Hinxton
| Hinxton | |
| Cambridgeshire | |
|---|---|
 St John & St Mary, Hinxton | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | TL496450 |
| Location: | 52°4’59"N, -0°10’59"E |
| Data | |
| Population: | 320 |
| Post town: | Saffron Walden |
| Postcode: | CB10 |
| Dialling code: | 01799 |
| Local Government | |
| Council: | South Cambridgeshire |
| Parliamentary constituency: |
South Cambridgeshire |
Hinxton is a village in the very south of Cambridgeshire, right by the Essex border, which skirts by the south of the village. Hinxton is best known today as the home to the Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, which includes the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the European Bioinformatics Institute. The 2001 population was 315.
The River Granta runs through the village, as does the Cambridge to Liverpool Street railway, though the village has no station. Hinxton parish's southern boundaries form the border between Cambridgeshire and Essex, across which lies Great Chesterford. The village is five miles northwest of Saffron Walden and nine miles south of Cambridge.
History
The name Hinxton is a contraction of Hengestestun, "the town of Hengest".[1]
The village of Hinxton is listed in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Hestitona, as Hyngeston in the Ely Registers of 1341 and Hengestone in the Ramsey Chartulary.
Church
The parish church of St Mary and St John is a mediæval flint and rubble church in the early-English style. It consists of a chancel, nave, south aisle, south chapel, south porch and a western tower with lead-covered spire that contains a clock and two bells that were first hung in 1903.[2] The chancel and nave date to around 1200, while to south aisle and chapel are 14th Century, the latter being built by bequest of Thomas Skelton[3] whose memorial is in the church. Other parts of the grade II* listed building are between 15th and 19th Century. [3]
The first record of a church on the site dates from 1092 when the local sheriff Picot of Cambridge granted it to what later became Barnwell Priory in Cambridge.[4]
In 1930 the vicarage was joined with that of neighbouring Ickleton, though resentment among locals resulted in the decision being reversed in 1955. The advowson has been in the possession of Jesus College, Cambridge since 1558.[4]
Hinxton Hall
Hinxton Hall, set on an estate of 95 acres on the banks of the River Granta, is a red-brick building built in the eighteenth century. Since 1992, the hall has been occupied by the Wellcome Trust Genome Campus and has housed their pioneering genome-sequencing project.[5]
History
The first house on the site of the hall was a modest hunting lodge built by Joseph Richardson of Horseheath in around 1740, before being sold to Thomas Brown of Ickleton in 1748, passing into the possession of his great-niece Mary Holden. Holden's first husband John Bromwell Jones pulled down the original house and built the present hall between 1748 and 1756. Subsequent owners extended the property and land.[4]
In 1953, the owner, Col. R. P. W. Adeane of Babraham, sold the hall and estate to Tube Investments Ltd. for use as research laboratories, and new buildings were added on the grounds as laboratories.[4] In 1992, the hall was taken over by the Wellcome Trust.
Hinxton Mill
Hinxton Mill straddles the River Cam as it flows northward through the village. Although the present mill was built in the seventeenth century, it is almost certainly the site of the mill mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086.
The mill, used for grinding corn, ceased operation in 1955 and fell into disrepair until being restored in the 1980s and is now open to visitors.[6]
Big Society
A perfect example of a quintessential English venue, Hinxton Village Hall dates back to Victorian times. Built of flint and brick, it lies in the midmost of the village.
The hall's community role began when the oldest part of the hall was opened as a reading room for villagers, a place to meet and keep up with the news and share books. Generations of Hinxton residents have cared for the building and over the last five years it has undergone a programme of sympathetic updating – to combine the best of traditional village life with modern amenities.
The village is home to the Red Lion public house, a seventeenth-century building that has been in use as a public house since at least 1841, though there are records of an inn in Hinxton in 1744.[4]
Outside links
 |
("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Hinxton) |
References
- ↑ Rev. Walter W. Skeat (1901). The place-names of Cambridgeshire. Cambridge Antiquarian Society.
- ↑ Kelly (1929). Cambridgeshire Directory.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 National Heritage List 1163553: Hinxton
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Parishes: Hinxton, A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely
- ↑ "History". Wellcome Trust. http://www.hinxton.wellcome.ac.uk/history.html.
- ↑ "Hinxton Watermill". CambridgePPF. http://cambridgeppf.org/hinxton-watermill.shtml.