Hardwick 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. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

in the county of

Cambridgeshire Cambridgeshire (abbreviated Cambs.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East of England and East Anglia. It is bordered by Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the north-east, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfor ...

, England with a large housing estate located about west of the city of

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

, England. The village lies immediately south of the A428 road between Cambridge and St Neots. It is about east of the newly developed town of Cambourne. The village is nearly on the

Greenwich Meridian The Greenwich meridian is a prime meridian, a geographical reference line that passes through the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, in London, England. From 1884 to 1974, the Greenwich meridian was the international standard prime meridian, ...

. The northern border of the village is St Neots Road, now largely bypassed by the A428, with no houses or property on the north side of the road. In the 2001 census, the population was 2,630 in 946 households, increasing to 2,670 in 1,017 households at the 2011 Census. Historically, the village of Hardwick is hundreds of years old with the first recorded mention in 991 AD and an entry 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 at the behest of William the Conqueror. The manuscript was originally known by ...

of 1086. Hardwick used to consist of just a few houses and farmland around St Mary's Church, on what is now the southern edge of the village. There are two sites with original water pumps, one near the church and the other quite central just off Pump Lane. The village's

bakery A bakery is an establishment that produces and sells flour-based baked goods made in an oven such as bread, cookies, cakes, doughnuts, bagels, Pastry, pastries, and pies. Some retail bakeries are also categorized as Coffeehouse, cafés, servi ...

was sited next to a row of houses just to the east of the pub at the end closest to the church, and the only remnant is the shell of the building which has become a garage. In its very early years, Unipalm had an office in Broadway house, indirectly linking the village to the early history of commercial internet in the UK. It has expanded greatly since the 1960s, mainly due to an estate of hundreds of houses built on the orchard land to the north of the original village, with the roads taking the names of the displaced trees (e.g. Ellison, Bramley, Limes, Pippin,

Quince The quince (; ''Cydonia oblonga'') is the sole member of the genus ''Cydonia'' in the Malinae subtribe (which contains apples, pears, and other fruits) of the Rosaceae family. It is a deciduous tree that bears hard, aromatic bright golden-yel ...

, Worcester...). Although significant building ceased, a number of new houses have been built over the years all over the village - wherever developers were able to acquire any plots of land; these are often the once large gardens of the earliest estate houses. The most recent significant developments are Meridian Close and the Grace Crescent. The Blue Lion, the only pub in the village, lies on Main Street. The Sports and Social Club is based next to the football and cricket pitches in the centre of the village. The Scout and Guides have a hut near the Sports and Social Club. St. Mary's church built a church hall, called the Cabin, which opened in 2020. Hardwick Community Primary School is the local pre- and

primary school A primary school (in Ireland, India, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, South Africa, and Singapore), elementary school, or grade school (in North America and the Philippines) is a school for primary ...

for children in Hardwick. Children of

secondary school A secondary school, high school, or senior school, is an institution that provides secondary education. Some secondary schools provide both ''lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper secondary education'' (ages 14 to 18), i.e., b ...

age usually go on to attend Comberton Village College, located in Comberton, southwest of Hardwick. The village shop and

post office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letter (message), letters and parcel (package), parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post o ...

are also on Cambridge Road. A beauticians nearby took over the site, after significant refurbishment, of another village shop which had failed and lain empty for some years. The village has mains gas, sewage and water for most residents, though some off the main estate are not on mains gas. Telephone and Internet service are provided using BT's infrastructure, focussed on the Madingley telephone (area code 01954), which is on the corner of Cambridge Road and St. Neots Road.

PSTN The public switched telephone network (PSTN) is the aggregate of the world's telephone networks that are operated by national, regional, or local telephony operators. It provides infrastructure and services for public telephony. The PSTN consists ...

and

ADSL Asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) is a type of digital subscriber line (DSL) technology, a data communications technology that enables faster data transmission over Copper wire, copper telephone lines than a conventional voiceband modem ...

2/2+ services are provided by the exchange, and there are two FTTC (

VDSL Very high-speed digital subscriber line (VDSL) and very high-speed digital subscriber line 2 (VDSL2) are digital subscriber line (DSL) technologies providing data transmission faster than the earlier standards of asymmetric digital subscriber li ...

2/2+) cabinets. NTL/

Virgin Virginity is a social construct that denotes the state of a person who has never engaged in sexual intercourse. As it is not an objective term with an operational definition, social definitions of what constitutes virginity, or the lack thereof ...

abandoned plans to fit cable TV about 1990 when their initial expansion plans ran out of cash, although they do have communication trunks running along St. Neots Road. The old parts of the village have their telephone and/or optical fibre internet delivered over poles, whilst the 70's part of the village has its telephone cabling buried, sometimes without ducting and no optical fibre available. The most recent parts have optical fibre in underground ducts. Cambridge Fibre are intending to offer Internet service and have been building infrastructure. There are a number of local businesses at the edge, based on St Neots Road, in Newton House and Broadway House. In November 2006 part of Newton House burned down, destroying a takeaway food outlet and a Turkish restaurant, while the rest of the building has been left unoccupied pending reconstruction work. Broadway House is home to several businesses. The adjacent property was the Conservative Party headquarters for Cambridgeshire. Further west on St Neots Road a café, a beauty salon, a pet shop, gym, a car repair/maintenance garage, medical clinic and an agricultural machinery merchant can be found. In 2006 to 2007 the A42
was improved
with a new section of dual carriageway, replacing the section of single carriageway, past Cambourne to Caxton Gibbet. Around the same time the postcode was changed from CB3 to CB23 for this sector.

References

External links

Hardwick Village Website

Hardwick Evangelical Church

St. Mary's Church Website

The murals
- of historic interest as they date back to the 15th century - se

Google Maps

Madingley Exchange Information
at SamKnows {{authority control Villages in Cambridgeshire Civil parishes in Cambridgeshire South Cambridgeshire District

See also

References

External links