Waterbeach (St. John)

WATERBEACH (St. John), a parish, in the union of Chesterton, hundred of Northstow, county of Cambridge; containing 1270 inhabitants, and comprising 3374 acres. The road from Cambridge to Ely passes within about half a mile on the west, and the river Cam at nearly the same distance on the east. Here is also a station of the Cambridge and Ely railway, 5½ miles distant from the Cambridge station, and 9½ miles from that of Ely. The living is a discharged vicarage, valued in the king's books at £5. 15. 7½., and in the gift of the Bishop of Ely: the great tithes have been commuted for £9. 6., and the vicarial for £73; the glebes comprise allotments of 332 and 288 acres, respectively. The church is in the early English style, and is supposed to have been built about the beginning of the 13th century. A charity school, now conducted on the national plan, was instituted in 1687, and endowed with lands, by Grace Clarke and Dorothy Staines; the master's salary is upwards of £40. An almshouse for six widows was founded in 1628, by a bequest from John Yaxley, of Cambridge, and endowed with £ 12 per annum; to which a rent-charge of £15 was added by Mrs. Jane Brigham, in 1705. About the year 1160, a cell to the monastery of Ely was established in a small island called Elmeneye, and was shortly after removed to Denney, both in this parish; in the following century, it was occupied by the Knights Templars, who then possessed the manor of Waterbeach. In 1293, an abbey for minoresses of the order of St. Clare was founded at Waterbeach by Dionysia de Mountchensi, which, in 1338 (the order of the Templars being then abolished), was transferred to Denney; at the Dissolution there were twenty-five nuns, and the annual value of the lands was estimated at £172. The abbey house and the demesne have been many years rented as a farm, and the refectory converted into a barn.