Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire

Historical Description

Whittlesey, a town and two parishes in Cambridgeshire. The town stands on the Old Nen river, with a station on the G.E.R., 82 miles from London, and a post, money order, and telegraph office. It was known at Domesday as Witesie, is a seat of petty sessions, and has two banks, a hotel and several inns, a town-hall, reading and news rooms, a public hall and institute, a fine ancient church of different dates, restored in 1862, another ancient church chiefly Decorated English, five dissenting chapels, two endowed schools, a workhouse, a weekly market on Friday. The parishes are St Mary and St Andrew; they have long lost their mutual boundaries, so as to be now intermixed, and they include the hamlet and chapelry of Coates and the hamlet of Eastrea. Acreage, 26,051 of land and 155 of water; population of the ecclesiastical parish of St Andrew, 2171; of the ecclesiastical parish of St Mary, 2451. Traces of a Roman road are at Eldemell, and several antiquities, including a massive gold ring, have been found there. The livings of St Mary and St Andrew are vicarages in the diocese of Ely; net value of St Mary, £200 with residence; of St Andrew, £250 with residence. The living of Coates was formerly a perpetual curacy, but is now a rectory, and it has been separately noticed. A small new church is at Ponders Bridge, and Wesleyan chapels are at Coates and Eastrea.

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 Whittlesey from the following:

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

Land and Property

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

Maps

Online maps of Whittlesey 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.