Yaxley, Huntingdonshire, England. Geographical and Historical information from 1932.

YAXLEY:
Geographical and Historical information from the year 1932.

"YAXLEY, a parish in the hundred of Norman-Cross, county Hunts. The sub-soil of Yaxley parish is of Oxford clay in the high lands but is of Alluvium in the fen district in the southern and eastern parts of the parish. the Great North Road (now the a1 Motorway in this area) follows the western boundary, and the main railway line north runs nearly parallel with it.

A large part of the parish is fen. Yaxley Fen was included in the Earl of Bedford's great drainage scheme undertaken during the reign of Charles I, and other parts were embanked and drained under a private Act of Parliament in 1830. Neolithic implements in the higher land and a bronze axe in Yaxley Fen have been dug up. There is much evidence of the existence throughout the Roman occupation of a small fen-side village, built of wattle and daub, the inhabitants of which used pottery and ornaments of Romano-British manufacture.

The church and older part of the village stand on high land to the north-west of the fen. Yaxley was one of the most important possessions of the Benedictine Monastery of Thorney, and developed into a small market town of which the Abbot was lord. It never attained any status as a borough, although in practice the inhabitants enjoyed some measure of control. Thus, in 1305, Edward I made a grant of pavage to "the baliffs and good men of the town" for five years, and a similar grant of three years was made in 1378. Certain royal proclamations were also sent to the baliffs of the town for publication. Whether the townspeople ever made any attempt to obtain the right to elect their own baliffs is doubtful, but in 1390 some of the Abbots villeins had been refusing to pay certain rents and customs dues to the Abbey, and in 1445 his quarrels with the townpeople appear to have resulted in his excommunicating some of the most important. An appeal to the Pope was necessary before peace was made.

The parish was inclosed by an Act of Parliament in 1767, the award being enrolled on the Recovery Rolls in 1769. There are some residual remains of ditches at the Manor House.

Norman Cross was a hamlet in the parish of Yaxley, which gave its name to one of the Hundreds of the county. Large barracks were built during the Napoleonic Wars in 1796-7 for the accommodation of French Prisoners-of-War, and to whom a memorial was raised in 1914. The barracks were dismantled in 1816."