Chesterton is a small village and
civil parish
In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...
of exactly 56 households in Cambridgeshire, England.
The village lies approximately west-southwest of central
Peterborough
Peterborough () is a cathedral city in Cambridgeshire, east of England. It is the largest part of the City of Peterborough unitary authority district (which covers a larger area than Peterborough itself). It was part of Northamptonshire until ...
, near the city's
Alwalton
Alwalton is a village and civil parish in Cambridgeshire, England. Alwalton lies approximately west of Peterborough city centre. Alwalton is situated within Huntingdonshire which is a non-metropolitan district of Cambridgeshire as well as being ...
district. Chesterton is situated within
Huntingdonshire
Huntingdonshire (; abbreviated Hunts) is a non-metropolitan district of Cambridgeshire and a historic county of England. The district council is based in Huntingdon. Other towns include St Ives, Godmanchester, St Neots and Ramsey. The popu ...
which is a
non-metropolitan district
Non-metropolitan districts, or colloquially "shire districts", are a type of Districts of England, local government district in England. As created, they are sub-divisions of non-metropolitan county, non-metropolitan counties (colloquially ''shi ...
of Cambridgeshire as well as being a
historic county of England.
In the 17th Century, Chesterton was the home of
John Dryden
''
John Dryden (; – ) was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who in 1668 was appointed England's first Poet Laureate.
He is seen as dominating the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the per ...
's family, who lived in Chesterton manor.
In the 1870s, Chesterton was described as
: "a parish in the district of Peterborough and county of Huntingdon; on the verge of the county, and on Ermine-street and the river Nen, 2½ miles SE of Castor r. station, and 5½ SW of Peterborough. Post town, Castor, under Peterborough. Acres, 1, 330. Real property, £2, 447. Pop., 129. Houses, 22."
History
Chesterton is rich in Roman history, with the name Chesterton meaning "Roman site farm/settlement". MR A. Guest presents the Romans appearance as impressive, when he states "The Roman colonisation of the parish was impressive. Their first appearance was military, a five acre fort at Water Newton on the North border of Chesterton, which was built in the mid first century to guard the crossing of the Nene. A Civil settlement soon appeared at the gates of the fort, this became Chesterton with its North and West boundary being the River Nene and Billings Brook respectively. Durobrivae was contained within this boundary, with a Roman Signal Station at its highest point near its Southern border." Another Roman feature in Chesterton is Chesterton mound, which is described as a 'Roman earthen barrow situated 380m north of Hill Farm on the crest of Chesterton Hill south of the remains of the Roman town Durobrivae. "There have been suggestions that the mound was used as a "Roman signal station and a Medieval beacon".
In 1085
William the Conqueror
William I; ang, WillelmI (Bates ''William the Conqueror'' p. 33– 9 September 1087), usually known as William the Conqueror and sometimes William the Bastard, was the first House of Normandy, Norman List of English monarchs#House of Norman ...
ordered that a survey should be carried out across his kingdom to discover who owned which parts and what it was worth. The survey took place in 1086 and the results were recorded in what, since the 12th century, has become known as the
Domesday Book
Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manus ...
. Starting with the king himself, for each
landholder within a county there is a list of their estates or
manors; and, for each manor, there is a summary of the resources of the manor, the amount of annual rent that was collected by the lord of the manor both in 1066 and in 1086, together with the taxable value.
Chesterton was listed in the Domesday Book in the
Hundred
100 or one hundred (Roman numeral: C) is the natural number following 99 and preceding 101.
In medieval contexts, it may be described as the short hundred or five score in order to differentiate the English and Germanic use of "hundred" to des ...
of
Normancross in Huntingdonshire; the name of the settlement was written as ''Cestretune'' in the Domesday Book.
In 1086 there were two manors at Chesterton; the annual rent paid to the lords of the manors in 1066 had been £8 and the rent had fallen to £6 in 1086.
The Domesday Book does not explicitly detail the population of a place but it records that there was 21 households at Chesterton.
[ There is no consensus about the average size of a household at that time; estimates range from 3.5 to 5.0 people per household. Using these figures then an estimate of the population of Chesterton in 1086 is that it was within the range of 73 and 105 people.
The Domesday Book uses a number of units of measure for areas of land that are now unfamiliar terms, such as hides and ]ploughland
The carucate or carrucate ( lat-med, carrūcāta or ) was a medieval unit of land area approximating the land a plough team of eight oxen could till in a single annual season. It was known by different regional names and fell under different forms ...
s. In different parts of the country, these were terms for the area of land that a team of eight oxen could plough in a single season and are equivalent to ; this was the amount of land that was considered to be sufficient to support a single family. By 1086, the hide had become a unit of tax assessment rather than an actual land area; a hide was the amount of land that could be assessed as £1 for tax purposes. The survey records that there were nine ploughlands at Chesterton in 1086 and that there was the capacity for a further five ploughlands.[ In addition to the arable land, there was of meadows at Chesterton.][
The tax assessment in the Domesday Book was known as geld or danegeld and was a type of land-tax based on the hide or ploughland. It was originally a way of collecting a tribute to pay off the Danes when they attacked England, and was only levied when necessary. Following the Norman Conquest, the geld was used to raise money for the King and to pay for continental wars; by 1130, the geld was being collected annually. Having determined the value of a manor's land and other assets, a tax of so many shillings and pence per pound of value would be levied on the land holder. While this was typically two shillings in the pound the amount did vary; for example, in 1084 it was as high as six shillings in the pound. For the manors at Chesterton the total tax assessed was nine geld.][
By 1086 there was already a church and a priest at Chesterton.
In 1933 Chesterton had electricity. However piped water was not installed into the village until 1939, which meant villagers had to use water from the local Billing Brook. This eventually led to a sewage system being completed in 1969.
]
Government
Chesterton does not have a parish council but has an annual parish meeting
A parish meeting, in England, is a meeting to which all the electors in a civil parish are entitled to attend.
In some cases, where a parish or group of parishes has fewer than 200 electors, the parish meeting can take on the role of a parish cou ...
.
Chesterton was in the historic and administrative county
An administrative county was a first-level administrative division in England and Wales from 1888 to 1974, and in Ireland from 1899 until either 1973 (in Northern Ireland) or 2002 (in the Republic of Ireland). They are now abolished, although mos ...
of Huntingdonshire until 1965. From 1965, the village was part of the new administrative county of Huntingdon and Peterborough. Then in 1974, following the Local Government Act 1972, Chesterton became a part of the county of Cambridgeshire.
The second tier of local government is Huntingdonshire District Council
Huntingdonshire District Council is the local authority for the district of Huntingdonshire in Cambridgeshire, England. Based in Huntingdon, it forms the lower part of the two tier system of local government in the district, below Cambridgeshire ...
which is a non-metropolitan district
Non-metropolitan districts, or colloquially "shire districts", are a type of Districts of England, local government district in England. As created, they are sub-divisions of non-metropolitan county, non-metropolitan counties (colloquially ''shi ...
of Cambridgeshire and has its headquarters in Huntingdon. Huntingdonshire District Council has 52 councillors representing 29 district wards. Huntingdonshire District Council collects the council tax
Council Tax is a local taxation system used in England, Scotland and Wales. It is a tax on domestic property, which was introduced in 1993 by the Local Government Finance Act 1992, replacing the short-lived Community Charge, which in turn re ...
, and provides services such as building regulations, local planning, environmental health, leisure and tourism. Chesterton is a part of the district ward of ''Elton and Folksworth'' and is represented on the district council by one councillor.[ District councillors serve for four-year terms following elections to Huntingdonshire District Council.
For Chesterton the highest tier of local government is ]Cambridgeshire County Council
Cambridgeshire County Council is the county council of Cambridgeshire, England. The council consists of 61 councillors, representing 59 electoral divisions. The council is based at New Shire Hall at Alconbury Weald, near Huntingdon. It is a me ...
which has administration buildings in Cambridge. The county council provides county-wide services such as major road infrastructure, fire and rescue, education, social services, libraries and heritage services. Cambridgeshire County Council consists of 69 councillors representing 60 electoral divisions. Chesterton is part of the electoral division of ''Norman Cross''[ and is represented on the county council by two councillors.][
At Westminster Chesterton is in the parliamentary constituency of North West Cambridgeshire,][ and elects one Member of Parliament (MP) by the ]first past the post
In a first-past-the-post electoral system (FPTP or FPP), formally called single-member plurality voting (SMP) when used in single-member districts or informally choose-one voting in contrast to ranked voting, or score voting, voters cast thei ...
system of election. Chesterton is represented in the House of Commons
The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. T ...
by Shailesh Vara
Shailesh Lakhman Vara (born 4 September 1960) is a Ugandan-British politician, who served as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland from July to September 2022. A member of the Conservative Party, he has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) ...
(Conservative
Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization in ...
). Shailesh Vara has represented the constituency since 2005. The previous member of parliament was Brian Mawhinney (Conservative) who represented the constituency between 1997 and 2005.
Demography
The occupational data of Chesterton in 1881, shown in the graph to the right, presents the majority of females as not having a " Specified Occupation". Compare this to the side which presents data for the male population in Chesterton in 1881, it presents all of the males within the village being in some sort of recognised occupation.
According to the 2011 Census, Chesterton (including Haddon) had a population of 317, with their main industry being in the Wholesale and Retail Trade. Compare this to the Chesterton of 1831, where the population was only 105 and 66% of the industry in Chesterton was in the agricultural industry. In 2011, the total number of households in Chesterton was 139. This compared to the number of households in the village in 1831, which was 21 households shows clear signs of development in the village to increase the number of households. The population density in Chesterton was measured at 0.2 (Numbers of people per hectare) in the 2011 Census. This is seen to be drastically under the national average in England which is 4.1 ( Numbers of people per hectare). Also in Chesterton, the percentage of people who stated their religion as Christian in the 2011 Census was also higher than the national average, with the percentage of the population who were Christians in Chesterton at 75.7% and the national average in England being 59.4%.
Education
Chesterton has no schools in the village itself. However it has several schools located within the local area. It has 2 primary schools located within a radius 1.5 miles from the village. These schools are Orton Wistow Primary School and Matley Primary School. Both these schools are for children aged 4–11 years old. An Ofsted report in 2011 gave Orton Wistow primary school a rating of "Good." An Ofsted report in 2013 for Matley Primary school rated the school as "Requires Improvement." The nearest secondary school is located 1.4 miles away from the village and is called Ormiston Bushfield Academy. The school is for children aged 11– 19 years old. An Ofsted report in May 2012 rated the school as "Good"
Religious sites
St Michael's church, which is located on the north side of the village dates back to the 13th Century and has monuments of the Lord of the Chesterton Manor, which belonged to the Beville family. Also St Michael's is where the tomb of William Beville who died in 1487 is located. The Beville family built Chesterton manor in the 1600s with Robert Beville building the manor, However the family acquired the land in which the manor was built in 1378 after "the Norman Conquest" and the marriage of John Beville and Agnes Walderchef, until the manor was passed on to the Dryden family at a later date. From 1927 to 1937 the Rev Frank Buttle was rector of Chesterton with Haddon and Alwalton
Alwalton is a village and civil parish in Cambridgeshire, England. Alwalton lies approximately west of Peterborough city centre. Alwalton is situated within Huntingdonshire which is a non-metropolitan district of Cambridgeshire as well as being ...
.
References
External links
{{authority control
Villages in Cambridgeshire
Huntingdonshire
Civil parishes in Cambridgeshire