Snailwell 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 ...

East East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the fac ...

Cambridgeshire Cambridgeshire (abbreviated Cambs.) is a 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 Northamptonshire to the ...

, England around north of Newmarket.

History

The parish of Snailwell covers an area of in the extension of eastern Cambridgeshire that surrounds the town of Newmarket in Suffolk. The western and southern boundaries also form the border between Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, with the southern boundary following the line of the ancient

Icknield Way The Icknield Way is an ancient trackway in southern and eastern England that runs from Norfolk to Wiltshire. It follows the chalk escarpment that includes the Berkshire Downs and Chiltern Hills. Background It is generally said to be, wi ...

(now the B1506). The northern boundary with Fordham follows the River Snail that rises in the parish, and the eastern boundary with Chippenham follows field boundaries. The parish has been occupied since at least the

Bronze Age The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second prin ...

when woodland was cleared. Ten

tumuli A tumulus (plural tumuli) is a mound of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves. Tumuli are also known as barrows, burial mounds or ''kurgans'', and may be found throughout much of the world. A cairn, which is a mound of stones built ...

, discovered in 1879, were situated alongside the Icknield Way but were flattened in 1941 when preparing space for a wartime airfield.

RAF Snailwell Royal Air Force Snailwell or more simply RAF Snailwell is a former Royal Air Force station located near to the village of Snailwell, Cambridgeshire, located north of Newmarket, Suffolk, England. History * USAAF 347th Fighter Squadron Ope ...

was open from 1941 until 1946 just north of the railway line towards Bury St Edmunds and housed primarily

American Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal ...

personnel with contingents from the

R.A.F. The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and ...

, 302 Polish squadron and the Royal Belgian Air Force. Sections of the concrete track and air-raid shelters can still be seen. Due to its proximity to Newmarket, the village has been heavily involved in the breeding and training of horses since the Jockey Club of Newmarket bought in the village for training in around 1882. In around 1900 Snailwell Stud was founded to the south-west of the village and grew to one of the most renowned in the country. Its most famous stallion was Chamossaire (1943–65), and in 1965 a life-size bronze statue of the horse was made by John Skeating to stand where the Newmarket Road reaches the village. Around a third of the land in the parish is now involved in the horse-racing industry. Listed as ''Sneillewelle'' in around 1050, and ''Snelleuuelle'' 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 manus ...

of 1086, the village's name means "spring or stream infested with snails" or perhaps "sluggish stream". The spring in question may well be that in the north west of the parish that is the source of the River Snail.

Church

There has been a church in Snailwell since at least the 11th century and the present parish church dates from this period. Now dedicated to St Peter, it was dedicated to St Andrew in the 13th century. The current building consists of a clerestoried nave with north and south aisles, chancel and a circular west tower, one of only two round-tower churches in Cambridgeshire (the other being in Bartlow). The tower is the oldest part of the church and was built in the 11th century. It had a lead spire until the mid-19th century. The chancel dates from the 13th century. The church had fallen into disrepair by 1820 and attendance fell. In 1878 a new rector immediately closed the church in order to perform extensive renovation. The 17th-century lawyer Sir Isaac Thornton is buried in the church, as is Sir Arthur Clarke (1715-1806), the last of the baronets of Snailwell.

Village life

A pub has been recorded in Snailwell since at least 1670. The village's only remaining pub, The George and Dragon, opened before 1834, moving to its present site in 1842. An annual fair, the Snailwell Medieval Fayre, is held each May in the village, though none was held in 2011. The village school closed in 1933; the building served as the village hall until 1976, when it became a private house.

References

External links

{{authority control Villages in Cambridgeshire Civil parishes in Cambridgeshire East Cambridgeshire District