The name ‘Westwick’ derives from the Anglo-Saxon ‘wic’ meaning a farm or settlement. But why ‘west’, when it is located north-east of Oakington? The reason is that Westwick was originally a satellite settlement of Cottenham (which it does lie to the west of). Links to Oakington began to develop from the late 13th century, but it was not until 1985 that the civil parish of Westwick was merged with that of Oakington to form the present civil parish of Oakington and Westwick.
For much of the 19th century most of the land in Westwick was owned by the Linton family, who built Westwick Hall and Westwick Hall Farm in the 1850s and 60s. At its height, the Linton’s farm covered 500 acres (extending well beyond Westwick) and employed all but a few of Westwick’s inhabitants. The Lintons also built the cottages of Westwick Terrace in the 1870s to house their workers.
Medieval Westwick: A Tale of Two Manors
Westwick is recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 as having three households, putting it in the smallest 20% of settlements recorded. It was within the Hundred of Chesterton (a Hundred was a group of parishes forming a subdivision of a county that had its own court), which also included Cottenham, Histon, Chesterton, Dry Drayton and Childerley. Oakington, on the other hand, was within the Hundred of Northstowe, which also included Longstanton, Rampton, Lolworth, Madingley, Girton, Impington, Milton, Landbeach and Waterbeach.
The Domesday Book listed Westwick under two manors. The larger of these, later known as Lisles and which was eventually to become Westwick Hall, covered about 240 acres and included three tenant households. The other manor, later known as Belbouches, covered about 120 acres and had no tenant households. It is generally said to have been sited on the north side of the present day Oakington to Cottenham road, although a location south of the road in what is now Westwick Park has also been suggested.
By 1279, the hamlet had grown to around 20 resident families, mostly renting land from the larger manor, which at that time was held by the Lisle family. The smaller manor had meanwhile passed to the Belbouche family. There was no church in Westwick, so inhabitants attended church in Cottenham, reflecting the origin of Westwick as an outpost of Cottenham. However, around the end of the 13th century Westwick residents began to be buried in Oakington churchyard instead of in Cottenham, after the chaplain of Cottenham apparently refused to bury them for fear of death. Westwick Bridge, which crosses Beck Brook on the road to Oakington, was also first recorded in 1279. It was later repaired in the late 14th century by the manor of Crowlands Abbey in Oakington, and was rebuilt in a new position in c.1835.
By 1315, Westwick inhabitants were attending all church services in Oakington, having their children baptised there, and paying tithes to Oakington instead of to the rector of Cottenham. The collection of the Westwick tithes by Crowlands Abbey, who held Oakington church, was formalised in 1316, and from that point on Westwick was ecclesiastically part of Oakington. For civil purposes, however, it remained a separate parish in the same hundred as Cottenham, and was still treated as part of Cottenham for some purposes for some time afterwards.
Apart from a small area near Cuckoo Bridge in the north of the parish, all of Westwick lies above the 20 foot contour (about 6 m) and so would have been safe from becoming fenland throughout the Middle Ages. This is in contrast to the area known as the Holme that lies just to the northeast of Cuckoo Bridge in Cottenham parish, which appears to have become fen for a time in the early 1300s, becoming known as Holmere and marking the termination of Beck Brook at this time. There is evidence for a significant rising of the water table around the early 1300s and although Westwick would have remained above the fen line it would not have been immune to periodic flooding in areas near the Beck Brook. There is some evidence for both manor and peasant houses in Oakington, Westwick, Cottenham and Histon being relocated to higher ground around this time, presumably to avoid flooding. This appears to have included parts of Oakington on the south side of Water Lane towards Oakington Brook, and it has been suggested that Westwick Hall (or Lisles manor as it would have been at that time) was moved uphill to the site of the current Westwick Hall from an earlier location closer to Beck Brook and Westwick Bridge in what is now Westwick Park.
In common with much of the rest of Europe, Westwick’s population declined in the later Middle Ages, with only 10 houses being recorded in 1674. The depopulation would no doubt have been driven in part by plagues such as the Black Death of 1348–49, which is estimated to have killed around 40–60% of England’s population. The two manors, Lisles and Belbouches, followed contrasting fortunes during this period. The smaller Belbouches manor appears to have already been divided by 1315, and a further portion of Belbouches land was acquired by the Harwards family at some point between 1346 and 1428. Richard Belbouche, the last of the Belbouches to be recorded as owning land in Westwick, held the manor house and 23.5 acres of land in the 1400s, but by 1486 the house and land formerly belonging to him had been conveyed to the trustees of Cottenham church and causeway estate.
The larger Lisles manor, on the other hand, was held by the Lisle family and their successors the Windsors, Scropes and Hindes until 1597, when it was sold to the Bendyshe family. It was subsequently sold to the Perse family in 1618, who in turn sold it to the Buck family in 1652. During this period the various owners enlarged the estate by buying up additional land in Westwick, including land that had previously been part of Belbouches. A large manor house with 12 hearths was recorded in 1674, at a time when there were only nine other houses in Westwick. Of these, five hand just one hearth, three had two, and one had five.
19th century Westwick: The Lintons
The former Lisles manor already covered 340 acres when it was sold in 1765, and was further expanded by the Lintons when it was bought by William Linton c.1809. By 1836 the Lintons owned almost four-fifths of Westwick, as well as land outside the parish, and by the time William Linton was succeeded by his son John Linton in 1861 the Lintons farm covered 500 acres. Having shrunk to five households comprising 28 individuals in 1794, the population of Westwick grew throughout much of the 19th century, reaching 20 families (the same as recorded in 1279) with about 80 individuals in the 1870s. Many of these families were employed by the Lintons as farm labourers.
Most of the buildings present in Westwick today also date from this period. The Lintons built Westwick Hall in 1855–56, replacing the previous manor house recorded in 1674. The Lintons also built Westwick Hall Farm in 1868, and Westwick Terrace was built in 1875 by John Linton as a row of eight cottages to house some of his workers, replacing earlier dwellings. The Lintons also built Cuckoo Farm in the north of the parish in 1852, but this was taken down in 1901. The only other houses in the parish from this time are Station Cottages, which were built for railway workers in the 19th century. The Cambridge to St Ives railway, which opened in 1847, was just across the parish boundary in Oakington parish, as was the New Inn public house (built c.1852) and the adjacent row of terraced cottages that were also built for railway workers. These buildings, together with Oakington railway station, were never technically part of Westwick parish, as they lay on the Oakington side of the parish boundary which followed the old course of the Beck Brook and crossed the road at Westwick bridge.
Coprolite mining
In addition to farming, coprolite mining may have taken place in the late 1800s. Coprolite (meaning literally ‘dung stone’) is often said to be fossilised dinosaur dung and some coprolite nodules may indeed have this as their origin, but most of those found in Cambridgeshire are thought to have originated from the shells of marine creatures. Either way, they are rich in phosphate, and can be processed to yield a very effective fertiliser. The discovery of this fact in the 1850s led to the “Cambridgeshire coprolite mining rush” throughout the later part of the 1800s. Mining was taking place on Coldham’s Common in Cambridge in the late 1850s and from there spread to nearby villages. By the late 1870s Cambridgeshire was supplying almost all of the phosphate material for fertiliser in Britain. Farmers could often get more money by leasing their fields to mining firms than from agriculture, so it was common for firms to rent land for a few years, extract the coprolite nodules that were there, and then return the land to the farmer afterwards. Mining took place in a band across Cambridgeshire from near Royston in the southwest to Soham in the northeast, following the line of geological deposits.
Westwick would have been on the edge of this band, and although there is no documentary evidence of coprolite mining in Westwick there are reports that it may have taken place here. One local story, documented by local historian Bernard O’Connor, tells of a lot of cheap, low quality housing being put up in Westwick in the 1860s to house coprolite diggers, and local historian Richard Grove mentions shallow platforms at Westwick as being the site of coprolite mining in his book The Cambridgeshire Coprolite Mining Rush. This may account, at least in part, for the significant increase in Westwick’s population around this time already noted above.
Coprolite mining proved to be a short-lived industry. By the 1880s most of the easily accessible coprolite had been extracted, and there was also increasing competition from fertiliser imported from overseas. By the end of the 1880s coprolite mining in Cambridgeshire had all but stopped.
20th century Westwick
After reaching a height in the 1870s, the population of Westwick again declined in the last decades of the 19th century, dropping to 13 families in 1891. Most of the growth in the earlier part of the 19th century was from the Lintons’ farm labourers (or possibly from coprolite miners), who generally did not form established families in the village. Farming activity on the Lintons’ farm also dropped, with only about 100 sheep being recorded in 1905 compared to over 700 sheep and lambs in 1866. The population of Westwick remained at around 12–15 families throughout the 20th century, although the number of individuals continued to decrease, with 33 people being recorded in 1981.
John H. H. Linton sold Westwick Hall in 1936, along with 35 acres of parkland. The remainder of the estate was bought be the Pearson family in 1939. The Pearsons farmed much of the parish from Westwick Farm from 1939 until the 1960s–70s, when Westwick Farm was sold to an investment company.
A few additional houses were added to Westwick during the 20th century. These included Foxelwood, which was built in 1914 by the Morris family as part of their market gardening business. Foxelwood was occupied by Miss Bertha Morris, who grew fruit there until at least 1937. The Morris family also occupied an adjacent farmhouse to the east of Foxelwood, which stood opposite Westwick Farm. The top of this house was taken off by an aeroplane during the war, and it was subsequently completely demolished.
Garden Cottage (adjacent to Station Cottages) was present in 1973 (when it was owned by Westwick Hall) and possibly earlier, while the modern New House (adjacent to Westwick Terrace) may have been built later.
Sources include:
- ‘Westwick: Introduction’, in A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely: Volume 9, Chesterton, Northstowe, and Papworth Hundreds, ed. A P M Wright, C P Lewis( London, 1989), British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/cambs/vol9/pp107-108 [accessed 20 July 2024].
- Westwick.indd (scambs.gov.uk)
- Archaeology of Cambridgeshire Vol 2: South East Cambridgeshire and the Fen Edge, Alison Taylor, Cambridgeshire County Council, 1998
- Liable to Floods: Village landscape on the edge of the fens A.D.450-1850, J.R.Ravensdale, Cambridge University Press, 1974
- The Cambridgeshire Coprolite Mining Rush, Richard Grove, Oleander Press, 1976
- Coprolites (bernardoconnor.org.uk)
Station Cottages | 1 | 2 | – Westwick Terrace | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
| Foxelwood | Garden Cottage | Lambs Cross Farm | New House | The Old Granary | Westwick Bridge | Westwick Hall | Westwick Farm | Westwick Park |
Lost buildings and features | Belbouches Manor | Dovecote | Morris Farmhouse | Westwick Water Pump | Windmill |
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