chesterto...