Station and Cambridge Roads
Once the railway was opened in 1847, Station and Cambridge Roads became the focus for village expansion. In 1806 there was nothing but open fields and the windmill. In 1877 a bill of sale advertised land for housing development. By 1886 there was the ‘Railway Vue’, fifty eight new homes and, of course, the massive jam works. Visitors from all over the world saw the area with its orchards, pasture, strawberry fields and young plantations, as a wonderful and healthy location for such an industry.
In 1880 permission was granted for a wall mounted post box in what became Impington’s first post office. Most people remember the post office and news agent being run by three generations of Bevis’s from around 1910 to c.1978.
c. 1912 Taken from Impington Mill – Villa Road, railway sidings and factory.
c. 1911 Impington Post Office. Since the Post Office closure c. 2008 the building has been extended and converted into flats.
‘Kendal House’ 1898, currently Station Stores, was originally Webb’s the Bakers. On the corner of Pepys Terrace (named 1892) the Pegg family had their coal yard. Their son Roland was a tenant farmer in Histon. Any surplus milk was converted to coconut ice by his Mum.
Villa Road and The Crescent, Impington
Villa Road was named after the ’Model Villa Cottages’ built by Chivers for valued employees by their building department during the early 1900s (completed by 1901). The cottages had running water, baths, flush toilets, and septic tanks. Plots were sold off subsequently for development. Deeds contained stringent sanitary requirements on building which the company reserved the right to enforce!
Now demolished for a housing development (2010), the box factory at the end of Villa Road had an interesting history. S.C.A. Packaging was the descendent of a joint venture. In 1875 Thompson and Norris of the U.S.A. invented single faced corrugated paper. By 1883 they were established in London where they developed double sided corrugated board. This was to supersede wood for making packing cases. Chivers and Sons were quick to recognise the qualities of this new material and in 1929 they closed their box making sawmill and together with Thompson and Morris replaced it with a joint facility on Villa Road. Originally fifty people were employed. Thirty years later there were three hundred. Today with mechanisation and computer control there are only seventy two. A.E. and Reed Co. bought Thompson and Norris in 1954, thus acquiring the Villa Road factory. They in their turn were taken over by the Swedish Paper Company Ltd. (Svenka Cellulosa Aktiebollaget) in 1992.
1926 Mill Road
In 1920, with the support of Chivers and Sons, Histon Co-operative Homes began building behind the windmill. Constructed by the Company’s building department (managed by John Unwin, Uncle of ‘Flash‘) the emphasis was on sound design, materials and construction. The Crescent and College Road were laid by 1922, followed by South Road in 1925 and finally Mill Road in 1926.
Employees were encouraged to buy their own homes and by 1939 many had done so. The properties all had large gardens protected by covenants to prevent future subdivision.
The builder family of Unwin (not to be confused with the seed firm family) came from Cottenham. John was invited by Stephen Chivers to form a building department c.1893. His brother Charles founded the firm on Station Road, ‘Hazeldene Works’.
In 1904, a field behind Impington Mill was provided by Chivers for the use of the Histon Institute Football Club (forerunner of Histon F.C.). When The Crescent was developed the team relocated to a field off New Road, Impington from which the current Recreation Ground was created by the Company in 1926.