Richard and Amelia Brett with their dog, Nell, in the Park Meadow at Manor Farm - later the site of Manor School/North Cambridge Academy. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, it was common for housewives to prepare dough for bread at home and then take it to the local baker to be baked. This was exactly what Mrs Amelia Brett of the Manor Farm on Arbury 'Meadow' Road, did. The dough would be wrapped in a sheet and placed in a pram to be taken to Chesterton village. The task of transporting the dough was entrusted to one or two of her eleven children. One hot summer's day, in the early 1890s, Amelia entrusted her daughters Elizabeth and Louisa with the task. They had never done it before - and so were rather pleased. But not for long. The large amount of dough in the pram kept causing it to tip from side to side, and as the girls pushed the sheet-wrapped bundle back into the carriage, something very odd began to happen. It began to swell. The sheet began to fill and overflow th...
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...