Old Arbury: Visual - Aerial View of Manor Farm In The 1950s And The Same Area In Recent Years. Spot The Farmhouse Garden Boundary!

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 above and spot the boundary! 'Easy peasy!' as we used to say. If not, just use my little yellow arrow!

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A Tribute To Debbie - Much Loved Arbury Archivist

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Manor School Memories Part 1

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Manor School Memories - Part 2

Lads from the Manor Boys' School in 1960. D. Claton, M. Farrow, R. Mitchell, C. Peck, I. Skeels, R. Potter and G. Paine are present. Do any readers remember who is who? School's back in - Manor School/Community College on Arbury Road that is (now North Cambridge Academy). Here is the second part of our series on Manor Memories - Part 1 is here . Pupils' foreign holiday, 1960: the first Manor girls to go on a joint foreign holiday with Manor boys: G. Anderson, J. Barnes, C. Blackwell, H. Brown, S. Budd, L. Carter, A. Clarke, L. Doggett, C. Doughty, P. Drake, S. Hardy, E. Harradine, B. Kaspar, D. Miller, J. Parker, L. Phillips, J. Reeves, J. Spencer, J. Symonds, with headmistress Mrs Firman. Note the Manor Schools' caretaker's house can be seen in the background, and the trees of the old Manor Farm orchard. October 1960, and here is a view of the Manor Boys' and Girls' schools from the car park at the Snow Cat public house (now the Cambridge Gurdwara). A view

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Ask Arbury: The Roman Villa in Arbury

E-mail to Arbury Cambridge blog: Was a Roman villa found at King's Hedges? I recently saw an outside display in North Arbury/King's Hedges Ward called 'The Roman Landscape in King's Hedges' which claims there was one. And is King's Hedges Road Roman? We've seen that display. Electoral wards are not historic areas and local historians really do need to be mindful of that fact. The answer to your questions regarding the Roman villa and King's Hedges Road is no. The Roman villa was found on the site of King's Hedges School, which is not part of the historic King's Hedges acres. Historically, King's Hedges was simply a named property, a farm, of fifty eight acres, and is now north of the guided busway. It was never a district. King's Hedges School is dearly loved by many of us and we treasure it, but those in the know accept it's not actually in any historically meaningful King's Hedges district, and the site it was built on ha

Things Called Arbury In Cambridge...

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Arbury Archaeology and History: Part 1

Imagine an iron age settlement. It is surrounded by a circular earthwork. People live here. There are houses, and pens for animals within the enclosure. Until recent years, it was not believed to be a fort. The settlement is larger than some, but believed to be very much the equivalent of what we now call a village - the earthwork simply to defend it from wolves and animal thieves. The earthwork is filled with water, and reeds and rushes grow there. Despite the naming of the Arbury earthwork as 'Ring Fort Road' in the Arbury Camp Farm Arbury/Orchard Park development, the original height of the earthwork and its enclosed area were not believed to indicate that Arbury was a fort (compare to Wandlebury), and the findings of archaeologists from Cambridge and London from the early 1960s to 1970 discounted the notion. Comment from Arbury Camp, Cambridge, A Preliminary Report on Excavations - by John Alexander and David Trump, 1970: The excavations therefore tend to confirm earlier s

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