Medieval Period (1066–1485): Crowland’s Manor
The largest manor in Oakington in 1086, comprising more than half of the total land recorded, was owned by the Abbot of Crowland Abbey near Peterborough. Why was land in Oakington owned by Crowland? According to the Crowland Chronicle (an account thought to have been written in the 14th century and to be of questionable reliability) the abbey was re-founded during the reign of King Edred (946–955) by a clerk known as Thurcytel after it had been destroyed by the Danes a century before. Thurcytel is said to have been a kinsman of both the Archbishop of York and of several English kings, and to have endowed Crowland with various lands and treasures (which he had presumably received from the kings he had served) when he re-founded the abbey and became abbot. True or not, it is certainly the case that Crowland was the largest landholder in Oakington both before and after the Norman conquest of 1066, and that at that time it also had substantial estates in nearby Dry Drayton and Cottenham as well as various other places across Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire, Huntingdonshire and Northamptonshire.
Around half of the Abbot of Crowland’s land in Oakington was leased to tenants, with the remainder being held as demesne – land reserved for the personal use of the Lord of the Manor (his ‘home farm’). This land would have been farmed by the monks of Crowland, along with that of nearby Crowland estates at Dry Drayton and Cottenham. From the late 1200’s the manor was recorded as having about 220 acres of demesne and about 350 acres of tenanted land. The monks’ manor house, from where the land was farmed and administered, was opposite the church. It later was later the farmhouse for Manor Farm, and is now 71 High Street. By the 14 century it had a hall, chamber and kitchen, as well as a surrounding wall. The manor also had its own court, dealing with minor civil and criminal cases, and also forming Crowland’s centralised court for its other Cambridgeshire estates. The Crowland Manor in Oakington also formed the centre of the Crowland’s Cambridgeshire court. Records of the court exist from 1290 to 1538, and include for example an alewife being fined for brewing with bad water in 1435. Another alewife was fined in 1440 for taking down her alehouse sign while she still had ale to sell.
Most of the grain produced by the demesne home farm, as well as some pigs and poultry, was sent to the Crowland Manor at Cottenham, from where it was transported by water to Crowland Abbey in Lincolnshire. The remainder was consumed on the manor – the oats and dredge (a mixture of barley and oats) mainly by the plough animals and the other crops by the manor’s staff. Apart from between 1290 and 1322, the abbey did not keep at peranent sheep flock on its Oakington demesne, but sheep were sent there for shearing and grazing from Crowland’s adjacent manors at Cottenham and Dry Drayton. Between 1290 and 1322 a flock of 100–120 breeding ewes were kept at Oakington, while the male sheep were kept in Cottenham.
Following the Black Death in 1349, which killed around half of the tenants of Crowland’s manor, wages and other costs rose, making the demesne home farm less profitable. The abbey finally leased it in 1429, with the first tenant being John Gilbert. It was leased continuously from this point on.
Post-Medieval: Queens’ College Manor and Farms
Crowlands Abbey was dissolved in 1539, and its land seized by the Crown, as part of King Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries. The manor in Oakington was sold by the Crown to a group of 13 people from London, including the brewer John Pope. By 1549, when he passed it to his relative Anthony Pope, John Pope had increased his share of the land to a fifth, and by the end of 1549 Anthony Pope was probably the sole owner. He then sold the manor to Queens’ College Cambridge in about 1560. This included the impropriate rectory – meaning that the College collected the tithes paid by villages to the church in return for providing a vicar.
The Popes leased the manor’s demesne to John Halfhead and his son Thomas. The lease subsequently passed to Robert Shute, Torrell Joscelyn, and Samuel Fortrey (husband of Joscelyn’s only daughter Theodora) who occupied the manor house in the 1660s and 1670s. Fortrey died in 1680, and the lease passed to his sons Samuel (died 1688) and William, who sold it to Guy Sindrey. In addition to leasing from Queens’ College, Sindrey also owned a farm of around 200 acres in Oakington. His son (also called Guy) held the lease until his death in 1761, and after his widow Grace died in 1772 the estate was reclaimed by Queens’ College.
Following Enclosure in 1834, Queens’ College emerged with 485 acres of land in the western half of the parish. This land was farmed as a unit by the Coles family until 1860, when the southern part (232 acres) was split off and farmed from the new Slate Hall Farm. This part was subsequently sold by Queens’ College in 1924 to Chivers Ltd, who in turn sold it to W J Cowell in 1959. Queens’ College sold the northern part of the land in 1940, with the Manor Farmhouse and 37 acres going to the Papworth family and the rest of the land to the Ministry of Defence for the construction of RAF Oakington.
Sources include:
- ‘Oakington: 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/pp192-195 [accessed 17 September 2024].
- 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
- https://opendomesday.org/place/TL4164/oakington/
If you have any information or photos of Crowland Abbey’s Manor / Queens’ College Manor, please leave a comment below.
See also: 71 High Street – The Manor House
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