Moving to Cambridge - good areas?

[annacambridge]

Hello all,

We are relocating to Cambridge from Surrey and looking for a place to live with our 2 children and a dog. We saw houses around Huntingdon road, Gilbert Road and Milton Road. Are those good places to live? All places are close to Mayfield primary school, our school of choice for our children who are 4 and 6. Initially I was looking for other schools like Newnham croft but waiting list is too long and we want to avoid the risk of having our children in different schools, even if its temporary. Locals keep telling us that Milton Rd primary is still excellent, despite the latest ofstead...

Any information about those areas are very helpful, particularly about traffic on Gilbert Rd. Tips about schools, places to take children, supermarkets... Shops on Histon road are not far. The area looks ok to me but I saw many conversations here saying to avoid Arbury and I am confused. Is that a safe place to live?

Thanks in advance!

Arbury had the reputation as the less-desirable area because it has a lot of social housing. The school is fab though.

Nowhere in Cambridge is really awful and the schools are generally v good. [Sod Ofsted!]

The vital thing to consider is where you/partner are working and what your daily commute will be. Will you drive, cycle, bus or walk? Then, what can you afford. Then the other factors like schools & shops.

Cambridge primary schools are pretty full (except St Luke's which is having a bad time at the moment). To maximise your chances of getting in to the primary of your choice, you really really need to live in catchment - it moves you right up the waiting list. Look at the Cambridgeshire County website for Catchment boundaries. Gilbert Road is in Milton Road Primary's catchment, as are parts of Milton Road.

Traffic is generally bad, with days when it's abysmal. If you have any alternative to driving, you will want to use it. Our car only does about 4000 miles a year because we cycle whenever possible.

DD is at Milton Road. It's a good fit for her, but wouldn't be for every child. The intake is very middle class (I'm not aware of any social housing in the catchment area) and pretty wealthy, though there's a good number of non-Brits there. Feel free to ask more questions!

Thanks, lovely ones!
Priority one, for us, is school; then what we can afford :)
I've checked with the council and some of our preferred schools (like Newnham croft) have a huge waiting list. I won't mention UCPS waiting list... If we live close enough my child who will start reception might get a place, but the other would have to go to a temporary school until getting priority based on sibling rules. We want to avoid that, so will try a less disputed school, but still one that makes us happy and Mayfield is the one. So we are looking for houses within the catchment.
I'm not worried about traffic because of driving but due to pollution on my doorstep and noise. I will work on my MPhil at Newnham and do school run on my bike. Husband will work from home but eventually commute to London. Unfortunately we couldn't find a place too close to the station that also has good primary AND secondary schools. We are more concerned about good secondary schools.
We are also not too worried about the local shops as we buy most of our stuff online, but we are concerned about the public the shops will bring. I recently saw an article about a Tesco stopping selling alcohol due to anti social behaviour on children play area nearby :(
Apparently we are going to be in Arbury. I saw the council blocks people talk about but they are not immediately close to the houses we are seeing, they are most on the north and east side. Should we look elsewhere? Is Arbury indeed not a nice place? I prefer Huntingdon road but we are not keen on the new developments and would prefer a period home, and most places at Huntingdon are new homes.
Anyway, please keep sharing your lovely thoughts!

Have you looked at any of the villages? Histon, Impington, Milton for example? Lovely schools, easy access to Cambridge North station, cycle routes into town.

We did look into the villages but we really want to be in Cambridge, walking distance to University.

When you say walking distance to the University which dept. There is no single campus and the different depts and colleges are miles apart if you take eg the West Cambridge sites and Homerton as the extremes.

You are very right, we can't be walking distance to all depts. My work will be around Grange Road and Newnham. I will cycle but I just want to be sure walking to Newnham is an option (even if 50 min walk), if bike breaks or in case of other catastrophe :) I will have to sort both school run and my work.

here's one in a good area www.carterjonas.co.uk/house/for-sale/cambridge/cam180203

If you needed to be near the station, then the obvious option would be to live within the catchment for St Matthew's primary, which feeds in to Parkside secondary. However the waiting list for St Matthew's was months when a friend applied last year.

To minimise bike trauma (with which I'm very familar!) I suggest you live near the relevant primary school and have a spare 'normal' bike at home - then if your normal bike dies, you can still walk to school, and use the back up bike to get to work. Given you've said you want to cycle a lot, I guess you're considering a cargo bike - a spare on of those would be very expensive.

I have colleagues living in a range of less desirable bits of Cambridge (due to house prices) and they find it OK, though some don't have children. Your best bet would be to come and walk around the part you're considering, ideally at night, to see how it feels. Where we are we've never had any problems with antisocial behaviour that I've heard or seen, but I've seen N2O canisters lying around the part a few hundred metres away, so I guess those living closer must get some noise. There's nowhere I wouldn't cycle at night (on main roads); I don't think I could say that of every city in the UK.

Slightly off topic, but if you have a major bike catastrophe you can always put your bike in the back of a 7 seater taxi. I've done that before.

Hello! We will be moving to Cambridge as well and are looking at St Matthew's primary. It's interesting to hear about your friend CambridgeCambridge. What happened in that situation? Were they given another school and then changed to St Matthew's later on?

Mayfield is a lovely primary school, and has been Cambridge News Primary School of the year for the last 2 years (at least), so is a good choice.
Arbury has historically been the rough & undesirable part of Cambridge, but has some lovely streets with period housing, which will be more affordable than other areas of Cambridge.
Close to Mayfield there is a parade of shops on Histon Road including a Coop, pharmacy, post office & takeaway, plus an Aldi and Iceland & the EACH charity shop.
If you are more towards central Arbury there are shops and a library at Arbury Court.
The nearest / catchment secondary is Chesterton Community college which is very good (& got Ofsted outstanding last year I think). It also has a sports centre with swimming pool.

It will be pretty quick to get to Grange road by bike from here as well.

All in all, a good choice I think. Welcome to Cambridge!

I think calling Arbury rough and undesirable is perhaps a bit harsh - depends where you live. But it's all relative - this is still Cambridge so it's fine compared with a lot of other places!

(conveniently forgetting time 20 years ago that flatmate's car was set alight in Carlton Way)