Westwick Park

The parkland to the south and west of Westwick Hall was probably the site of part of the medieval settlement. Ridge and furrow can be seen to the south of the hall, as visible in the aerial photograph below (and, with more imagination, in the first of the above photographs), and other earthworks to the west. The ridges, and the furrows between them, arose from the way in which the land was ploughed. Usually, ploughing was done in a clockwise direction around a rectangular strip of land. Because medieval ploughs turned the soil over to the right, this led to soil building up towards the centre of the strip, forming the ridge. Each strip would typically be managed by one family. The ridges provided better drainage than a flat field would, and ensured that there was always some drier ground (at the top of the ridge) for crops that would otherwise become waterlogged in wet weather and also some wetter ground (in the furrow) for moisture-loving crops that would otherwise become dried out in periods of little rain. The ridge and furrow can be seen in the grassland from the public bridleway that runs through the park from Westwick Bridge.

The park is currently used as sheep pasture, and also contains a number of mature trees including oaks.

Aerial photograph looking southwest (Oakington in top right corner) with Westwick Park occupying most of the centre of the picture

At one time, the Beck Brook flowed through the park from where it crosses under the former Cambridge to St Ives railway (now Cambridgeshire Guided Busway) to where it flows under Westwick Bridge. The brook was diverted to follow along the railway, with a dogleg along Station road to Westwick Bridge and another dogleg under the bridge, after the railway was built in the late 1840s. However, the original course still formed the parish boundary between Westwick and Oakington until the two parishes were joined in 1985.

A long, straight, shallow ditch running parallel to the bridleway from near the busway to near Westwick Bridge can also still be seen in the park, and in the above photograph. This may have been a leat channel (an artificial watercourse typically used to supply water to a mill) that took water to a watermill at Westwick Bridge; records exist of a mill, known as Loumilne, at this location at some point in the Middle Ages.