Cheveley: Local government

LOCAL GOVERNMENT.

The honor of Richmond's free tenants attended the honorial tourn for east Cambridgeshire in 1334. (fn. 1) Bansteads manor, adjudged to be held from Cheveley manor in 1582, (fn. 2) is not known to have held courts.

Courts for Cheveley manor were being held by 1260 (fn. 3) and Sibyl Loveday claimed view of frankpledge in 1299. (fn. 4) Her successors also had the assize of bread and of ale. Court rolls survive for 1422 and 1442-59. (fn. 5) When Sir John Cotton and his mother leased the manor in 1663 they reserved the right to hold the court in the manor house. (fn. 6) There are court books for 1736-1849. (fn. 7)

A row of four cottages, evidently intended as almshouses, was built by Henry Jermyn, Lord Dover, on Oak Lane in 1692, but he failed to endow them and after his death they were taken over by the vestry and used as a parish poorhouse until 1835, when the Poor Law Amendment Act meant that they were no longer needed for that purpose. The rector, J. T. Bennet, was frustrated in an attempt to incorporate them into Reeve's and Raye's charity, (fn. 8) and instead the vestry let them to labourers, whose refusal to pay rent in the 1860s led to their summary sale. (fn. 9) They remained standing in 2000. Between 1706 and 1738 the parish acquired another house, divided into two cottages, which also housed the poor. (fn. 10) Pulled down but replaced on a new site at the expense of J. T. Hand (rector 1778-1831), they, too, were sold in the 1860s. (fn. 11)

After 1835 Cheveley was successively incorporated in Newmarket poor-law union (to 1894), Newmarket rural district (1894-1974), and East Cambridgeshire district (from 1974). (fn. 12)