Manor Farm can be traced back to the Manor of Crowland Abbey, which was the largest landholder in Oakington at the time of Domesday book of 1086. The manor house was probably on the site of the present manor farmhouse. Part of the estate was leased to tenants while the rest formed the manor’s demesne (home farm) and would have been farmed by the monks of Crowland Abbey (near Peterborough). After Crowland Abbey was dissolved in 1539 the estate was purchased by Queens’ College Cambridge, which remained a major landowner in Oakington until into the 20th century. Much of the land that had formerly been Manor Farm was sold to the Ministry of Defence in 1940 for the construction of RAF Oakington, while the manor farmhouse and a small amount of land went to the Papworth family.
For more on the manor, see Manor of Crowland Abbey and Queens’ College. For more on the farmhouse, see 71 High Street – The Manor House.
Oakington Aeroplane
Between 1906 and 1930 the Daily Mail newspaper offered a series of prizes for early aviation flights, designed to stimulate the development of the industry. One such prize, announced in 1908, offered £1000 (equivalent to about 130,000 in 2024) for a mile-long circular flight by an all-British aeroplane. London engineers A. M. Grose and N. A. Feary were among those to take up the challenge. They chose Oakington as the location in which to build their aeroplane, apparently in order to dodge the inquisitive press, and presumably because one of them was the brother of Mrs Cook whose husband owned Manor Farm. The monoplane was built in a large barn at Manor Farm. It had a wooden skeleton, designed to take a 20-horsepower engine, and was similar in construction to the French Blériot monoplane that was the first to fly across the English Channel in 1909 (thus claiming another of the Daily Mail’s prizes).
RW wrote: “My father remembered with other boys helping to pull the plane to the top of the hill near the mill. The plane would run down the hill but he said it only took off momentarily when it hit a bump! There was good natured banter between the two men [Grose and Feary], one saying the other ought to be the first to fly it because he had a wife and children to support, to which the other replied that he had a widowed mother.“
Sadly the Oakington aeroplane never flew, and the Daily Mail’s prize was claimed in October 1909 by John Moore-Brabazon on the Isle of Sheppey.
A newspaper article of June 1910 reported an apparently strange object being towed through Oakington, which got the villagers excited that they might at last see an aeroplane in action, but to their disappointment the object turned out to be an ordinary farm water cart being towed backwards by another cart. An aeroplane was, however, seen flying over Oakington in late 1911. This was reportedly the first aeroplane to pass over the village, and most of the villagers got a good view of it. Oakington’s long association with aeroplanes had begun, and the story would be taken up again in 1940 with the construction of RAF Oakington.
Sources include:
- Ralph Warboys History of Oakington
- Mike Petty’s Oakington Scrapbook
If you have any information or photos of Manor Farm, or of the Oakington aeroplane, please leave a comment below.
See also: | Manor of Crowland Abbey and Queens’ College | 71 High Street – The Manor House | RAF Oakington |