Place:Impington, Cambridgeshire, England

Watchers
NameImpington
Alt namesEpintonesource: Domesday Book (1985) p 47; Impington (1998)
TypeAncient parish, Civil parish
Coordinates52.25°N 0.117°E
Located inCambridgeshire, England
See alsoNorthstow Hundred, Cambridgeshire, Englandhundred in which it was located
Chesterton Rural, Cambridgeshire, Englandrural district 1894-1974
South Cambridgeshire District, Cambridgeshire, Englanddistrict municipality covering the area since 1974
the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Impington is a village and civil parish in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is situated just north of Cambridge mostly separated from the city by the A14 major road.

Over the years Impington and its neighbouring village of Histon have grown and entwined together, to such an extent that many villagers today do not know where one ends and the other begins. The civil parishes originated in two different hundreds and remained separate entities at least until the formation of the South Cambridgeshire District in 1974, where they probably are now considered one ward named Histon and Impington. Wikipedia only gives an 2013 estimate of their population: 11,280. Both have parish churches dedicated to St. Andrew.

The following paragraph is copied directly from Wikipedia

The opening of the Cambridge & St. Ives Branch by the Eastern Counties Railway Company on 17 August 1847 fuelled the growth of the villages and the expansion of companies within. Stephen Chivers was one of the first to seize the new opportunity that this brought. In 1850 he bought an orchard next to the line giving him access to London and the north of England and in 1870 he sent his sons to open a fruit distribution centre in Bradford in Yorkshire. Their customers were mainly jam makers and this was quickly noted by the boys. Following an extra good harvest of fruit in 1873, they got their father to let them make their first jam in a barn off Milton Road, Impington. This proved a successful venture, and within two years the Victoria Works jam factory had opened on the orchard site. By 1895 Chivers had diversified into many other areas including lemonade, marmalade and dessert jellies, and were the first large-scale commercial canners in Europe. By 1939 the company owned most of the large farms and estates in Histon and Impington, Impington windmill and 8,000 acres (32 km2) of land around East Anglia, and the factory employed up to 3,000 people.

Since World War II the company has gone through different ownerships, but Chivers jam is still available in British supermarkets.

Research Tips

  • Original historical documents relating to Cambridgeshire are now held by Cambridgeshire Archives and Local Studies at Shire Hall, Ely, Cambridgeshire, CB7 4GS
  • The Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire Family History Society has transcribed the parish registers for many if not all the ancient parishes of Cambridgeshire and these can be purchased from the Society as separate pdfs.
  • A History of the County of Cambridge. Seven volumes from British History Online (Victoria County Histories). This is by far the most complete history of the parishes of the county to be found online. From the numbering it would appear that some parts of the county are yet to be published online, but the first two volumes for any county are of little interest to the genealogist. The chapters are ordered by the divisions of the county called hundreds, but each parish is listed in the volume's content page.
  • GENUKI has a page on Cambridgeshire and pages for each of the ecclesiastical or ancient parishes in the county. These give references to other organizations who hold genealogical information for the local area. Each parish page includes a map of the parish provided by Open Street Maps.
  • The FamilyTree Wiki has a series of pages similar to those provided by GENUKI which may have been prepared at a later date.
  • A Vision of Britain through Time, section "Units and Statistics" for each parish and borough leads to analyses of population and organization of the county from about 1800 through 1974.
  • Map of Cambridgeshire divisions in 1888 produced by UK Ordnance Survey and provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time
  • Map of Cambridge divisions in 1944 produced by UK Ordnance Survey and provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Impington. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.