Six Mile Bottom is a hamlet

Hamlet (place)

A hamlet is usually a rural settlement which is too small to be considered a village, though sometimes the word is used for a different sort of community. Historically, when a hamlet became large enough to justify building a church, it was then classified as a village...

 within the parish of Little Wilbraham

Little Wilbraham

Little Wilbraham is a village in Cambridgeshire, England, southeast of Cambridge between the A1303 and the A11. It is in the district of South Cambridgeshire. It is a small village with a population of only 394 and there is little employment within the village...

, near 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...

 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...

.

History

In the 1790s the only building at Six Mile Bottom was a paddocks run by a stable keeper. In 1802, a sizeable country house was built nearby. Early residents were George and Augusta Leigh

Augusta Leigh

Augusta Maria Byron, later Augusta Maria Leigh , styled "The Honourable" from birth, was the only daughter of John "Mad Jack" Byron, the poet Lord Byron's father, by his first wife, Amelia Osborne .-Early...

, the latter being Lord Byron's half-sister.
Their residence is now the Country House Hotel, Swynford Paddocks. There was little additional building until the 1840s, but it grew from there until there were 22 homes housing around 170 people in around 1920, most owned by the Six Mile Bottom estate.

The hamlet derives its name from its distance from the start of Newmarket Racecourse

Newmarket Racecourse

The town of Newmarket, in Suffolk, England, is the headquarters of British horseracing, home to the largest cluster of training yards in the country and many key horse racing organisations. Newmarket Racecourse has two courses - the Rowley Mile Course and the July Course. Both are wide, galloping...

 and because it lies in a valley bottom.

Six Mile Bottom railway station

Six Mile Bottom railway station

Six Mile Bottom railway station is a disused railway station on the Ipswich to Ely Line between and . It served the village of Six Mile Bottom, until closure in January 1967. The station buildings and platform remain as a private residence...

 served the village from the 1860s (by the Newmarket and Chesterford Railway) until 1967.

Village life

The hamlet has a pub/restaurant, The Green Man, which also provides accommodation. It has served since the hamlet grew in the early 19th century, but may also be the same inn with stabling for 22 horses that was reported in 1686.

There was at one time a small school, reopened as a community centre in 1975. Christian services were held in the village's school from the 1890s to the 1920s. The brick-and-flint mission church of St George was built in 1933.