Old And New Arbury Meet - Manor Farm, Alex Wood Road and Arbury Court...

Numbers 1 and 2 Manor Farm Cottages stood in the middle of what is now Campkin Road. The back gardens ran across what is now Arbury Town Park.

When they were demolished at the start of the 1960s, as work was beginning on North Arbury, one of the ex-occupants, who had many fond memories of life there, took his camera to record the cottages' demise.

This striking photograph shows the cottages from the back as demolition took place. No 2 is almost no more, and No 1, for years the home of Mr Ernest Sale, who began and ran the Manor Nurseries further up Arbury Road towards Histon Road for decades, will soon follow suit. If you look at the bottom left hand corner of the print, you can see across Arbury Road and glimpse Alex Wood Road and Arbury Court.

The original part of Arbury Court was then complete - but it was then in Alex Wood Road, which terminated at Arbury Road, and the supermarket and library buildings had yet to arrive.

A stray thought, which sometimes crosses our minds, is how many vehicles have now passed over the site of the farm cottages? It's an amazing transition from the quite pace of life in the cottages to tarmac and motor engines.

These two views are basically the same, but in different years - 1955 and 1961. We have marked on items of interest regarding (then) current and future locations.

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.

Comments

FlexMay 8, 2022 at 7:01 PM
Thanks for your efforts. The blog's a real change from a lot of the Hooray Henry stuff we get doled out in Cambridge. There is a lot of back slapping and council agendas and stuck-up people who don't know what they're on about. This is down to earth. I'd like to do something similar on Coleridge. I have been interested in local history for a long time. Is there any advice you can offer?
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Arbury EstateMay 8, 2022 at 7:05 PM
Hey, Flex - thanks for the compliments! If you'd like to email us at arburyestate@btinternet.com we can exchange some ideas and advice. We're not experts on being online, but we do have local history experience going back to 1981 and we'll help in any way we can.
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AnonymousMay 20, 2022 at 5:35 PM
I'm really sorry but nothing is going to make the Arbury or King's Hedges or North Cambridge or whatever the council rulers like to call it interesting. It's a depressing dump and always has been. You don't need to be a hooray Henry to work that out. Cambridge is hugely overrated anyway. The gorgeous old medieval shops they tore down in Magdalene Street to build a WALL and the nightmare that is Petty Cury. Consider the buildings there before. Cambridge is a dive which only has appeal for the unfortunate who are stuck here, plus the chattering and upper classes.
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