Caxton, Cambridgeshire

Historical Description

Caxton, a decayed town and a parish in Cambridgeshire. The town stands on Ermine Street, 2½ miles NNW of Old North Road station on the L. & N.W.R., and 9½ W of Cambridge, under which it has a post, money order, and telegraph office. It is the head of a union and petty sessional division, and is a polling place for the western division of the county. It had a market from the 13th century till the middle of the 18th, and it still has a fair in the beginning of October. Acreage, 2242; population, 515. The manor belonged to the D'Eschallerses, the Freviles, the Burgoynes, and others, and belongs now to the Gape family. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Ely; net yearly value, £228 with residence, in the gift of the Dean and Canons of Windsor. The church, which is a building of stone and fiint partly Early English and partly in the Perpendicular style, contains some old tombs, and was restored in 1874. There is a workhouse with accommodation for about 200 inmates. Matthew Paris the historian was a native.

Administration

The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.

Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.

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 Caxton from the following:

• Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Caxton (St. Andrew))

Land and Property

The Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Cambridgeshire is available to browse.

Maps

Online maps of Caxton 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.