LITTLE WILBRAHAM
Little Wilbraham, lying c. 8 km. (5 miles)
east of Cambridge, (fn. 38) and covering 806 ha. (1,990
a.), (fn. 39) was by 1086 an independent vill, (fn. 40) known
as Little Wilbraham by the mid 13th century. (fn. 41)
It is divided from its slightly larger southern
neighbour, Great Wilbraham, by the Little
Wilbraham river, which rises near Wilbraham
Temple, the main house in Great Wilbraham
parish. Further south-east the parish has a
long straight boundary stretching to the line of
the Icknield way. The elongated parish, which
reaches across that way, includes at its southeast extremity the 19th-century settlement
called Six Mile Bottom after its distance from
the Newmarket racecourse start. Little Wilbraham's north-eastern and northern boundaries follow former field and fen boundaries.
The parish lies on the Middle Chalk, overlaid
in the north-west with Totternhoe Stone and
the Cambridge Greensand. There are deposits
of river gravels, especially near the brook and
the village. (fn. 42) The surface slopes gently from over
30 m. (100 ft.) in the south-east to 15 m. (50 ft.)
near the village, while the north-west end of the
parish consists of fenland below 15 m., imperfectly drained until after 1800. (fn. 43)
No ancient woodland was recorded in 1086. (fn. 44)
In the late 19th century belts of trees were
planted on the Six Mile Bottom estate to assist
game preservation. (fn. 45) A 25-a. field facing
Wilbraham Temple had been similarly planted
after 1800 so as to be visually part of that house's
parkland. (fn. 46) A royal forester of Wilbraham was
recorded from the 1170s until the 1220s. (fn. 47)
Newmarket being a centre for the Stuart kings'
hunting, from 1605 to the 1680s the Crown
regularly appointed keepers, perhaps after 1660
sinecurists, for a royal warren called Wilbraham
Bushes, (fn. 48) which probably included the parish's
south-eastern corner.
An Anglo-Saxon cemetery a mile south-east
of the village, was excavated, mostly in 1851,
partly c. 1926. It contained c. 300 burials, a third
cremations, probably dating from the pagan
period. (fn. 49) From the 13 peasants recorded, with 5
servi, in 1086 (fn. 50) the number of landholders
increased to c. 40 by 1279. (fn. 51) The fifteenth was
paid by 38 people in 1327, (fn. 52) the poll tax by 108
adults in 1377, (fn. 53) and the subsidy by c. 30 people
in 1524. (fn. 54) In 1563 there were only 21 families, (fn. 55)
but the population may have risen in the late
16th and early 17th centuries before declining
after 1640. (fn. 56) Under Charles II there were c. 40
dwellings, and 124 adults were reported in
1676. (fn. 57) After probably declining by a third or
more between 1690 and c. 1740, numbers recovered from the 1750s (fn. 58) and stood at 183, in 41
families, in 1801. The total population in the
parish rose steadily to reach 397 in 1851, and
after dipping briefly in the 1860s stood at 412
in 1881 before falling gradually to 266 in 1951.
It rose to 388 in 1961 and was c. 350 in the
1980s. (fn. 59)
Little Wilbraham, almost entirely devoted to
agriculture, consisted until inclosure in 1797 of
arable open fields in the south-eastern two thirds
and fen pasture in the north-west. The village,
close to their meeting point, lay largely along a
curving street, running east-west, ¼ mile north
of the brook.
In the 1980s a few small farmhouses and cottages, timber-framed, but some partly cased in
brick, and some still thatched, survived from the
17th and early 18th century. (fn. 60) White Hall,
timber-framed of c. 1600, has a central two-storeyed projecting gabled porch, with matching
pendants and finials. Its central room contains
a pilastered oak fireplace with a panelled
overmantel. (fn. 61)
In 1800, as still in the 1980s, (fn. 62) there was a gap
in habitation where the village street curved
south, west of its junction with a road from
Bottisham. To the east, on the part called Green
street by 1460, (fn. 63) lay the church and rectory, to
the west, on a section probably called Hawk
street by 1350, (fn. 64) were most of the farmhouses
and cottages. In the mid 19th century (fn. 65) there
were 15-20 houses at Church End to the east,
35-40 along Main or Front Street to the west,
and another 10-12 on Mill Street (fn. 66) and at Frog
End beyond. After 1880 the falling population
led to c. 12 houses being empty by the 1890s. (fn. 67)
In 1910 there were 18 houses and 43 cottages in
and near the village. (fn. 68) New houses were built
between 1960 and 1975 at the west end of the
main street and near Rectory Farm. (fn. 69)
By the 1790s a stable keeper had paddocks at
Six Mile Bottom. (fn. 70) By 1802 a substantial house,
later called the Lodge, had been built there, just
across the Bottisham border amidst c. 37 a.
mostly inclosed in 1802 from Bottisham heath.
An early occupant was probably Col. George
Leigh, a racing man and intimate of the Prince
of Wales, on whose behalf it was ostensibly
acquired in 1806. (fn. 71) Leigh's wife Augusta was
half-sister to Lord Byron, who several times visited her there, 1813-15. (fn. 72) The plain Regency
house, whose owner enlarged it to the rear in
the 1870s, had 55 a. of grounds when offered for
sale in 1879. (fn. 73) It belonged by 1890 to Herbert
De la Rue of the printing family, who in 1891
had it remodelled and added a larger wing to the
south-east. He occupied it with those grounds
until c. 1920. From the 1920s it served the
Swynford Paddocks stud. (fn. 74) The house was by
the 1980s a country hotel, while 40 a. of surrounding paddocks were still in use in 1990 as
a stud. (fn. 75)
There was little other settlement near that
house before the 1840s. In 1851 at Six Mile
Bottom there were 14-17 dwellings, by 1861 22,
by 1871 27, while its inhabitants numbered c.
100 from the 1860s and c. 170 in 1921. (fn. 76) The 22
dwellings there in 1912 almost all belonged to
the owners of the Six Mile Bottom estate. (fn. 77)
About 1975 the estate modernized 20 of its 34
houses, replacing a row of the 10 earliest cottages
with bungalows. (fn. 78)
By the 13th century the parish was crossed
by the Street way, running parallel with the
Icknield way. (fn. 79) Curving fieldways, called by 1600
the Wilbraham, Bottisham, and Cambridge ways,
connected the village with Great Wilbraham,
Bottisham, and the line of the later CambridgeNewmarket turnpike road to the north. The
Wood or Westley way led south-east, across
Street Way, towards the Icknield way, (fn. 80) whose
line formed between 1724 and 1871 formed part
of the Great Chesterford to Newmarket turnpike. (fn. 81) The Great Eastern railway line to
Newmarket, first opened in 1848 and linked to
Cambridge in 1851, (fn. 82) had by the 1860s a station
at Six Mile Bottom. (fn. 83) The line was still open in
1989, but the station was closed in stages
between 1964 and 1967 and sold soon after. (fn. 84) In
the late 1970s a section of dual carriageway, linking the former turnpike with the improved
Cambridge-Newmarket road and Newmarket
bypass was laid out, mostly on an embankment,
across the south-east end of the parish. (fn. 85)
The Gate, originally the village's main public
house, recorded from 1783 and rebuilt in brick
c. 1859, (fn. 86) closed after 1937. Of two others the
Greyhound, rebuilt in 1913, closed c. 1970. The
Hole in the Wall was still open in 1989, in a 3bayed, probably mid 16th-century house,
enlarged westward in the 18th; it retains a 2bayed hall with a chamber above it and a service
wing to the east. (fn. 87) The Green Man at Six Mile
Bottom, part of the former Anglesey estate c.
1800 as in the 1920s, (fn. 88) was perhaps the inn with
stabling for 22 horses reported in 1686. (fn. 89) It
catered for turnpike traffic by 1780 and was still
open in 1989. (fn. 90)
The village feast, held on the green by the
church on the Thursday after Midsummer, was
still being celebrated c. 1915. (fn. 91) A former poorhouse, perhaps the Town house mentioned in
1616, and used in the 19th century as the village
cage, was by the 1920s converted into a reading
room. (fn. 92) At Six Mile Bottom W. H. Hall, the
landowner, from 1870 provided a recreation
ground for his tenantry; from 1978 it was a
cricket field, where a local cricket club played in
the 1980s. In 1874 Hall opened a reading room,
in use until the 1930s. An associated coffee room
closed after 1912. (fn. 93) In 1975 his successor Lady
Delemere opened the former Six Mile Bottom
school as a community centre. (fn. 94) By the 1970s
Little Wilbraham parish council was renting a
recreation ground near the village from the district council. (fn. 95)