Bottisham, Cambridgeshire
Historical Description
Bottisham, a large village and a parish in Cambridgeshire. The village stands on an affluent of the river Cam, with a station on the G.E.R., 6½ miles ENE of Cambridge, under which it has a post, money order, and telegraph office, and is a seat of petty sessions. The parish includes also the hamlets of Lode, or Bottisham Lode, Fen, and Longmeadow. Acreage, 5997; population, 1501. Bottisham Hall is the seat of the Jenyns family. Traces exist at Anglesey of an Augustinian priory founded in the time of Henry I. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Ely; net value, £300 with residence. Patron, Trinity College, Cambridge. The church is a beautiful building of flint and stone, and one of the finest specimens of pure Decorated in the county. The hamlets of Bottisham Lode, Longmeadow, and Fen were formed in 1863 into the ecclesiastical parish of St James. The church is a building of stone, erected in 1853. The living is a vicarage; net yearly value, £153, in the gift of Trinity College, Cambridge. There are Baptist and Congregational chapels.
Administration
The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.
| Ancient County | Cambridgeshire | |
| Ecclesiastical parish | Bottisham Holy Trinity | |
| Hundred | Staine | |
| Poor Law union | Newmarket |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Church Records
The register of baptisms dates from the year 1561; marriages, 1563; burials, 1569.
Churches
Church of England
The Holy Trinity (parish church)
The church of the Holy Trinity is a beautiful edifice of stone, chiefly in the Early Decorated style, consisting of chancel, clerestoried nave of five bays, aisles, north and south porches and western Galilee porch, and an embattled western tower with pinnacles and containing 5 bells: the chancel retains an Early English piscina and sedilia, and there is also an Early Decorated chancel arch, with a Perpendicular stone screen: on the south wall of the chancel is a marble tablet to the Rev. William Pugh, vicar from 1812, dated 1825: the stained east window and the reredos are memorials to Col. Jenyns, one of the "six hundred" at Balaclava (October 25th, 1854), who died in 1873: at the east end of the north aisle is an oak screen, apparently of the Decorated period, which incloses two monuments, one to Margaret, daughter of William Coningesbye, of King's Lynn, and another, with effigies in marble and cherubs supporting a canopy, to Leonettus and Dorothea, children of William and Elizabeth Allington, ob. 1638: there is also here an altar tomb of Purbeck marble, with the matrix of a brass effigy and canopy and panelled sides relieved by shields; the inscription on the margin, now lost, commemorated Elyas de Beckingham, appointed a justiciar of the Common Pleas, 15 Edward I. (1285); he retired from the bench, or died, in 1305; in 1289, when all the judges were apprehended by the king on charges of bribery and corruption, Beckingham and Metingham alone were honourably acquitted: in the same aisle is a marble tablet to Hester Paulina Lushington, d. 1795: the south aisle has an arcading along its whole length, inclosing a series of stone coffin slabs: a screen similar to that on the north side incloses a large tomb of white marble to Sir Roger Jenyns, d. 1740, and Dame Elizabeth, his wife, d. 1728, with their effigies in bed attire; and near this tomb, against the south wall, is a plain marble tablet to Soame Jenyns esq. M.P. and controversialist, and son of Sir Roger Jenyns, who died 18th Dec. 1787: on the south side is a beautiful piscina and a sedile: there are also slabs inscribed to Francis Hessel, d. 1659, and John Lack, d. 1742: the church was restored and warming apparatus fixed during the period 1875-91, and affords about 350 sittings.
Congregational
Congregational Chapel
There is a Congregational chapel, founded in 1800, and having sittings for 230 persons.
Civil Registration
For general information about Civil Registration (births, marriages and deaths) see the Civil Registration page.
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Bottisham from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Bottisham (Holy Trinity))
History
In 1712 a destructive fire consumed 20 houses in the village, besides causing other damage, and an incendiary fire which occurred on February 13th, 1846, destroyed the produce of two large farms, as well as fifteen cottages, depriving twenty-four poor families of their homes.
Land and Property
The Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Cambridgeshire is available to browse.
Maps
Online maps of Bottisham are available from a number of sites:
- Bing (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- Google Streetview.
- National Library of Scotland. (Old maps)
- OpenStreetMap.
- old-maps.co.uk (Old Ordnance Survey maps to buy).
- Streetmap.co.uk (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- A Vision of Britain through Time. (Old maps)
Newspapers and Periodicals
The British Newspaper Archive have fully searchable digitised copies of the following Cambridgeshire papers online:
- Cambridge Independent Press
- Cambridge Chronicle and Journal
- Huntingdon, Bedford & Peterborough Gazette
Visitations Heraldic
The Visitations of Cambridgeshire 1575 and 1619 is available online.