Great Eversden is a village 6 miles south-west of

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. The population of the

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 authority ...

at the 2011 Census was 241. The

Prime Meridian A prime meridian is an arbitrary meridian (a line of longitude) in a geographic coordinate system at which longitude is defined to be 0°. Together, a prime meridian and its anti-meridian (the 180th meridian in a 360°-system) form a great c ...

runs through the parish just to the east of the village, separating it from

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. The Prime Meridian runs through the parish just to the west ...

. Great Eversden is a small village of about 85 houses. It broadly takes the shape of a cross, with the

Harlton Harlton is a village and civil parish in Cambridgeshire in the United Kingdom. The village is south-west of Cambridge and neighbours Haslingfield. History The parish of Harlton covers an area of . Its southern border is marked by the ancient tra ...

Kingston Kingston may refer to: Places * List of places called Kingston, including the five most populated: ** Kingston, Jamaica ** Kingston upon Hull, England ** City of Kingston, Victoria, Australia ** Kingston, Ontario, Canada ** Kingston upon Thames, ...

road forming the East and West arms (called Church Street and the High Street), and the no-through-roads of Chapel Road and Wimpole Road forming the North and South arms.

History

The history of Great Eversden is closely related to that of its neighbour Little Eversden, though the two have formed distinct parishes since at least the 13th century. The parish of Great Eversden, covering 1400 acres, lies between the Bourn Brook to the north and Mare Way, the ancient ridgeway, to the south. Little Eversden lies to the east of the village. Prehistoric activity has recently been recorded in the parish in the form of a number of flint tools and waste flakes dating from the

Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts ...

. One

Iron Age The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age (Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age (Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostly appl ...

Trinovantian coin has been recovered and a hitherto unknown Roman Farmstead is being recorded. Great Eversden was settled before Little Eversden and is the larger of the two. The name "Eversden" means "vale of a man named Eofory". The village is the birthplace of John Tiptoft, 1st Earl of Worcester, sometimes known as 'The Butcher of England'.

St Mary's Church

There has been a church at Great Eversden since at least 1092, and dedicated to

St Mary Mary; arc, ܡܪܝܡ, translit=Mariam; ar, مريم, translit=Maryam; grc, Μαρία, translit=María; la, Maria; cop, Ⲙⲁⲣⲓⲁ, translit=Maria was a first-century Jewish woman of Nazareth, the wife of Joseph and the mother of ...

since at least the 13th century, but the original church was replaced in the 13th century. The 13th century church was razed to the ground in the mid 15th century when it was struck by lightning. The current church was completed in 1470, consisting of a chancel, nave with north porch, and west tower, and includes two misericords built at this time. It is worth noting that one of the misericords shows the family crest of the Beauchamp family (a fess between six cross crosslets) which may indicate that the family paid for much of the church, or that the misericords were installed for canons to pray for the dead of that family.

Village life

The village contains a Village Hall, allotments, an open space known as the Fossey Field, an Indian restaurant, Cam Spice (which replaced The Hoops in February 2016), which for a short while was a Chinese restaurant. Prior to this the Hoops was the local pub which was open by 1851. The other former public house, The Fox, opened at the start of the 19th century at the north end of the village. The

Post Office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letters and parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post offices may offer additional serv ...

closed in 2005 and the nearest shops are now in Orwell, Comberton, Toft and Haslingfield. The churches in Great and Little Eversden hold services on alternate Sundays.

References

External links

Village websiteVillage Hall
{{authority control Villages in Cambridgeshire Civil parishes in Cambridgeshire South Cambridgeshire District