Ickleton
Encyclopedia
Ickleton is a village on the Cambridgeshire
Cambridgeshire
Cambridgeshire is a county in England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the northeast, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire to the west...

Essex
Essex
Essex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...

 border in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. It grew at the point where the ancient Icknield Way
Icknield Way
The Icknield Way is an ancient trackway in southern England. It follows the chalk escarpment that includes the Berkshire Downs and Chiltern Hills.-Background:...

 crossed the River Cam
River Cam
The River Cam is a tributary of the River Great Ouse in the east of England. The two rivers join to the south of Ely at Pope's Corner. The Great Ouse connects the Cam to England's canal system and to the North Sea at King's Lynn...

, so it is likely that some form of habitation has existed on the site since prehistoric times. However, the present layout of the village probably dates mainly from the late Saxon
Saxons
The Saxons were a confederation of Germanic tribes originating on the North German plain. The Saxons earliest known area of settlement is Northern Albingia, an area approximately that of modern Holstein...

 period.

History

There has been a settlement at Ickleton for at least two thousand years. The pre-Roman
Roman Britain
Roman Britain was the part of the island of Great Britain controlled by the Roman Empire from AD 43 until ca. AD 410.The Romans referred to the imperial province as Britannia, which eventually comprised all of the island of Great Britain south of the fluid frontier with Caledonia...

 Icknield Way
Icknield Way
The Icknield Way is an ancient trackway in southern England. It follows the chalk escarpment that includes the Berkshire Downs and Chiltern Hills.-Background:...

 runs through the parish
Parish
A parish is a territorial unit historically under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of one parish priest, who might be assisted in his pastoral duties by a curate or curates - also priests but not the parish priest - from a more or less central parish church with its associated organization...

, and in Roman times there was a villa
Villa
A villa was originally an ancient Roman upper-class country house. Since its origins in the Roman villa, the idea and function of a villa have evolved considerably. After the fall of the Roman Republic, villas became small farming compounds, which were increasingly fortified in Late Antiquity,...

 in the village, not far from a nearby Roman fort at Great Chesterford
Great Chesterford
Great Chesterford is a medium sized village and civil parish in the Uttlesford district of Essex, England. It is located north of Bishop's Stortford, south of Cambridge and about north of London.- History :...

.

The medieval village was dominated by Ickleton Priory that was founded in the mid-12th century. Despite its small size, the village prospered in the 15th and 16th century.

The Domesday Book
Domesday Book
Domesday Book , now held at The National Archives, Kew, Richmond upon Thames in South West London, is the record of the great survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086...

 of 1086 shows that the village then had a population of about 250. By the time the railway arrived in 1845, the population had grown somewhat and today Ickleton is home to about 650 people.

Listed as Icelingtune in the 10th century and Hichelintone in the Domesday Book, the village's name means "estate associated with a man named Icel".

Location

Cambridge
Cambridge
The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...

 lies about 20 km (12.4 mi) to the north, and Saffron Walden
Saffron Walden
Saffron Walden is a medium-sized market town in the Uttlesford district of Essex, England. It is located north of Bishop's Stortford, south of Cambridge and approx north of London...

 about 8 km (5 mi) to the south. The River Cam (or Granta) forms the eastern border of the village. Houses are mainly grouped around three streets, Abbey Street, Frogge Street, and Church Street, which leads into Brookhampton Street. The village itself lies at the eastern end of the parish which stretches for 3 km (1.9 mi) to the west amidst rolling farmland.

Economy

Throughout its history, agriculture
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...

 and related trades have been almost the only economic activity. It was only after the Second World War
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 that farming ceased to predominate. Today, Ickleton's farms are hugely more productive than they were, even in the 1940s, yet they employ only a small number of people. Like many other rural villages, most of the working population is now employed elsewhere, in Cambridge, other towns nearby, or in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

.

The village has one remaining pub: The Lion in Abbey Street was open by 1728. Former pubs include The Rose Inn and The Bell, both mentioned in the 16th century. The White Lion south of the green burned down at the end of the 17th century to be replaced on the same site by The Chequer (18th century) and then The Duke of Wellington in the 19th century which closed in around 1957. The New Inn in Brookhampton Street was open in the late 19th century and The Greyhound in the south of the parish on the edge of Great Chesterford
Great Chesterford
Great Chesterford is a medium sized village and civil parish in the Uttlesford district of Essex, England. It is located north of Bishop's Stortford, south of Cambridge and about north of London.- History :...

 was open by 1851 but closed in the late 20th century.

There are a few small businesses in the village and a village shop. The Wellcome Trust Genome Campus
Wellcome Trust Genome Campus
The Wellcome Trust Genome Campus is a scientific research campus built in the grounds of Hinxton Hall, located in the village of Hinxton, Cambridgeshire....

 is in Hinxton
Hinxton
Hinxton is a village in South Cambridgeshire, England. It is the home to the Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, which includes the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the European Bioinformatics Institute. The 2001 population was 315....

, less than one mile away.

Church

The focal point of the village's architecture
Architecture
Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...

 is its parish church, which is undoubtedly one of the most important in East Anglia
East Anglia
East Anglia is a traditional name for a region of eastern England, named after an ancient Anglo-Saxon kingdom, the Kingdom of the East Angles. The Angles took their name from their homeland Angeln, in northern Germany. East Anglia initially consisted of Norfolk and Suffolk, but upon the marriage of...

. It dates from the 11th century and contains a series of early wall paintings of the 12th and 14th centuries revealed after a serious fire in 1979.

External links

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