So, this is Campkin Road, with the Arbury Community Centre, Arbury Town Park, Grove School and part of the North Cambridge Academy. I have marked in the field names from Manor Farm days. The old farm 'Drive', of course, became Campkin Road. The yellow star marks the site of the Manor Farmhouse. This was, as you can see below, a very large house - and was often referred to by locals as the 'manor house'.  After the farm was bought by Cambridgeshire County Council in 1909, the house was let to the Medlow family, and, after they left, became the residence of two County Land Agents in succession. There were also four semi-detached cottages at the farm, plus the foreman/horse keeper's house. A detached cottage was added in the 1920s. As mentioned before on this blog, the boundary of the farmhouse garden has been 'immortalised' in the old Manor School/North Cambridge Academy boundary, which was erected around it.  Compare the 1950s photograph below with the one ab...

Question from Mos: Hello! I like your site. I live in Campkin Road and I'm interested in the history of the estate of The Arbury. Please can you tell where the Arbury Adventure Playground was? I have never heard of anything called that. I thank you. Hello, Mos! Thanks for getting in touch. The Arbury Adventure Playground was in the big field out beyond Nun's Way. Arbury residents campaigned to get the field, and the City Council of the time promised facilities for it, but none were forthcoming. So, residents got together and collected for the playground. A real Arbury community effort! The City Council then provided some funding for staffing, etc. I've done my best to indicate the spot on the aerial view above - I may be a few feet out as aerial views can confuse me a bit! I've included pics of the playground through the years below, and also Mrs Lark's account of campaigning for the field and other facilities for Arbury. Mrs Lark and other residents on Arbury campa...

The original dead-end route of King's Hedges Road can be seen on this aerial view. It ended at the farm - see 1900 map below. I have blacked out the expanded road so you can clearly see where it begins. Frankly, the rise of King's Hedges Road from a dead-end farm track leading north of the guided busway to a fifty eight acre farm called King's Hedges, and on to the modern day major road looping around the prehistoric Arbury Camp and lopping off the end of the original Arbury Road, is amazing!  King's Hedges was never a district.  The motor car has led it to stardom. While King's Hedges Road was a dead end farm track leading to a named property until the late 1970s, Arbury Road was a public highway. There is conjecture that Arbury Road follows the alignment of a pre-Roman track, leading from Arbury Camp to the river in what is now Chesterton. The fact that Arbury Camp is now believed to have been an iron age fort, not the era's equivalent of a village, lends cred...

Featuring short anecdotes of life in North and South Arbury. When he was a child in the 1890s, my great grandfather, at the Manor Farm on Arbury Road, believed that babies were found underneath a gooseberry bush.  Of course, being a thoroughly modern twentieth century child, I knew that wasn't true. My sister was born at my aunt's house in Rutland Close, South Arbury, in 1972. I, aged seven, was anxiously scanning the night sky from the back bedroom window at the time - waiting for The Stork to fly in over the Kingsway Flats.

The old homestead - Cunningham Close on South Arbury. This was my childhood home and it was here as a little 'un that I learned the concept of left and right. I stood on that corner and memorised the fact that we lived on the left and the other side was the right. Even now, when my poor addled old brain is required to work out right from left, I still spontaneously summon up a mental image of Cunningham Close. It might be nice to be able to write that I attended one of the Arbury primary schools, but I didn't, despite living in Cunningham Close on South Arbury. When I started school, I lived in Stretten Avenue - then considered as 'New Chesterton' by its inhabitants and, indeed, the home of the New Chesterton Window Cleaning Company - but residing in 'Castle Ward', electorally.  My mother had attended Milton Road School, as had my grandmother, and so I was sent there. When we moved to Cunningham Close, I expected to be moved to Arbury School on South Arbury or t...

The War is over...  The third part of the 1981 book, born of the Arbury 1980 project. The building of 'The Arbury' begins.... Self-build houses in Essex Close and Brimley Road... For the Christian worshippers on the Arbury Estate - from an old army hut to the Good Shepherd Church! Community spirit was strong on the original Arbury Estate. Mrs Lark, who lived in the original King's Hedges Road, was concerned at the lack of community resources and joined forces with other Arbury people to campaign. Even so, it was a struggle, with the Arbury Adventure Playground (in the field near King's Hedges Road) being funded by local residents and the Arbury Town Park in Campkin Road being reduced in size from what the City Council had originally promised. Arbury did not gain a community centre until 1974. Fun at the Arbury Adventure Playground... I remember 'Tig Off Ground' very well indeed! The Arbury Adventure Playground goat in 1979! Raising money for the Arbury Adventur...

Manor Farmhouse, Arbury Road in the early 20th Century. I've had some queries here at the blog so I will do my best to answer them. It will be a one-by-one process, so please bear with me. Here goes with the first: Jake has asked: Where exactly was the Manor Farmhouse on Campkin Road, and what's on the site now?Also, can you tell me why Arbury Ward was moved away from the original estate? This is a puzzle. Thanks for that, Jake. The Manor Farmhouse stood opposite what is now Arbury Town Park.  Up to 1977, Arbury Road ran from Milton Road to the Histon/Cambridge Road - until the building of the A14 motorway and the expansion and redirection of King's Hedges Road. Our 1900 map, featuring the locations of the Arbury/Harborough Meadows, including the furlong and corner fields. We have marked on the Guided Busway site for orientation. Arbury Meadows also covered a swathe of land to the south of Arbury Road. My grandparents often referred to Arbury Road as 'Arbury Meadow Road...

  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.

Our house in Cunningham Close, on South Arbury, was very well thought out. I've enclosed a plan, but one of the best things was the 'shed', included in the house structure, running from front to back, with doors at either end into the front and back gardens. Here, we once housed a sickly hedgehog in a cardboard box with a blanket and plenty of milk to lap. It had been hit by a bike and sadly didn't survive - but we did our best. It was a nice house - we moved in in 1971 - and settled in happily. There was a great back garden, with a few small trees at the bottom, a large 'through' lounge, an adequate kitchen/dining room, with pantry, and it was very comfortable. We didn't have central heating or anything like that, but then we didn't expect it. We settled in and life went on and... And then the lights went out!  Several times. I had my 'Look-In' put by at Arbury Court. I couldn't miss an issue because 'The Tomorrow People' were always...

  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...