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Great Staughton, Huntingdonshire, England. Geographical and Historical information from 1932.

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GREAT STAUGHTON:
Geographical and Historical information from the year 1932.

[Description(s) transcribed by Martin Edwards and later edited by Colin Hinson ©2010]
[from The Victoria County History series - 1932]

"GREAT STAUGHTON, this large parish lies on the borders of Bedfordshire. The banks of the River Kym, which flows through it, are about 80 ft. above sea-level, and the land rises to a little over 200 ft. to the north and south. The soil is chiefly clay with a gravel sub-soil in the south. The parish was mainly woodland down to the 13th century when, it seems from the licences to assart lands, the timber was being cleared. There is still some woodland about Agden and Perry, but the land is mainly arable growing wheat and beans.

The principal part of the village has grown up as a roadside settlement along the main road from St. Neots to Kimbolton. The village street here has been known since the 16th century as Staughton Highway.

At the eastern end, the road crosses the River Kym by a bridge which was, in the early 16th century, called "Wrong Bridge". The church, with the early settlement of houses, cottages and a 17th century Inn, is about one-third of a mile to the west of the highway, on a by-road to Pertenhall in Bedfordshire.

The lands to the south of the village apparently belonged to the chief manor - the manor house of which stood in the moated enclosure about a mile south-west of the church. It was later known as Old Manor Farm, which has now been shortened to Manor Farm.

There are a number of hamlets in the parish. To the north-east of the village is the hamlet of Dillington, the manor of which was built by the ubiquitous Engaine family in the 12th century. At West Perry, another hamlet further north-east, was another Manor Farm, which was a moated brick house of the 16th century, which was rebuilt and modernised in the 19th century. This was probably a manor house of one of the co-heirs of Dillington Manor when that was divided into moieties. A further hamlet is at Beachampstead, which included Agden, lying north of the village. The site of the manor house of the Beaufoys may, perhaps, be identified by the homestead moat north-east of Stoughton Green. The house, we are told, was burned and devastated in the middle of the 14th century, and there is no evidence that it was ever rebuilt."

[Description(s) transcribed by Martin Edwards ©2003 and later edited by Colin Hinson ©2010]
[mainly from The Victoria County History series- 1932]