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SWAFFHAM PRIOR:
Geographical and Historical information from the year 1929.

[Transcribed and edited information mainly from Kelly's Directory of Cambridgeshire 1929]

"SWAFFHAM PRIOR (or Great Swaffham) is a parish and village, with a station on the Cambridge and Mildenhall branch of the London and North Eastern railway, half a mile west of the churches, 6 miles west from Newmarket, in the hundred of Staine, Bottisham petty sessional division, Newmarket union and county court district, rural deanery of Fordham and archdeaconry and diocese of Ely: it is remarkable for its two churches, both standing in one churchyard.

The soil is loamy; subsoil, chalk. The chief crops are wheat, barley, turnips and mustard seed. The area is 5,587 acres of land and water; the population in 1921 was 592, including part of the ancient British hamlet of Reach, which is about 2 miles north at the western end of the Devil's Dyke or ditch, and partly in this parish and partly in that of Burwell. "