How many things that are, or have been, called 'Arbury' in Cambridge and its immediate environs can you think of over the years? Most 'Arbury' things are clustered north of Arbury Road - one of the most historic Arbury areas in Cambridge, although, nonsensically, part of the "King's Hedges" electoral ward. Check out King's Hedges on the map. That's right. It's north of the guided busway/railway line and was a fifty eight acre plot. A lot of the land north of Arbury Road, and a swathe of land to the south, were known as the Arbury or Harborough Meadows, North Arbury/Harborough Furlong, etc. Harborough is a variation on the Arbury name.  We put our thinking caps on, and came up with: 1) Arbury Road: This road connected the Milton/Ely Road with the Histon/Cambridge Road until the late 1970s when a new road was built across the Arbury Meadows/Manor Farm by the iron age Arbury Camp at the time of the A14 development. The new road linked the formerly...

On at the Rendezvous - 1927! More changing times in the eleventh part of our serialisations of Arbury Archive transcripts from the 1980s. Mrs Hinchcliffe (1910-1998) was Andy's grandmother and his interviews with her are some of our favourites here. The family bond led to some very warm and natural reminisces. As this era includes the beginning of World War II, Andy had assembled various dates at the Cambridgeshire Collection concerning the Cambridge war time events to aid Mrs Hinchcliffe in presenting events in chronological order, something she was very keen to do. So, from the late 1920s to 1940, ushering in the Second World War...  'Mum and Dad moved from Milton Road to Hertford Street. Beautiful house, with a bathroom, though the toilet was outside - they rented the house, of course. The house had a garage with a flat roof that fronted Magrath Avenue, and I remember something really funny. 'There used to be... well, I suppose you might call it university police - Bull...

The Kingsway Flats and a Rubik's Cube. What's the link? Read on! A little post to say hello, share some more Arbury history, answer some queries and apologise for our slowness in updates. Andy has been in hospital but he's out now, and working on our Grovebury Ladies and Arbury in wartime articles. Welcome back, Andy!  We're also working on our 'big hug' to Arbury School article, as it celebrates 70 years. Meanwhile, we've had quite a few queries which we've answered personally - via email - or on here - via the comments section. So, this little post will cover a bit of Rubikian "fun" (!) at the Kingsway in 1982, and a few queries we'd like to highlight. So, here we go! Anonymous asks: When did Tesco arrive in Campkin Road? I remember when there was a Stop's newsagent in both North and South Arbury, one in Campkin Road, one in Carlton Way. Ah yes, 'Stopsiz' as we pronounced it! Nice pic below of the Campkin Road shops from the A...

The Rubik's Cube was Lord of the Manor in 1981. I'm adapting the 1986 song  Snooker Loopy  for the blog post title here, and Rubik's Loopy  was certainly very descriptive of the Manor, the forerunner of the North Cambridge Academy, in 1981. The Rubik's Cube was quite an amazing thing in those days. It penetrated the Iron Curtain and made its way into the Western World - and that was really something! It was in January/February 1980 that Erno Rubik demonstrated his invention at toy trade fairs in London, Paris, Nuremberg and New York. This was the original 'Buvos Kocka' - 'Magic Cube'. The first test batches of the Magic Cube had been released in its native Hungary just before Christmas 1977, and there had been a small seepage across Hungarian borders in 1978, 1979 and early 1980, including a few into the UK. But the Magic Cube existed in only very small numbers and there were nowhere near enough to break the major pop culture barrier in the UK or the re...

Two photographs: the Manor Girls' School's first lunchtime in 1960 and the Manor Farm's 'Park' Meadow with a grazing cow in the 1940s. The house in both pics is the same - the Manor Farm's foreman/horse keeper's house! Work had begun on North Arbury , but several of the old farm buildings still stood in 1960. The foreman/horse keeper's house features extensively in Andy's 1987 Cambridge Weekly News An Arbury Story of Farming Folk articles - here , and the memories of Mrs Hinchcliffe - here - and Mrs Wiles - here - recorded in the 1980s and detailing Arbury life in the early 20th Century. Copies of many 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.