Stapleford is a village located approximately 4 miles to the south 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 ...

, in the county of

Cambridgeshire Cambridgeshire (abbreviated Cambs.) is a Counties of England, county in the East of England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the north-east, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and North ...

, in eastern

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 ...

on the right-hand bank of the

River Granta The River Granta is the name of two of the four tributaries of the River Cam, although both names are often used synonymously. The Granta starts near the village of Widdington in Essex, flowing north past Audley End House to merge with the ...

. Stapleford is first mentioned in 956 when it was given the Latinised name of Stapelforda, formerly Stapleton. Unlike most parishes, the spelling has hardly changed since then. The parish, however, was inhabited long before this. Wandlebury Ring, which lies within the parish boundary, is an Iron Age hill fort, originally built in the 3rd century BC, but rebuilt with a double bank in the 1st century AD. More recently, the village found fame with the discovery that

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...

is a direct descendant of one Thomas Blossom, who grew up here towards the end of the 16th century before emigrating to the United States. Stapleford is home to two pubs, The Rose and The Three Horseshoes,. The village also is home t
Saint Andrew's church
a primary school, several garages, two hairdressers, allotments, a youth football club, a cricket team and several farms. Famous ex-residents include Robert Huff (racing driver) and Nobel laureates Sir John Sulston and Sir James Mirrlees. From 1750 to 1755, John Berridge, the later evangelist, served as curate in Stapleford near Cambridge, riding out from Clare College. He performed his duties with "a sincere desire to do good". He preached and taught "the importance of sanctification". Yet, as Berridge later reflected, his ministry in Stapleford was fruitless because he neither believed nor preached the gospel of justification by faith. Because he believed that he was having "no beneficial effect, spiritual or moral" on his congregation, he resigned, later to become vicar of Everton, near Sandy. Stapleford is twinned with Villedomer, in the

Loire The Loire (, also ; ; oc, Léger, ; la, Liger) is the longest river in France and the 171st longest in the world. With a length of , it drains , more than a fifth of France's land, while its average discharge is only half that of the Rhône ...

region of France. Stapleford is also twinned with

Nachingwea Nachingwea is a district in the Lindi Region of Tanzania. The district is bordered to the north by the Ruangwa District, to the east by the Lindi Rural District, to the south-east by the Mtwara Region, and to the south-west by the Ruvuma Region. ...

, one of the six districts in the

Lindi Region Lindi Region (''Mkoa wa Lindi'' in Swahili) is one of Tanzania's 31 administrative regions. The region covers an area of . The region is comparable in size to the combined land area of the nation state of Sri Lanka. The regional capital is the m ...

Tanzania Tanzania (; ), officially the United Republic of Tanzania ( sw, Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania), is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It borders Uganda to the north; Kenya to the northeast; Comoro Islands and ...

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