Heritage

A 15 metre ‘summit’ of a ridge with gently sloping sides can be seen. The colour contours have been exaggerated to show small changes.  

The squares on this map show some of the places where HIAG dug test pits as part of a large community archaeology campaign starting in 2016 involving hundreds of local people.

Nine of the pits (red squares) were on Croft Close Nature Reserve and a further four on Abbey Farm. (At the time they were dug, all were within the then boundaries of Abbey Farm.) The earthworks of the 12th century church of St Etheldreda can be seen, situated on the same summit as St Andrew’s church 150 m to the east (hidden under a blue square).

The land drops on either side of the ridge down to 10 m and looking northwards it drops to 5 m – here we are on the medieval Fen Edge – a great source of resources at the time. The soil of the ridge was kind to the early settlers – gravel from an old course of the River Cam, lying over gault clay. So easier to start ploughing and not so prone to dry out. (Impington formed on a similar ridge to the southeast.)

The Histon Brook is perhaps Anglo-Saxon in origin. Its deep ditch alongside Park Lane, helps to keep the centre of the village dry.

The Lidar map shows, with the eye of faith perhaps, an oblong elevated area. E marks the site of St Etheldreda church now at the centre of the Abbey Farm estate.

(Lidar – Light detection and ranging – is used here to detect localised changes in ground level though remote sensing.)

A great deal can be gleaned from this map about how the landscape was used in the past. For example, H-shaped and rectangular features to the west suggest Roman field boundaries. Parallel tracks on the east are from medieval ploughing headlands consolidated into tracks to the outer open medieval fields. Field walking in these areas confirms this activity.

One research objective has been to test the idea that for Histon it all started on the ridge – which includes Croft Close Nature Reserve, Abbey Farm, Histon Manor, and parts of Church End. Late Bronze Age pottery sherds have been found (not yet at Croft Close) indicating that there was activity here around 3000 years ago.

Evidence of Romano-British activity nearly 2000 years ago is widespread across the whole landscape. It seems that people of the Early Anglo-Saxon period from 1400 years ago used this ridge as evidenced by quantities of pottery sherds from their time – probably there were isolated farmsteads.

Then in the 8th or 9th century they decided that they liked to live closer together – easier to share ale perhaps - resulting in the large village of Domesday by the 11th century.

In the 12th century the land of modern Abbey Farm seems to have been at the centre of one of the two manors of Histon with its own church of St Etheldreda built in the 12th century, which gradually disappeared though neglect and demolition, leaving earthworks up to 1 metre in height. A geophysics examination shows some of what is still there under the ground including remains of a nave, a chancel and a bell tower (centre bottom), an enclosure on the right perhaps surrounding some dwellings and a curved churchyard wall.

Magnetometry image of part of the earthworks field showing the outline of a church and other structure

In the sixteenth century many parishioners requested burial in the churchyard of St Etheldreda’s church, for example, as late as 1575, Thomas Langham, a weaver. The church was demolished in 1599.

In 1741, a terrier of Histon notes the existence of St Etheldreda’s ‘churchyard and vicarage yard’.  In 1749, a yearly rent of £1.10s was payable for the churchyard, which, surviving still around 1757, was afterwards taken into Abbey Farm

In the 19th century human bones were uncovered while installing a water main to Abbey Farm. These were reinterred in a pit marked by a grave slab, which has been identified at the foot of a tree near the Abbey Farm driveway, close to the site of St Etheldreda’s church.

This map is taken from a 1901 OS map which has been annotated to show some of the key HIAG excavation findings.

There is evidence of Romano-British and Early Anglo-Saxon activity on or close to the ‘summit’ of the Earthworks Field. The village seems to have had an early centre here and nearby. In the 12th to the 14th centuries it spread to North Field (Croft-Close Nature Reserve) as shown by large amounts of pottery sherds from this time. It also spread to Church End. But then disaster seems to have struck – there is very little evidence of Late Medieval or post-medieval activity on Abbey Farm – the village ‘shrunk’. We can still see perhaps 14th or 15th century evidence of ploughing – the ridge and furrow pattern typical of the time.

The North Field (Croft Close Nature Reserve) has re-generated in lines perhaps related to old medieval ridge and furrow, while the field just to the south, a meadow, has an obvious ridge and furrow pattern. For these patterns to survive means that this land in post-medieval times was no longer used for arable purposes but was perhaps mainly used as parkland or for grazing of animals which spared it most of the time from hundreds of years of ploughing.

As the population picked up the village grew eastwards towards the village Green. A Jacobean Manor house was built in South Field after 1611, demolished in the 19th century.