Conington, Huntingdonshire

Conington (Conington All Saints, or "Conington-juxta-Petriburg") is an English village and civil parish in the Cambridgeshire .[1] Conington lies about 10 km (6 miles) south of Peterborough and 3 km (2 miles) north of Sawtry. It is within earshot of the A1(M), part of the Great North Road, which follows the course of the Roman Ermine Street. Conington lies within Huntingdonshire, which is a non-metropolitan district of Cambridgeshire and one of the historic counties of England.

Not to be confused with Conington, South Cambridgeshire.

Place name sign in Conington
Conington
Conington
Location within Cambridgeshire
Population209 (2011)
OS grid referenceTL176860
District
Shire county
Region
CountryEngland
Sovereign stateUnited Kingdom
Post townPeterborough
Postcode districtPE7
PoliceCambridgeshire
FireCambridgeshire
AmbulanceEast of England
UK Parliament

History

Conington was listed in the Domesday Book in the Hundred of Normancross in Huntingdonshire; the name of the settlement was written Coninctune in the Domesday Book of 1086,[2] when there was just one manor at Conington; the annual rent paid to the lord of the manor in 1066 had been £9 and the rent was the same in 1086.[3]

The Domesday Book also records that there were 27 households at Conington.[3] Estimates for the average size of a household at that time range from 3.5 to 5.0 people.[4] These yield population estimates of 94–135. The survey records there was an area of 15 ploughlands at Conington in 1086.[3] In addition to the arable land, there were some 40 acres (16 hectares) of meadow.[3] The total tax assessment for the manor at Conington was nine geld.[3] By 1086 there was already a church and a priest.

The Cotton Baronetcy of Conington was created in the Baronetage of England on 29 June 1611 for the antiquary Robert Bruce Cotton (1570–1631), who also represented five constituencies in the House of Commons.[5] The novelist, expurgator and editor Henrietta Maria Bowdler was born in Conington in 1750.[6]

In the Second World War, Conington was located next to Royal Air Force Station Glatton. RAF Glatton was constructed to Class "A" standards to support heavy bombers in 1943, as it was to be used by the US Army Air Forces. The 457th Bombardment Group (Heavy) arrived on 21 January 1944. The recognisable tail code of the 457th was the "triangle U" painted on the vertical stabilizers of the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses which operated from the air base. The 457th Bomb Group operated from RAF Glatton from January 1944 until 20 April 1945, when it completed its 237th and last combat mission at the conclusion of the war. In All Saints' Church, Conington is a memorial to the 457th Bomb Group.[7]

Governance

As a civil parish, Conington has an elected parish council. It consists of five members. Conington was in the historic and administrative county of Huntingdonshire until 1965. From 1965, it became part of the new administrative county of Huntingdon and Peterborough. Then in 1974, following the Local Government Act 1972, Conington became part of the county of Cambridgeshire, with Huntingdonshire District Council as its second tier. Conington lies in the district ward of Sawtry. It is represented on the district council by two councillors as part of the electoral division of Sawtry and Ellington,[8] and is represented on the county council by one councillor. It lies in the parliamentary constituency of North West Cambridgeshire,.[8] The member has been Shailesh Vara (Conservative) since 2005.

Demography

Population

The historical UK census population of Conington in the period 1801 to 1901 ranged between 154 in 1801 and 319 in 1851.[9] The subsequent ten-year census results were as follows:

Parish
 1911
 1921
 1931
 1951
 1961
 1971
 1981
 1991
 2001
 2011
Conington 261 259 245 348 290 247 219 209 216 209

All population census figures have been taken from the report Historic Census figures Cambridgeshire to 2011 by Cambridgeshire Insight.[9] In 2011, the parish covered an area of 3,173 acres (1,284 hectares),[9] so that the population density for Conington in 2011 was 42.2 per square mile (16.3 per sq. km).

Level crossing

The nearby level crossing has suffered many railway accidents, notably the Connington South rail crash of 1967.[10] A former Mayor of Peterborough Arthur Mellows also died here, when his black Chrysler Windsor was hit by a train in 1948.[11][12]

See also

References
  1. Ordnance Survey: Landranger map sheet 153 Bedford & Huntingdon (St Neots & Biggleswade) (Map). Ordnance Survey. 2013. ISBN 9780319231722.
  2. Ann Williams; G.H. Martin, eds. (1992). Domesday Book: A Complete Translation. London: Penguin Books. p. 1333. ISBN 0-141-00523-8.
  3. Professor J. J. N. Palmer, University of Hull. "Open Domesday: Place – Conington". www.opendomesday.org. Anna Powell-Smith. Retrieved 25 February 2016.
  4. Goose, Nigel; Hinde, Andrew. "Estimating Local Population Sizes" (PDF). Retrieved 23 February 2016.
  5. ODNB: Stuart Handley, "Cotton, Sir Robert Bruce, first baronet (1571–1631)" Retrieved 14 March 2014, pay-walled.
  6. M. Clare Loughlin-Chow, "Bowdler, Henrietta Maria (1750–1830)" Retrieved 14 March 2014, pay-walled.
  7. 457th Bomb Group (H) and RAF Glatton Cambridge Military History Research Site
  8. "Ordnance Survey Election Maps". www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk. Ordnance Survey. Archived from the original on 20 February 2016. Retrieved 23 February 2016.
  9. "Historic Census figures Cambridgeshire to 2011". www.cambridgeshireinsight.org.uk. Cambridgeshire Insight. Archived from the original (xlsx – download) on 15 February 2016. Retrieved 12 February 2016.
  10. Railways archive
  11. Cambridge News
  12. Ministry of transport
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.