photo: Steve Odell

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Village Index
Crow End Cottages c1918 (below)

Arrington Hill, c1920
© Cambridgeshire Collection and Cambridgeshire Libraries.

Image: c1920, village scene, looking due north, quality of the available image (digital) is rated 'fair'.
Location: About 400m north of Arrington village at Arrington Hill taken from the eastern side of the A1198 (ex A14).

Arrington Hill was originally part of Ermine Street, the major north/south Roman road. Two hundred years ago it was the Great North Road, the main stagecoach route between London and York and the most important road in England. The 'Hardwicke Arms' in Arrington was a famous coaching stop, providing both refreshments to travellers and a set of fresh horses for the coach. Later designated as the A14, the route declined in importance after the development of the A1 trunk road and this section became the rather undistinguished sounding A1198 in 1990.

The plaster-and-lathe thatched estate cottages on the left are called Crow End. According to the 1901 census, Crow End comprised eight dwellings (and 43 residents).

It may be an unqualified observation, but the modern road between Arrington village and Crow End cottages appears to be almost horizontal and built at a significantly higher level than the inclined road pictured in the photograph above. This may help to explain something that puzzled me. In a contemporary record of the Great Storm of 10 August 1843, the Rector of Wimpole (Henry R.Yorke) wrote in the Parish Registers:

"A most dreadful storm passed over this parish and caused the most serious destruction of property. It began about 4 o'clock p.m. and lasted several hours - the lightning and hail were terrific, the former like sheets of fire filled the air and ran along the ground, the latter as large as pigeon's eggs; some larger and others large angular masses of ice.... . Such was the violence of the rain and its continuance that a stream rolled down Arrington Hill four or five feet deep, washed men off their feet, and carried away 30 or 40 feet of the Park wall."

This paragraph makes more sense if Arrington Hill used to be longer, steeper, confined within banks/walls and ran down to a dip north of the Arrington Gates and the village.