WETHERLEY HUNDRED
Wetherley hundred lies south-west of Cambridge, extending in an arc south and
south-west from the road from Cambridge to St. Neots; on the west the hundred just
crosses the Old North Road to include the long and narrow parish of Arrington. To the
south and east the hundred is mostly bounded by the river Cam or Rhee, but by 1066 it
included the village of Shepreth south of that river. The western part of Wetherley
hundred was divided from Longstowe hundred, lying to the north, by the Mare Way, an
ancient hill-top track (fn. 1) which further east formed parish boundaries within the hundred.
The hundred of Wetherley, 1845
Before the Norman Conquest Wetherley hundred was assessed at 80 hides, its vills
being divided into four groups each assessed at 20 hides. The northernmost comprised
Comberton, Barton, and Grantchester; the next only Haslingfield, which contained a
large royal manor; another, Harlton, Barrington, and Shepreth; a fourth, Orwell,
Wratworth, 'Witewell', Wimpole, and Arrington. (fn. 2) The area included in the hundred
remained constant throughout the Middle Ages and into modern times, but its division
into townships and parishes underwent much alteration. Wratworth had disappeared
by the 13th century, its land probably being absorbed into Wimpole. The 'Witewell' (fn. 3)
named in Domesday has usually been identified with a hamlet of a similar name in
Barton parish. Its hidation and tenurial condition, however, link it with Wimpole
and Arrington, and it was evidently a vill that has vanished in that area. (fn. 4) Within the
township of Orwell there had grown by 1200 a settlement called Malton which, though
it remained linked with Orwell for civil purposes, was a separate ecclesiastical parish
from the 13th to the 17th century. The hamlet of Coton, which developed at the north
end of Grantchester parish, also had its own church by the 13th century and, although
administratively attached to Grantchester until the 14th century, subsequently
achieved the status of an independent civil parish.
The hundred derived its name from a place called Wetherley, where the hundred
moot may formerly have met. That place was probably on the summit of the down
where the parishes of Orwell, Barrington, Harlton, and Little Eversden meet, probably
near Maypole Farm in Harlton. (fn. 5) Wetherley hundred remained in the hands of the
Crown during the 13th and 14th centuries. In 1279 it was being farmed with Thriplow
hundred, (fn. 6) with which it had shared a bailiff in 1260. (fn. 7) Estates in Wetherley hundred
c. 1235 owed 17 suits to the hundred and county courts. (fn. 8) Under Edward I the lords of
18 manors claimed view of frankpledge with minor franchises such as the assizes of
bread and ale. Several lords had withdrawn their estates, with the suits owed from
them, from the geldable and the sheriff's tourn. The abbess of Chatteris claimed such
exemption for her land at Shepreth and Barrington, under colour of the liberty of the
see of Ely on which her abbey had once depended. The Hospitallers of Shingay and
their tenants enjoyed similar liberties at Shepreth and Arrington by royal charter. The
earls of Gloucester had since c. 1250 withdrawn their own and their vassals' lands at
Arrington, Orwell, and Harlton, and claimed there 'all things belonging to judgement'.
The local bailiff of the honor of Richmond assumed similar exemptions for property at
Wimpole, Malton, Shepreth, and Grantchester, which did suit to the honor court
instead. Both the Gloucester and the Richmond franchises may have been usurpations
since neither was claimed in 1299. (fn. 9) In the 16th and 17th centuries Wetherley hundred
was normally linked administratively with Armingford, Longstowe, and Thriplow
hundreds. (fn. 10)
Most of the hundred is comparatively flat and low-lying, but two spurs of the west
Cambridgeshire chalk upland reach into it: Madingley Hill at its northern edge,
Barrington Down across its centre. The villages are mostly nucleated, several centering
on ancient greens, and are situated on spring-lines between the chalk ridges and the
streams, both of which form parish boundaries, running east and west. The Bourn
brook forms such boundaries in the north part of the hundred. The older settlements
all lie a little off the main roads of the area. At Barton a Roman road was indeed deflected
from the site of the medieval village. Several settlements disappeared during the
Middle Ages and later. Wratworth and perhaps 'Witewell' were abandoned or absorbed
into other townships probably between 1086 and 1200. Malton had dwindled into a
single farm by the 15th century. The hamlet of Whitwell, which existed in Barton by
1200 at least, disappeared during the 16th century, leaving only one farm to mark its
site. The adjacent settlement at Coton, an offshoot of Grantchester, probably already
established by 1086, flourished sufficiently to achieve and retain its independence. The
village of Arrington moved its site: already in the 13th century it partly lay scattered
along Ermine Street. The original site of Wimpole, and probably the former site of
Wratworth, were included in Wimpole Park when that was laid out in the late 17th
century. The name of Wimpole was later attached to a group of houses built beside the
road to Cambridge in the mid 19th century.
The economy of Wetherley hundred was almost entirely agricultural until the 19th
century. The open fields were usually cultivated in early times on a biennial, or later a
triennial, rotation, although some villages had four or more open fields. At Wimpole
and Arrington the concentration of ownership in the hands of the Chicheleys by 1600
led to an early division of those parishes into separately inclosed farms cultivated from
scattered farmsteads. Elsewhere in the hundred, as in Cambridgeshire generally,
wholesale inclosure waited until the earlier 19th century. Five parishes were inclosed
during the Napoleonic wars, the remainder in the late 1830s. The ground was in places
quarried in the Middle Ages for clunch, from the late 19th century for brick-works and
cement-making. A feature of the area was the exploitation between 1855 and 1885 of its
gault subsoil by extensive digging for coprolites, which for a time brought relatively
high levels of wealth and employment. (fn. 11) The villages, which had shared in the general
depopulation of the countryside after 1870 during the agricultural depression, underwent a considerable expansion after 1945. Many new houses, built both by local
authorities and by private developers, provided accommodation for an influx of new
inhabitants from Cambridge and elsewhere. Growth was most marked in the villages
closest to that city.