- Volume
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v. 5 ISBN 9780197227176
Description
This volume contains the histories of 25 parishes in west Cambridgeshire and eight articles on sport. The parishes form the hundreds of Longstowe and Wetherley. On the west they lie along the Old North Road, which has affected thechanging shape and fortunes of some of the villages, while on the east the closeness of Cambridge has been influential through the ownership of land and livings by the colleges and, in modern times, through the spread of satellite housing. The soil is mostly a heavy clay that was not easily drained, and the existence in Wetherley hundred of five deserted village sites may attest the difficulties of cultivation. One site, however, was that of Wimpole, moved to make apark around what became the county's finest country house, once the seat of the Chicheleys and later of Edward Harley, earl of Oxford, and of the earls of Hardwicke. A few other places stand out from their neighbours,Bourn with its Norman castle-site, Caxton as a small market town and coaching centre which prospered until the decline of the Old North Road, and Rupert Brooke's Grantchester. The parishes tend to be small, with nucleated settlements. Much land remained in open fields until the eighth century, and several villages retain extensive greens. During periods of agricultural depression the inhabitants suffered acute poverty; coprolite-digging between 1855 and 1885 brought some prosperity. Modern agriculture includes large-scale arable farming, fruit-growing, and market-gardening. Light industry, cement-works, and radio-telescopes vary the rural scene. Of the sports whose history is toldin the volume, racing takes pride of place since Cambridgeshire includes Newmarket Heath. The presence of the university underlay the development of rowing, football, and cricket, while the county's geographical characteristics have given peculiar importance to wildfowling and skating.
- Volume
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v. 6 ISBN 9780197227466
Description
This volume contains the histories of 24 parishes in south-east Cambridgeshire, forming the hundreds of Chilford, Radfield, and Whittlesford. Traversed, and in part bounded, by the Icknield Way and the ancient Wool Street, they stretch from the neighbourhood of Cambridge to the Suffolk border. In the valley of the Cam or Granta the arable was cultivated in open fields until the early- rgth-century inclosures. On the south-eastern upland the medieval clearance of ancient woodland in the heavy clays produced much early inclosure, while the heathland lying along the Icknield Way encouraged sheep-farming, and nearer Newmarket is used for stud-farms. Babraham was notable for 17th-century irrigated meadows, and as the home of the Victorian sheep-breeder, Jones Webb. The villages in the river valleys are mostly nucleated; in the less populous eastern part settlement has been more scattered. The former market townof Linton, near the centre of the area, had once two small religious houses, and Castle Camps a motte-and-bailey castle, held by the Veres. Among later mansions, the Tudor Babraham Hall, and Horseheath Hall, a grand classical house, destroyed through its owner's extravagance, have gone. Sawston Hall, the seat of the Catholic Huddlestons during four centuries, survives. The village of Sawston and its neighbours have grown since the 19th-century through the presence of such industries as tanning, paper-making, and the production of fertilizers, and more recently of adhesives, besides light engineering. Further east the land is still devoted mainly to farming.
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v. 7 ISBN 9780197227480
Description
This volume is devoted to an account of Roman Cambridgeshire. It completes the `general' articles on the county for the Victoria History, while the topography, on which four volumes have already been published, remains to be completed in three or four further volumes. Although in Roman times the county in no way formed a unit, and may indeed have been divided between the provinces of Britannia Superior and Inferior along the line of the Fen Causeway, andalthough only a relatively small part of the area looked towards the Roman settlement of Cambridge as its centre while the rest looked towards urban centres tying beyond the later county boundary, it has been possible to piece together the story of Roman Cambridgeshire. To a considerable extent it has been possible because of the pioneering groundwork done by the late Sir Cyril Fox on the Cambridge region, extending beyond the county but including all itssouthern part, and more recently by the Fenland Research Committee, taking in the Isle of Ely along with the rest of the Fens. The author of the present volume, Mr. David Browne, has devoted a long time to the study of Roman Cambridgeshire and has built on the work of his predecessors. Following a discussion of the landscape, which has changed greatly since the 1st century A.D., and of the roads, he unravels the story of settlement in the Roman period, in which the town of Cambridge, the Duroli-ponte of the Antonine Itinerary, provides contrasts with the villages of the Fens and the villas of the southern uplands. An analysis of the recorded items of material culture, together with shorter sections on agricul-ture, currency, religion, and burial, is linked with the settlement history to provide a comprehensive survey which may be used also as a selective gazetteer.
- Volume
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v. 8 ISBN 9780197227572
Description
This volume covers the two hundreds of Armingford and Thriplow in south-west Cam-bridgeshire. They comprise 23 ancient parishes, lying between the Gogmagog Hills south-east of Cambridge, where an Iron Age hill fort partly survives, and the clay-covered West Cambridge-shire upland. To the north-west they are largely bounded by the Cam or Rhee, to the south by heathlend along the Icknield Way. The land has long been used mainly for arable farming. Some of the villages, which are mostly nucleated, may stand near the sites of Roman or earlier settlement. Those in the far west had some dependent hamlets, mostly vanished long ago. In that area several villages, after the early inclosureof their poor, heavy soils for pasturage, shrank greatly or, as at Clopton and Shingay, became. entirely deserted. Elsewhere open fields survived until the early 19th century. Later in that century coprolites were widely dug; in the 20th com-mercial fruit growing was introduced; the chalk has been dug to make cement and whiting; and some of the larger villages, such as Melbourn, have attracted light industry. During the Second World War much level ground was taken over for airfields. The churches of the area range from the humble early Norman work at Hauxton, through cruciform 13th-century buildings, as at Fowlrnere, to the stately Decorated of Trumpington and Bassingbourn. The Igth century saw much rebuilding and refurnishing, sometimes financed by local religious plays. Several villages retain much timber framed vernacular building. The only aristocratic mansion, Gogmagog House of the dukes of Leeds at Wandlebury, has been demolished, but lesser houses include some well preserved late medieval manor houses and much good, plain Georgian work, as at Trumpington Hall, seat of the Pembertons. The villages near Cambridge have been greatly affected in the 20th century by the spread of population.
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v. 9 ISBN 9780197227732
Description
THE volume relates to the part of the county lying north-west of Cambridge and includes the histories of twenty-seven parishes forming the hundreds of Chesterton, Northstowe, and Papworth. The area is bounded on the south by the road to St. Neots, on the east by the river Cam, and on the north by the Great Ouse or Old West River; it falls into two distinct physical landscapes, the land in the south sloping gently from a ridge and that in the north formingan extension of the fenlands of the Isle of Ely. Two distinct settlement patterns reflect the geographical division. The villages on the higher ground were mainly devoted to arable farming. Some of the smaller parishes there cameinto or remained in the hands of a single landowner between the early 16th and the mid 17th century, and each parish tended to be dominated by its principal landowner and the Church of England; population rose steadily in the earlier 19th century but fell sharply from the 1870s. Along the fen edge the parishes were mostly larger and included extensive meadow and pasture created on former marshland; numerous smallholders could support themselves out of theresources of the fens, grazing sheep on the commons, fishing, fowling, and cutting peat, and in the 17th century the villagers combined to resist the attempts of new lay lords to restore seigneurial rights and to inclose large tracts of commons. Religious dissent was strong. From the 1870s the establishment of orchards and market gardens and the growth of the Chivers jam factory at Histon enabled the villages to maintain or increase their population. Thesouth-east corner of the area was particularly affected by the urban and academic expansion of Cambridge in the late 19th and the 20th century; several parishes were largely built up, Chesterton became fully suburban, and research organizations were established.
Table of Contents
Parishes - Chesterton, Childerley, Cottenham, Dry Drayton, Histon, Westwick, Girton, Impington, Landbeach, Lolworth, Madingley, Milton, Oakington, Rampton, Long Stanton, Waterbeach, Boxworth, Conington, Fen Drayton, Elsworth, Graveley, Knapwell, Over, Papworth Everard, Papworth St Agnes, Swavesey, Willingham.
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v. 10 ISBN 9780197227831
Description
400 articles on the history of East Cambridgeshire, the four hundreds of Cheveley, Flendish, Staine and Staploe.
The contributions of ordinary men and women, as well as gentry, clergy, farming dynasties, merchants and manufacturers, to the history of the towns, village, hamlets and streets of East Cambridgeshire, and to theworking of fens, fields and farms, are clearly revealed in the histories of the twenty-three parishes which make up the four hundreds of Staploe, Staine, Flendish and Cheveley. The region is diverse in character: fenland dominates the north of theregion; to the south lies open field arable and heathland, and in Cheveley hundred in the south-west there are hills, a continuation of the East Anglian heights. Major themes include the economy and drainage of the fens, the development of horse breeding around Newmarket, and the growth of industry and communications around Cambridge. The comprehensive history of each parish is fully referenced, illustrated with at least one map, which is complemented by four hundredal articles and an introduction setting out general themes and issues.
Table of Contents
- Cheveley Hundred
- Ashley-cum-Silverley
- Cheveley
- Kirtling and Woodditton
- Flendish Hundred
- Cherry Hinton
- Fen Ditton
- Fulbourn
- Horningsea and Teversham
- Staine Hundred
- Bottisham
- Great Wilbraham
- Little Wilbraham
- Stowe-cum-Quy
- Swaffham Bulbeck and Swaffham Prior
- Staploe Hundred
- Burwell
- Chippenham
- Fordham
- Isleham
- Kennett
- Landwade
- Snailwell and Soham
- analysis of hearth tax assessments.
by "Nielsen BookData"
