Place:Landwade, Cambridgeshire, England

Landwade is a very small parish on the edge of Cambridgeshire and Suffolk. It was part of the Staploe Hundred in Cambridgeshire, but as a chapelry it was linked to the ancient parish of Exning in Suffolk.

The following description from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72 is provided by the website A Vision of Britain Through Time (University of Portsmouth Department of Geography).

"LANDWADE, a parish in Newmarket [registration] district, Cambridge; 4 miles N by W of Newmarket [railway] station. Post-town: Newmarket. Acres: 120. Real property: £192. Population: 36. Houses: 5. The manor belonged, in the time of Edward III., to the Hastings family; and passed to the Cottons. The living is a [perpetual] curacy, annexed to the vicarage of Exning, in the diocese of Ely. The church is ancient; consists of nave, transepts, and chancel, with a low tower; and contains some very old monuments of the Cottons; but has ceased to be used."

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Exning and Newmarket are situated in the westermost part of Suffolk in an almost detached portion surrounded by Cambridgeshire. The narrow parish of Newmarket All Saints was transferred from Cambridgeshire to this part of Suffolk in 1895, but the "bridge" linking it to the rest of the county was still only a few tens of metres wide as late as 1994, when local government reforms of that year substantially increased its width. In the early 1970s, when major alterations were about to be made to the borders of many English counties, it was proposed that Newmarket and Exning be moved to Cambridgeshire, but this was voted down by residents in a referendum.

The village is crossed by the New River (formerly known as Monk's Lode), a small river that flows through Wicken Fen and reaches the River Cam at Upware in Wicken parish. The area around Landwade was occupied in Roman times, and a villa was situated just to the south of the modern parish.

Although it has existed since early medieval times, the parish of Landwade has always been comparatively small. By the late 13th century it consisted of around 300 acres of farmland and around 1,400 acres of fen, but boundary changes between 1881 and 1954 reduced it to its present size of only 127 acres. The civil parish was amalgamated with Fordham, Cambridgeshire in 1954, but in 1994 it was transferred to Exning in Suffolk.

Parishes of its size were often absorbed in the Middle Ages, but Landwade survived thanks to the rebuilding of the church by Walter Cotton (d. after 1434), Lord of the Manor, in the 15th century to serve as a burial place for his family. The Manor of Landwade had passed to Sir Thomas Cotton, Knight, of Cotton Hall, Cambridgeshire, by virtue of his marriage to Alice, daughter and heiress of John Hastings, Lord of the Manor of Landwade in the 14th century. Landwade Hall, a large house that was partially destroyed by bombs during the Second World War, was the ancestral home of the Cotton family until they moved to Madingley in the 18th century. The church of St Nicholas is privately owned and located in the grounds of Landwade Hall. Built in the mid 15th century by Walter Cotton, the church contains fine memorials to members of the Cotton family.

Although only small parcels of land were transferred when further adjustments to the Suffolk/Cambridgeshire border were made in 1994, some houses changed county nonetheless: 2 people moved from Suffolk to Cambridgeshire, and 10 from Cambridgeshire to Suffolk. All of the houses affected were in the estate of Landwade Hall, and Landwade's church was among the buildings transferred to Suffolk.

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.

• A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely: Volume 3, the City (Cambridge) and University of Cambridge (published 1959)
• A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely: Volume 4, City of Ely; North Ely and South Ely, Witchford and Wisbech Hundreds (the cathedral city and liberty of Ely and the rural areas to the west and northwest, including the port of Wisbech) (published 2002)
• A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely: Volume 5, the Hundreds of Longstowe and Wetherley, west of Cambridge (published 1973)
• A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely: Volume 6, the three Hundreds of Chilford, Radfield and Whittlesford (in the south of the county, on the border with Essex) (published 1978)
• A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely: Volume 8, Armingford and Thriplow Hundreds (south and west of Cambridge) (published 1982)
• A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely: Volume 9, Chesterton, Northstowe, and Papworth Hundreds (the suburban and rural areas to the north and northwest of Cambridge) (published 1989)
• A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely: Volume 10, Cheveley, Flendish, Staine and Staploe Hundreds (northeastern Cambridgeshire) (published 2002)

• 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