Prehistoric and Roman Oakington
A few palaeolithic (early stone age) hand axes have been found in Oakington, as well as some waste flint chippings from the mid and late stone age, suggesting that there may have been a chipping floor here at some point. The finding of pieces of Roman pottery in gardens and fields in the village, as well as some Roman coins near the Cambridge to Godmanchester Roman road (now the A14) suggests that there may also have been some form of settlement here in the 2nd–4th centuries AD. However, little is known about Oakington in this period.
Prehistoric and Roman Northstowe
[This section is based on an article by Oscar Aldred of Cambridge Archaeological Unit, which appeared in the October 2024 edition of the Oakington & Westwick Journal. A more detailed account can be found there].
Excavations on the site of the former RAF Oakington prior to the construction of Northstowe have suggested some colonisation and development of permanent settlements in the area from around the mid iron age (around 350 BC). These were in the form of discrete clusters of roundhouses, with perhaps one or a few households in each. By around 100 BC there were several distinct settlements of people and their animals, some of which connected by ditches and banks. In the Roman period, around 50–100 AD, many of these iron age dwelling places appear to have been abandoned, and were replaced by two main settlements: a complex farm located north of Rampton Road and a larger village on the former Oakington airfield. These were connected together by a track, and appear to have dominated the area for the next 400 years. Large amounts of pottery, as well as human burials and cremations, animal remains, and objects of stone, metal, wood and leather were found. There was also evidence of both round and rectangular buildings and, within the larger village, of a crossroads, a market place, ad a possible public building. These Roman settlements appear to have been largely abandoned after the early 5th century, and the land was subsequently turned into open fields in the medieval period (see below).
Anglo-Saxon Oakington (400–1066)
Main page: Anglo-Saxon Oakington
The name Oakington derives from Hochington (under which it is recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086) meaning the homestead (tun) Hoc (a personal name) and his people (inge). Hoc may have been an Anglo-Saxon settler who arrived from the North Sea coast of Europe sometime in the 5th century AD. Most of what we know about this period comes from excavations of an Anglo-Saxon burial ground that was located where the recreation ground is today.
It seems likely that around the 5th and 6th centuries Oakington was a community of perhaps two or three family groups, with people of mixed Anglo-Saxon and “native British” ancestry. The settlement may have transitioned to a possibly enclosed and defended village centred around a church and manor house at some time around the 8th century.
Please see the page here Anglo-Saxon Oakington for more about the excavation of the cemetery and on Oakington in the Anglo-Saxon period.
Medieval Oakington (1066–1485)
By the time of the Domesday Book in 1086 Oakington consisted of 59 households, representing around 300 people and putting it in the largest 20% of settlements recorded. The largest landowner was Crowland Abbey in Lincolnshire. The Crowland manor owned 8 ploughlands (a ploughland was an area of land that could be ploughed by a team of 8 oxen in a year, typically around 120 acres although this varied depending on the quality of the land) as well as meadow land. The other landowners listed were Picot Sheriff of Cambridge (3.5 ploughlands), Countess Judith (1.5 ploughlands), Boselin of Dives’ wife (1.5 ploughlands) and the Abbey of Ely (0.1 ploughlands).
Most of the inhabitants of Oakington would have been peasants, renting land from one of the landowners. The Domesday Book records 30 villagers in Oakington (small-scale landholders holding an average of around 30 acres each as well as two oxen for ploughing), six smallholders and 10 cottagers (each holding around 5 acres) and three slaves, who would have worked on the manors. Almost half of these households are listed under the land of Crowland Abbey, which owned more than half of the land recorded. No woodland was recorded, and most of the land was used for growing crops.
Wheat and oats were the main crops until about the 1250s, after which the peasants in particular (as opposed to the home farms of the manors) began to grow more barley, dredge (a mixture of barley and oats) and rye. Peas, which were important for improving soil fertility, were increasingly grown from the 1280s. By the early 1300s, a three-year crop rotation system was in operation, and (apart from some small enclosed areas around the village itself) most of the arable land Oakington parish had been divided into three main fields. These were
- Moor Field (later Osmoor Field), covering about 310 acres in the south of the parish
- West Field (later New Close Field), covering about 460 acres in the west of the parish
- Mill Field, covering about 425 acres in the north of the parish.
Most of the Crowland Abbey demesne (the land farmed directly by the abbey rather than being leased to tenants) was in Mill Field, with the remainder being divided between the other two fields.
A typical crop rotation was to grow wheat, maslin (a mixture of wheat and rye) and probably some dredge (a mixture of barley and oats) in one field; peas, oats and dredge in the second, and to leave the third field lying fallow. The following year the fields were rotated so that the field that had been fallow was used for wheat and maslin, and so on. This system was to remain in use until Enclosure in 1834.
Pasture land for grazing animals was in relatively short supply in Oakington, and lay mostly in the north of the parish alongside Beck Brook. Much of this grassland (which was later known as the Great Meadow and covered about 40 acres) was owned by the Crowland Manor and used by them for grazing their own demesne animals.
The main road through the village at this time was probably Water Lane. It formed part of a road, known as Jumblatt Way, which ran from the Cambridge to Huntingdon road (now the A14) to Westwick Bridge and onwards towards Cottenham. Crofts (small enclosed fields leased from the manor by tenant farmers, and typically including the farmer’s dwelling) would have at one time run along both sides of Water Lane. There was also a parallel track running to the south-east of the road passing further dwellings. Evidence of ridge and furrow (a pattern of ridges and troughs created by medieval ploughing) and of house platforms can still be seen in this area. However, it appears that a rise in the water table sometime in the 1300s which led to the dwellings along this track and on the south side of Water Lane being abandoned and moved to higher ground, with the road to the northwest of Water Lane (later known as Church Street and today as High Street) becoming more important. There would be almost no building work carried out to the southeast of Water Lane until the 20th century.
Meanwhile, the population of Oakington, which had comprised 55 households in 1086, had grown to around 100 households (about 500 individuals) by 1279, making Oakington a relatively large settlement. In 1315 the population allegedly included 16 men aged between 60 and 85, and five men aged between 90 and 120. The population was maintained at a similar level until 1349, at which point the arrival of the Black Death plague took a devastating toll on the village. On the Crowland manor around half of the tenants died. Many dwellings were left empty and fell into ruin, and Crowland Abbey found it increasingly difficult to find tenants. Unsurprisingly, the quantities of crops grown in the parish fell around this time. Tenements were also being combined by 1400, a practice that had previously been rare.
Oakington in the Early Modern Period (1485–1800)
The population of Oakington remained small during this period, dropping to around 50 households by 1500 and 43 in 1567. Crowland Abbey was dissolved by King Henry VIII in 1539, and its land was ultimately purchased by Queens’ College Cambridge, who continued to lease the manor farm. Queens’ College would remain a major landowner in Oakington until into the 20th century.
Land continued to be cultivated on the three-field rotation system, although the proportions of land held by different farmers varied. In the 1660s a relatively small number of farms dominated; besides the Queens’ College Farm these included “Hatton’s Great Farm” (formerly the Lays Manor) and the Elmes estate (formerly the Olifards Manor), and an estate owned by the Greens of Histon. Around 6–7 houses with 3–5 hearths were recorded around this time, compared to about 50 with only one or two. Meanwhile, the Queens’ College manor farmhouse had nine hearths and the Hatton’s estate farmhouse fifteen. The population was said to be 47 families and 166 individuals in 1728, and 55 families comprising about 285 people in 1800.
Most of the village was probably still concentrated around the church and the former Crowland manor house, owned by Queens’ College from 1560. This included the area of what is now Mill Road, which had become known as Town End Close by 1498, and the area of what is now Church View, then known as Camping Close, which occupied about 4 acres. Camping Close was used for all religious festivals, feasts and fairs. The name comes from Camp Ball, a forerunner of football, which was played with an inflated pig’s bladder. Inter-village matches were played on Good Friday as part of the Easter celebrations. The Churchwardens often brewed small beer to sell at these events, in order to help with church finances.
Centres had also grown up in the south of the village where Jumblatt Way was crossed by the Girton to Longstanton road. The area around the crossroads was known as Broad Green around 1520 and later as Alehouse Green. It covered around 4.5 acres until the time of enclosure (1834) and extended along both sides of what is now Longstanton Road. There were also dwellings around Sheeps Green, which occupied about 2 acres in the area where the White Horse pub now stands. The White Horse, of which the oldest record we have is from 1765, was originally on Alehouse Green at the crossroads, on the corner of Longstanton Road and Water Lane. It moved to its current location after the original building was burned down in 1805.
19th Century Oakington (1800–1900)
By the early 1800s, the largest farms in the parish included the Queens’ College farm, the Adeane farm (previously Hatton’s Great farm, and farmed at that time by the Papworth family), the Free School farm (previously the Elmes estate) and the farm of the Lintons of Westwick Hall. The four largest farms (180 acres or more) made up at least 1040 acres of the open fields. Eight smaller farms of between 40 and 100 acres made up another 520 acres, and a further 110 acres was shared between 21 smallholders. Six out of the twelve larger farms were owner-occupied.
The Enclosure Act of 1834 divided up the large open fields that had existed since the 1300s into separate enclosures owned by different landlords. Queens’ College emerged with 485 acres of land (mostly in the northwest and southwest of the parish), H J Adeane with 301 acres (mostly in the east of the parish), the Free School estate with about 140 acres and the Lintons with about 100 acres. Four further landowners (including the vicar) had about 80 –95 acres each and three others about 40–65 each, all generally spread over several plots in different parts of the parish. 40 smallholders shared about 150 acres between them.
The population of Oakington, which was 285 people in 1801, grew to 610 in 1851, including 90 labourers. The number of houses and cottages also increased, from about 42 in 1801 to about 120–130 around 1850, roughly equally divided between the north of the village around the church and the south of the village around Alehouse Green and Sheeps Green. There was not enough work on the farms for all of the inhabitants, however, and many people emigrated in the early 1850s, many to Adelaide (Australia) as a result of poverty and unemployment. 90 people left in 1851, 11 families in 1852, 9 families in 1853, and 43 people in 1854. By 1861 the number of labourers had dropped to about 65, and the total population had declined to about 425 in the 1890s. 15 houses were recorded as being empty in 1891.
Oakington remained essentially a farming community for the second half of the 19th century, and events such as annual ploughing matches, traditional harvest dinners featured in village life. The village feast was held in the 1860s and 1890s on the last Sunday in May, and the village Horticultural Society (founded in 1892) held shows in mid-July. Besides farming, other trades in the village included blacksmiths, brickmakers, carpenters, butchers and shopkeepers, as well as the mill and bakery run by the Papworth family. The village had its own fire engine, run by volunteers, from 1845 until the 1920s (and later briefly revived during the second world war). The railway arrived in 1847, and the present school on Water Lane opened in 1841. There were also at least eight pubs in the village in 1834 and throughout most of the century. By 1895 the Parish Council had been established, and was recorded around this time hiring unemployed villages to work at a gravel pit just north of the village. (Mill Lane was formerly known as Gravel Pit Lane, which appears on the 1834 Enclosure map).
Most of the older buildings in Oakington date from the 19th century, when they were farmhouses and cottages. They are generally of gault brick with Welsh slate roofs, and would have been built following the arrival of the railway which allowed the easy transport of heavy building materials. Relatively few earlier buildings from the 15th to 18th centuries survive; those that do (mainly on the High Street) tend to have timber frames and thatched roofs.
20th Century Oakington (1900–2000)
Farming activity began to decrease during the 20th century. The number of farm labourers employed dropped from around 50 in the 1930s to 30 in the 1950s and only 12 in 1980. Yields of crops, mainly wheat and barley at this time, also dropped from over 600 acres in the 19th century to about 525 acres in 1905. The number of sheep had already declined to around 400–450 in the 1890s and dropped further to 200 or fewer in the 1910s. The number of cows kept in the village was generally below 50. There was, however, a rise in fruit growing and market gardening in the early decades of the 20th century.
Most of the land in the northwest of the parish (much of which was previously owned by Queens’ College) was sold to the Ministry of Defence in 1940 for the construction of RAF Oakington. The airfield later became a flying training school until 1975, and was subsequently an army barracks and an immigration reception centre before taken over for the development of Northstowe in 2010. The old Oakington to Longstanton road, which landowners at the time of enclosure in 1834 had prevented from being made into a new and straighter route, was closed when the airfield was built. Village residents strongly opposed its reopening to motor vehicles in the 1970s, although some traffic did continue to use the road until it was physically blocked in 2018 during Northstowe construction.
The number of pubs in the village dropped during the 20 century, from eight in 1900 to four in 1910, two in 1960 and, after the New Inn closed in 1989, just one, the White Horse. Oakington railway station closed to passengers in 1970, although a small number of freight trains continued to use the line until 1992. The population of Oakington, on the other hand, grew steadily throughout the first half of the 20th century, from about 425 in the 1890s to about 500 in 1951. The number of houses also increased, from about 116 in 1910 to 132 in 1931 and 156 in 1951. The second half of the 20th century saw a much more rapid rise in population, which reached around 1400 in 1996. This was enabled by the building of many new housing estates, as well as backfilling gaps between the existing housing, with approximately 80–90 houses being added each decade after 1951. There were 405 houses in 1981. The new estates included Arcadia Gardens (built in 1967 on a field adjacent to Arcade Farm), Church View (on the site of Camping Close, built in the late 1970s), Manor Farm Close (built in the 1970s), Meadow Farm Close (built on part of Meadow Farm), and Days Meadow (built around 2006).
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/
- Oakington & Westwick Journal
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