Exning is a 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 ...
in the
West Suffolk district of
Suffolk in eastern England.
It lies just off the
A14 trunk road, roughly east-northeast of
Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a College town, 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. Cam ...
, and south-southeast of
Ely. The nearest large town is
Newmarket.
The most conspicuous building in Exning is the church of St Martin, which is visible from the A14.
History
Local lore reputes Exning to have been the capital of the
Iceni
The Iceni ( , ) or Eceni were a Brittonic tribe of eastern Britain during the Iron Age and early Roman era. Their territory included present-day Norfolk and parts of Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, and bordered the area of the Corieltauvi to the we ...
tribe and therefore the home of
Queen Boadicea (Boudicca).
At the time of William the Conqueror, Exning was in Staploe Hundred. Later, the settlement was in the Liberty of Ely. When the powers of the Liberty were reduced, some of its territory returned to Suffolk, including Exning – albeit as a part of
Lackford Hundred, where it would remain until the Victorian period. For several centuries, the part of Suffolk centred on Exning was almost an enclave of the county within the confines of Cambridgeshire. The parish of Newmarket All Saints was transferred from Cambridgeshire to this virtual enclave in 1894, but it continued to be practically detached until boundary changes in the area widened considerably the "bridge" between it and the rest of Suffolk a hundred years later.
Exning is reputed to have been the birthplace of
Saint Ethelreda, to whom the
cathedral
A cathedral is a church that contains the '' cathedra'' () of a bishop, thus serving as the central church of a diocese, conference, or episcopate. Churches with the function of "cathedral" are usually specific to those Christian denominatio ...
at
Ely is dedicated, though this is disputed.
A spring at Exning was named St Wendreda's Well, and a local legend had it that the seventh-century
Saint Wendreda used its water for healing. Newmarket jockeys used to take horses there to drink before a race.
is an early Victorian building which was frequently visited by Queen Mary.
During the
Second World War
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 opposi ...
, the headquarters of
No. 3 Group of
RAF Bomber Command were located in Harraton House. Nearby Newmarket Heath, the northwest corner of which borders on Exning, was used as an airfield for, amongst others, Stirling III Bombers of
No. 75 (NZ) Squadron RAF. Little evidence remains of this chapter in Exning's history, apart from a single aircraft hangar on Heath Road,
Burwell (near the One Thousand Guineas Connect service station on the A14 trunk road) and a memorial plaque on the racecourse.
See also
*
Landwade, a neighbouring village that was formerly in Cambridgeshire but is now part of Exning parish
References
External links
Exning Parish CouncilExning history and picturesExning Cricket ClubExning parish churches
Villages in Suffolk
Forest Heath
Civil parishes in Suffolk
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