With the summer holidays beginning, what could you do as an Arbury child in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s? Well, the Arbury Adventure Playground, off Wagstaff Close on the Nun's Way playing field, was a bit of a wow. And you could think yourself lucky you lived in Arbury - it was the only Cambridge City housing estate to have an adventure playground - and all provided by local residents' fund raising and campaigning and council grants to keep it going! Graham Odd, of the Cambridge Evening News , popped in on 23 July, 1979: It is the start of an intensive six-week season at the Arbury Adventure Playground. Between 150 and 300 children will daily pour into the 1.25 acre enclosure off Wagstaff Close. The sound of a bell rose above the bleating of goats and the crowing of cockerels in North Arbury this morning, and a crowd of children gathered to plan their summer adventures. In itself, the idea of an adventure playground is no longer startling. They are dotted all over the country a...

We've superimposed the old Arbury Meadows, Furlongs and Corner onto a 1904 map. Remember, the Manor Farm, which covered most of North Arbury (or the Council's inappropriately named 'King's Hedges Ward'), did not exist before the 1840s. Our 1900 map also features the details from the 1840 enclosures map. The names Arbury and Harborough were variations on each other and interchangeable. Whilst the 1840 enclosures map used the 'Harborough' form, an 1839 newspaper article (featured) used the 'Arbury' form. During the late 1800s, the 'Harborough' form all but disappeared. The Arbury name is derived from the Old English for 'earthwork', the earthwork surrounding the iron age settlement at Arbury Camp Farm (now Orchard Park, originally Arbury Park). The earthwork, or at least part of it, was a landscape feature for around 2000 years, and the part of the outline seen on this map is incorporated into the design of Ring Fort Road. Arbury was. f...