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...
Mrs Hinchcliffe's Memories of Old Arbury, Chesterton and Vicarage Terrace Part 10: The Monkey Walk, Bilious Attacks, 'The Beaky' of Gwydir Street, The Charleston and High in the Sky over Arbury...
Mrs Grace Hinchcliffe (1910-1998) was Andy's grandmother and shared many memories for the Arbury Archive in the 1980s. This is the tenth part of her recollections, spanning the mid-1920s to mid-1930s. The photograph above shows her, the young Grace Brett, in 1928. Mrs Hinchcliffe remembered a Sunday afternoon ritual much enjoyed by local youngsters in the 1920s: 'The Monkey Walk! On nice Sunday afternoons, in the spring or summer, we'd put on our best dresses or suits and walk round and round Sidney Street, Petty Cury, Market Hill and Market Street - girls in one direction, boys in the other. We'd go in twos or threes and it was all very innocent and fun. We weren't really hoping to find our Mr or Miss Right - we were just being young peacocks!' Mrs Hinchcliffe's cousin, Mrs Muriel Wiles, described a similar ritual at the bandstand on Christ's Pieces [ here ]. Back to Mrs Hinchcliffe's recollections: 'It was exciting being young. There were lots ...