West Wratting is a village and civil parish 10 miles southeast 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 ...

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 ...

. At above sea level, it can claim to be one of the highest villages in Cambridgeshire. The parish covers 3,543 acres in south east Cambridge, a thin strip, less than two miles wide, stretching from the

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

to Newmarket road to the border with Suffolk. Much of its western border follows the

Fleam Dyke Fleam Dyke is a linear earthwork between Fulbourn and Balsham in Cambridgeshire, initiated at some timepoint between AD 330 and AD 510. It is three miles long and seven metres high from ditch to bank, and its ditch faces westwards, implying inv ...

. It is bordered by

Weston Colville Weston Colville is a village in South Cambridgeshire, 10 miles southeast of Cambridge and 6 miles south of Newmarket, close to the border with Suffolk. History The parish of Weston Colville forms a long thin area of 3235 acres stretching from j ...

to the north and east, and by

Balsham Balsham is a rural village and civil parish in the county of Cambridgeshire, England, which has much expanded since the 1960s and is now one of several dormitory settlements of Cambridge. The village is south east of the centre of Cambridge be ...

and

West Wickham West Wickham is an area of South East London, England, mainly within the London Borough of Bromley with some parts lying in the London Borough of Croydon. It lies south of Park Langley and Eden Park, west of Hayes and Coney Hall, north of ...

to the south.

History

The parish is believed to have been formed as an offshoot of

Great Wratting Great Wratting is a village and civil parish in England, about four miles from Haverhill, Suffolk, Haverhill, Suffolk, in the valley of the River Stour, Suffolk, River Stour. There is a ford across the Stour in the centre of the village, where b ...

in Suffolk. Land at the village is recorded in 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 manusc ...

(1086) as belonging to one Harduin de Scalers. The same family owned the land until it was granted by Stephen de Scalariis and his wife, Juliana, to the Nunnery of St Mary and St Radegund, Cambridge, on the placement there of their daughter Sibil before 1161. It houses a

smock mill The smock mill is a type of windmill that consists of a sloping, horizontally weatherboarded, thatched, or shingled tower, usually with six or eight sides. It is topped with a roof or cap that rotates to bring the sails into the wind. This typ ...

dated to 1726, the oldest confirmed in the country. Two 18th century manor houses, West Wratting Hall and West Wratting Park, remain standing. West Wratting Hall was home to E.P. Frost who built an unsuccessful flapping-wing flying machine ("

ornithopter An ornithopter (from Greek ''ornis, ornith-'' "bird" and ''pteron'' "wing") is an aircraft that flies by flapping its wings. Designers sought to imitate the flapping-wing flight of birds, bats, and insects. Though machines may differ in form, ...

"), powered by steam. Frost was president of the Aeronautical Society from 1908 to 1911, and a later version of his machine can be seen in the

Shuttleworth Collection The Shuttleworth Collection is a working aeronautical and automotive collection located at the Old Warden Aerodrome, Old Warden in Bedfordshire, England. It is the oldest in the world and one of the most prestigious, due to the variety of old a ...

. West Wratting Park was home to

Lady Ursula d'Abo Lady Ursula Isabel d'Abo (''née'' Manners, formerly Marreco; 8 November 1916 – 2 November 2017) was an English socialite and aristocrat who served as a maid of honour to the Queen at the Coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in 193 ...

in her later life. Towards the end of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

an airfield was set up outside the village at RAF Wratting Common, and part of No. 195 Squadron RAF was posted there equipped with

Avro Lancaster The Avro Lancaster is a British Second World War heavy bomber. It was designed and manufactured by Avro as a contemporary of the Handley Page Halifax, both bombers having been developed to the same specification, as well as the Short Stirlin ...

s. After the war in the late 1940s, the station was used to host foreign displaced persons and workers in the Westward Ho! and North Sea scheme work programmes. According to Ordnance Survey, West Wratting is the second highest village in Cambridgeshire (390 feet, 120 m above sea level) after Great Chishill (479 ft. 146 m above sea level). Listed as ''Wreattinge'' in the 10th century and ''Waratinge'' in the

, the village's name means "place where crosswort or

hellebore Commonly known as hellebores (), the Eurasian genus ''Helleborus'' consists of approximately 20 species of herbaceous or evergreen perennial flowering plants in the family Ranunculaceae, within which it gave its name to the tribe of Helleboreae. ...

grows". The area between West Wratting and

is said to be the haunt of the mythical

Shug Monkey In the folklore of Cambridgeshire, the Shug Monkey is a creature that shares features of a dog and monkey, which reportedly haunted Slough Hill Lane (a street that leads from the village of West Wratting to nearby Balsham). The creature, believed ...

Church

The village had a church from at least the early 12th century. The present parish church, dedicated to

St Andrew Andrew the Apostle ( grc-koi, Ἀνδρέᾱς, Andréās ; la, Andrēās ; , syc, ܐܰܢܕ݁ܪܶܐܘܳܣ, ʾAnd’reʾwās), also called Saint Andrew, was an apostle of Jesus according to the New Testament. He is the brother of Simon Pete ...

since the 16th century, includes elements dating back to the 13th century. The present building consists of a chancel with north vestry, clerestoried nave with south porch, and west tower. The chancel arch dates from the 13th century, and the tower from the 14th, though foundations of a small tower predating the 13th century have been found. The church has a keen band of bell ringers who meet for practice on Thursday evening and ring for services on Sunday. A nonconformist chapel was built in around 1815, but numbers declined in the 1960s to the point of dereliction.

Village life

Today the village houses one pub, the Chestnut Tree, which opened in the late 19th century. There were three alehouses licensed in the village in 1632. The Crown Inn, opposite the church, recorded from 1788, was renamed The Lamb in the 20th century but closed at some point after 1975. A National day school was opened in 1861 but had completely disbanded by 1971. According to Ordnance Survey, West Wratting is the second highest village in Cambridgeshire (390 feet, 120 m above sea level) after Great Chishill (479 ft. 146 m above sea level).

Politics

West Wratting and the surrounding area is part of the South East Cambridgeshire for UK general elections. A safe seat for the

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 i ...

party, the seat is currently held by

Lucy Frazer Lucy Frazer (born 17 May 1972) is a British politician serving as Minister of State for Housing and Planning since October 2022. A member of the Conservative Party, she previously served as Solicitor General for England and Wales and Minister ...

, following the retirement of Sir

James Paice Sir James Edward Thornton Paice, DL (born 24 April 1949) is a Conservative Party politician in the United Kingdom. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for South East Cambridgeshire between 1987 and 2015, when he stood down from parliament. ...

. At the 2015 general election, the Conservatives won 48.5% of the vote in the constituency, leaving the Liberal Democrats and

Labour Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the labour ...

a distant second and third respectively.Cambridgeshire South East
BBC News

References

External links

West Wratting village website
{{authority control Villages in Cambridgeshire Civil parishes in Cambridgeshire South Cambridgeshire District