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 forming an 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 came into 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 the resources 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. The south-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.

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 town of 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.

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 inclosure of 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.