Foxton Region

Cottegers Of The Foxton Region

There was much rebuilding in the 16th and 17th centuries. About 1571 one house was put up by night in the street, and in 1618 seven villagers had lately built new tenements to house immigrants. Surviving 16th-or early 17th-century timber framed houses include Herods Farm, with decorated bargeboards and inside carved beams. There is a group of five near the western green, among them the L-plan Home Farm, with a massive brick chimney, topped by a tall shaft. There are over 20 one-storeyed cottages of the late 17th and the 18th century, many timber framed and thatched, such as Michaelhouse, or two on Station Road. In 1788 several dwellings at the east end of the village were destroyed by fire.

In the early 19th century Foxton included almost 50 dwellings. About 1840 there were 14 houses and 25 cottages, subdivided to accommodate nearly 90 households. In 1851 c. 80 dwellings were inhabited along the street, and almost 20 on the lanes leading off it, half of them on Stocker's Lane, later Station Road. It ran north from the middle of the street towards the main Cambridge road, beside which a few houses had been built by 1861. The village grew slowly in the early 20th century from 95 to over 130 houses. About 1908 four blocks of four dwellings each were built along Station Road for the workers at a new printing works, and named after authors. They were the first in the village to have piped water. Council houses were built from the 1920s along Station Road. Growth was rapid after 1945. The number of dwellings increased from 180 in 1951 to 290 by 1971. Gaps along the street were mostly filled in, and many cottages refurbished for middle-class newcomers. By 1961 the rural district council had built the Highfields estate on the rising ground south of the village, while between that and the street private estates totalling c. 100 houses were built in the 1970s. [1]

Story Of Foxton

Of 10 hides in 1086 almost a third was probably demesne, including all the Richmond manor, on which no peasants were recorded, but only a third of Chatteris abbey's 5? hides. The rest of that was held by 16 villani, probably yardlanders. In all there were 21 villani with 9 ploughteams, compared with 5 demesne teams, and 21 bordars. Although the 14½ ploughlands were thus almost fully stocked, the total yield of the estates had fallen by nearly £2 since 1066 to £11.

In the 13th century the arable outside the demesnes was divided into yardlands, reckoned locally as 36 a., and their fractions, halves and quarters, all later usually called warelands. That scheme remained nominally, and to some extent practically, in force until the 19th century. In 1279 the demesnes comprised just over 600 a. out of 1,450 a. of arable. Chatteris abbey had 300 a., and De la Hayes and Mortimers 160 a. each. The remaining land was mostly divided between 6 tenants, ...