Harlton
Encyclopedia
Harlton is a village and civil parish in the East of England
East of England
The East of England is one of the nine official regions of England. It was created in 1994 and was adopted for statistics from 1999. It includes the ceremonial counties of Essex, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk. Essex has the highest population in the region.Its...

 region and the county 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...

 in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

. The village is 5 miles (8 km) south-west of 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...

.

History

The parish of Harlton covers an area of 1261 acres (510.3 ha). Its southern border is marked by the ancient track Mare Way, which runs along a raised ridge dividing it from Barrington
Barrington, Cambridgeshire
Barrington is a village and civil parish in the South Cambridgeshire district of Cambridgeshire, England. The village is about ten miles south-west of Cambridge, between Haslingfield and Shepreth....

 (plus a short border with Orwell
Orwell, Cambridgeshire
Orwell is a small rural village outside Cambridge in South Cambridgeshire, England.The Prime Meridian passes the eastern edge of Orwell.-History:...

). The Bourn Brook forms its northern boundary with Comberton
Comberton
Comberton is a village and civil parish in South Cambridgeshire, England, just east of the Prime Meridian.-History:Archaeological finds, including a Neolithic polished stone axe and a Bronze Age barrow , suggest there has been a settlement here for thousands of years. A Roman villa was discovered...

, and its western border with Little Eversden
Little Eversden
Little Eversden is a village approximately south-west of Cambridge, England. It has two main roads: Harlton Road which goes through Little Eversden and joins the A603, and High Street, which is a dead end....

 mostly follows the Roman Road (now the A603). Field boundaries and old water channels divide it from Haslingfield
Haslingfield
Haslingfield is a village and civil parish in South Cambridgeshire, England. The village is about six miles south-west of Cambridge, between Harston, Barton and Barrington. The population in the 2001 census was 1,550 people living in 621 households. The main streets in the village are called High...

 to the east. There is a very short border with Barton
Barton, Cambridgeshire
Barton is a village and civil parish in the South Cambridgeshire district of Cambridgeshire, England. It is about south-west of Cambridge, near junction 12 of the M11 motorway.- History :...

 at its north-eastern tip.

The village was an important source of mining for many centuries. The pits to the south east of the village were used to mine the clunch
Clunch
Clunch is a term for traditional building material used mainly in eastern England and Normandy. It is a term which encompasses a wide variety of materials, often locally variable....

 that was used to build Cambridge Castle
Cambridge Castle
Cambridge Castle, locally also known as Castle Mound, is located in the town of the same name in Cambridgeshire, England. Originally built after the Norman conquest to control the strategically important route to the north of England, it played a role in the conflicts of the Anarchy, the First and...

 in 1295. The quarry was last used for building material in 1906 and it is now a heavily-wooded recreation area. The clay
Clay
Clay is a general term including many combinations of one or more clay minerals with traces of metal oxides and organic matter. Geologic clay deposits are mostly composed of phyllosilicate minerals containing variable amounts of water trapped in the mineral structure.- Formation :Clay minerals...

 quarry to the south-west of the village was known as the Lady Quarry from the 15th century but is now filled in. Gravel
Gravel
Gravel is composed of unconsolidated rock fragments that have a general particle size range and include size classes from granule- to boulder-sized fragments. Gravel can be sub-categorized into granule and cobble...

 was mined alongside the Bourn Brook from at least the 15th century, and coprolite
Coprolite
A coprolite is fossilized animal dung. Coprolites are classified as trace fossils as opposed to body fossils, as they give evidence for the animal's behaviour rather than morphology. The name is derived from the Greek words κοπρος / kopros meaning 'dung' and λιθος / lithos meaning 'stone'. They...

 digging provided employment for the second half of the 19th century.

The village had one of the smallest populations in the Wetherley hundred
Hundreds of Cambridgeshire
Between Anglo-Saxon times and the 19th century Cambridgeshire was divided for administrative purposes into 17 hundreds, plus the borough of Cambridge...

 in medieval times, with 20 residents listed in 1086, and 74 in 1676. The census of 1801 listed 156 residents and the coprolite employment caused an increase to a peak of 335 in 1871. It fell to 201 by 1931 and has risen slowly since.

The Cambridge to Bedford
Bedford
Bedford is the county town of Bedfordshire, in the East of England. It is a large town and the administrative centre for the wider Borough of Bedford. According to the former Bedfordshire County Council's estimates, the town had a population of 79,190 in mid 2005, with 19,720 in the adjacent town...

 railway line reached the parish in the 1860s with Lord's Bridge railway station
Lord's Bridge railway station
Lord's Bridge was a railway station on the Varsity Line which ran between Oxford and Cambridge. Situated in the north of the parish of Harlton on the western outskirts of Cambridge, it was the penultimate station before the line's eastern terminus at Cambridge. The station opened in 1862 and closed...

 opening in 1862, closing in 1968 as part of the Beeching Axe
Beeching Axe
The Beeching Axe or the Beeching Cuts are informal names for the British Government's attempt in the 1960s to reduce the cost of running British Railways, the nationalised railway system in the United Kingdom. The name is that of the main author of The Reshaping of British Railways, Dr Richard...

. In 1938 the Air Ministry
Air Ministry
The Air Ministry was a department of the British Government with the responsibility of managing the affairs of the Royal Air Force, that existed from 1918 to 1964...

 took land south-east of the Roman Road for an ammunition dump with new sidings added to the railway line. It closed in 1955 and in 1957 the Cavendish Laboratory
Cavendish Laboratory
The Cavendish Laboratory is the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge, and is part of the university's School of Physical Sciences. It was opened in 1874 as a teaching laboratory....

 of Cambridge University built the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory
Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory
Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory is home to a number of large aperture synthesis radio telescopes, including the One-Mile Telescope, 5-km Ryle Telescope, and the Arcminute Microkelvin Imager...

 there. The land was bought from the Ministry of Defence
Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom)
The Ministry of Defence is the United Kingdom government department responsible for implementation of government defence policy and is the headquarters of the British Armed Forces....

 in 1971 and the section of the railway line there was used to carry a number of mobile radio telescope
Radio telescope
A radio telescope is a form of directional radio antenna used in radio astronomy. The same types of antennas are also used in tracking and collecting data from satellites and space probes...

 dishes.

Listed as Herletone in 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 the village's name means "farmstead of a man called Herela".

Church

The parish church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary was built to replace an earlier building in the late 14th century. It comprises a chancel with north vestry, aisled and clerestoried nave with north and south porches, and west tower. Some 14th and 15th-century glass remains and there are 16th century stalls. The tower contains three bells.

Village life

The village retains a public house, the Hare and Hounds, which has been open since at least 1879. The Wheatsheaf pub which was open where the Eversden road crosses the Roman Road from at least 1833 is now La Pergola Italian restaurant and pub. Former pubs include The Red Lion on High Street, open from the early 19th century to 1960, and The Railway Inn, near Lord's Bridge station, open by 1886 and closed by 1966.

The village had a school from at least 1601, and a dedicated schoolroom was built in 1816, with a larger one replacing it in 1853. The school moved to accepting primary children only in 1920 with the older children attending Haslingfield, and by the Second World War the attendance was only 16. The school closed in 1959. Primary children now attend Haslingfield Primary School, and secondary children go to Comberton Village College
Comberton Village College
Comberton Village College is a secondary school in Comberton.Comberton Village College was opened in 1960. As a Cambridgeshire Village College, it was designed to be a centre for the life of its community and to provide quality education for pupils aged between 11 and 16.In 1974, the school became...

.

External links

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