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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.
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.
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