IMPINGTON
IMPINGTON lies immediately north of Cambridge, its parish church 4.25 km. (c. 2½; miles)
from Magdalene bridge. (fn. 64)
From the late 19th
century new building created a residential and
industrial area astride the Histon boundary and
the parish gradually lost its separate identity,
though it retained its administrative status in
1987. New housing physically joined the old
village to its neighbour only in the 1970s. The
two parishes were inclosed together in 1806.
Impington covered 1,668 a. in 1891. (fn. 65)
The
ancient boundary with Milton and Chesterton
partly followed medieval arable strips. In the
south-east it follows the Roman Akeman Street,
locally called Mere Way. (fn. 66)
A south-western
tongue of the ancient parish reached the Cambridge-Huntingdon road, also Roman in origin (fn. 67)
and a turnpike between 1745 and 1874. (fn. 68)
In 1912
an area of 694 a. belonging to Chesterton until
1911 and briefly in Milton was transferred to
Impington; 570 a. of it, partly built over, was
given to Cambridge in 1934, leaving Impington
extended by two small areas on the south. The
south-west tongue, 82 a., was transferred to
Girton in 1953. (fn. 69)
After adjustments of the
boundary with Histon in 1985 (fn. 70)
the parish covered 715 ha. (1,768 a.). The remainder of this
account is concerned with the ancient parish
before boundary changes, though the growth of
settlement in the late 19th and 20th century is
treated elsewhere. (fn. 71)
The parish is crossed by the railway between
Cambridge and St. Ives opened in 1847, the
road from Cambridge to Histon and the bypass
built east of it in 1963, and the Cambridge
northern bypass opened in 1978. The village was
approached both before and after inclosure by
roads from Histon green, from the Cambridge
road, and from Milton. (fn. 72)
The land, loam and stiff clay over gault and
gravel, (fn. 73)
rises very gently from just above 8 m.
(25 ft.) in the north to 23 m. (75 ft.) by the
turnpike. The parish was almost entirely agricultural until the late 19th century when the establishment of the Chivers jam factory at Histon,
straddling the parish boundary, led to residential
development and the planting of orchards. There
is no record of ancient woodland, but the park
of Impington Hall south of the village has given
the centre of the parish a well-wooded aspect
since the 18th century. (fn. 74)
The population was already small before the
Black Death, with 24 peasant families in 1086, (fn. 75)
c. 45 landholders in 1279, (fn. 76)
and 32 taxpayers in
1327. (fn. 77)
Numbers had fallen further by 1377,
when there were only 57 inhabitants aged over
14, the seventh lowest population recorded in
the county. (fn. 78)
The village remained small until
the 19th century, rising from only 14 families in
1563 (fn. 79)
to 35 households and 80 adults in the
1660s, (fn. 80)
then falling to 24 families and c. 90
people in 1728. (fn. 81)
In 1801 there were 22 families
and 92 people. Numbers rose to 273 in 1851 and
untypically for the district went on rising in the
late 19th century and the early 20th as new
houses were built outside the village. The only
decades in which the increase was less than 10
per cent were the 1870s and 1880s. In the 1890s
the population increased by half to stand at
over 600 in 1901. The old parish had c. 1,000
inhabitants by 1931 and further increases
brought it to 2,000 by 1981, about a third of the
total for Histon and Impington together. (fn. 82)
The medieval village was presumably near the
church, which stands with Burgoynes Farm in
a large enclosure circled by roads. The southern
stretch, along the Histon-Milton road, was called
High Street in the 19th century (fn. 83)
and Burgoynes
Road in 1986. Three quarters of the outer side
of the enclosure were lined by irregular tofts in
the early 19th century. (fn. 84)
Several were then empty
and a more regular pattern may have been
obscured by the shrinkage of the village in the
late Middle Ages and the late 17th century.
Other tofts were perhaps destroyed when the
park was made in the late 16th century.
At least one house stood at Little Green on
the Cambridge road in the 1580s (fn. 85)
and several
of the 30-35 dwellings in the mid 17th century
may have been there. In 1674 a relatively large
proportion of the houses were substantial: 8 had
four or more hearths, 10 had two or three, and
only 13 had a single hearth. (fn. 86)
By 1801 there were only 18 inhabited houses;
most were in the village but some cottages were
scattered along Cambridge Road. (fn. 87)
The number
trebled to 54 in 1851, when there were 19 in the
village and 29 by the road, the settlements being
distinguished as Great and Little Impington
despite the reversal of sizes. New building in the
late 19th century was almost entirely along and
near Cambridge Road. In 1871 there were 58
dwellings there, 19 in the village, and 14 elsewhere in the parish. Outlying farmhouses
built in the 19th century included Woodhouse
Farm (earlier Hog's Hall) and another farm
in the south before 1851 and the Elms on
Milton Road by 1871. In the 1860s seven
cottages were put up on other farms outside the
village. (fn. 88)
The parish included part of the medieval
hamlet of Howes north of the Cambridge-Huntingdon road. (fn. 89)
Old inclosures there covered c.
40 a. in 1806. (fn. 90)
An inn by the road, called the
Black Bull or How House, had a bowling green
in 1676 and survived until the 1870s. (fn. 91) Its site
and land further back from the road were later
occupied by nurseries (fn. 92) and eventually by part
of a Girton housing estate. A second close
by the road was bought in 1849 by Charles
Lestourgeon, a surgeon at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, who in 1852 designed and
built Howes Close, later called Howe House, as
his residence. (fn. 93)
A later occupant was the politician Sir John Gorst, M.P. for Cambridge
University. (fn. 94)
The other public houses in the parish were
all on Cambridge Road. (fn. 95)
The Chequers was
recorded by 1765 and closed c. 1910. (fn. 96)
In the
late 19th century and the 20th residents of
Impington shared the social amenities of Histon, (fn. 97)
many activities after 1939 taking place at
Impington village college. (fn. 98)
The village Feast
was said in 1982 not to have been held for many
years. (fn. 99)
A 20-a. irrigation lake was created in the late
1970s north of the Cambridge northern bypass.
From 1984 it was stocked for anglers (fn. 1)
and in
1983 a 120-bed hotel was opened overlooking it. (fn. 2)
Samuel Pepys was a relative of the Pepys
family which owned Impington Hall in the 17th
century. His diary recorded four brief visits to
the house in 1661-2 in connexion with his uncle's
will. (fn. 3)