The North Arbury Flood of 1970, The Ship Pub Provides Liquid Refreshment in 1974 and Hairdressing at the North Arbury Post Office in 1981...

Photo captioned 'Flooding at North Arbury, 1970'. The children are having fun!

Well, here's North Arbury in flood in 1970! We'll have more on this soon. Note the dear old Jenny Wren on the left - and we've got more on that too! Why 'Jenny Wren'? We'll have the details.

South Arbury had the Carlton and the Snowcat public houses, which opened within a couple of weeks of each other in 1959, but for years North Arbury had only the Jenny. Until 1974 - in May the Cambridge Evening News reported:

Residents of the North Arbury estate did not need a heat wave to remind them of their need for another pub and the opening of The Ship will meet with eager response. Campaigners for real ale will be pleased to find that Wells of Bedford are making this their fourth Cambridge pub, providing beer connoisseurs with their prize-winning bitter as well as a wide range of other beers, wines and spirits in spacious new premises...

The opening of the Ship in Northfield Avenue in 1974. Northfield Avenue was named after the North Arbury barley field in the old Arbury/Harborough Meadows in which a Roman villa and other finds were discovered in the 1960s. The council, rather oddly, named this area of North Arbury 'King's Hedges' after the 58 acre farm north of the guided busway. The name is believed to be derived from a medieval hedged hunting warren in which the King watched his tenants chasing and killing local wildlife as 'sport' in the days of the old Royal Manor of Chesterton. In the 1800s, men fought in organised matches at King's Hedges before huge crowds of town and gown spectators. In the late 1970s, there was a major redirection of the formerly dead-end King's Hedges Road across the Arbury Meadows, which lopped off the Histon/Cambridge Road end of Arbury Road. The King's Hedges electoral ward (formerly part of Arbury Ward) now covers a large area, including North Arbury and parts of East Chesterton, but is not actually an area in any historical sense.

Details of the Arbury/Harborough Meadows, North Arbury/Harborough Furlong, etc, north of Arbury Road superimposed on our 1900 map. Harborough? This was a variation on the Arbury name, and the two were used interchangeably. Both were derived from the prehistoric earthwork at Arbury Camp, now Orchard Park (formerly Arbury Park and Arbury Camp Farm). The Manor Farm was established in the years following the 1840 Chesterton Enclosures. Spot the Arbury Court and guided busway sites, and the REAL King's Hedges - the farm north of the busway. Also, the original courses of the King's Hedges and Arbury Roads.

Lots more to come on the pubs of the North, but let's take a moment to reflect... back in those days, when less than 50% of UK homes had a landline phone, mobiles did not exist, and the World Wide Web was way ahead in time (invented in 1989, implemented in the early 1990s), pubs were very much the hub of the community.

We miss those days!

Arbury Kebab - a popular neighbour of the Ship in more recent years! In 1974, if you missed closing at Turner's Chip Shop in Arbury Court, you stood no chance of a hot food takeaway on the Arbury Estate.

VOICE of Arbury, 1981, contained advertising from the North Arbury Post Office and Spar - which was also a hairdressers. We don't recall that. Arbury Court, of course, had Court House - so North and South Arbury were well served by crimpers. Does anybody recall the hairdressers at the North Arbury PO?

A page from the 1981 book 'Arbury Is Where We Live!' - showing the shopping parade in North Arbury.

UPDATED 20/6/2024

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AnonymousOctober 19, 2022 at 3:40 PM
I remember in the 80's the chip van parking outside the Jenny Wren.
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