Place:St. Neots, Huntingdonshire, England

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NameSt. Neots
Alt namesSt Neotssource: Wikipedia
Saint Neotssource: Getty Vocabulary Program
TypeAncient parish, Urban district
Coordinates52.233°N 0.283°W
Located inHuntingdonshire, England     ( - 1965)
Also located inHuntingdon and Peterborough, England     (1965 - 1974)
Cambridgeshire, England     (1974 - )
See alsoToseland Hundred, Huntingdonshire, Englandhundred in which it was located
Huntingdonshire District, Cambridgeshire, Englanddistrict municipality of which it has been part since 1974
Contained Places
Cemetery
St Neots Priory
NOTE: Do not confuse St. Neots, Hungtingdonshire with St. Neot far to the west of England in the county of Cornwall.


the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

St. Neots has been, since 1974, a town and civil parish in the non-metropolitan county of Cambridgeshire, England, within the historic county of Huntingdonshire, next to the Bedfordshire county border. It lies on the banks of the River Great Ouse in the Huntingdonshire District, 15 miles (24 km) west of Cambridge and 50 miles (80 km) north of central London. St Neots is the second largest urban centre in Cambridgeshire (the largest being Cambridge) with a population of approximately 40,000 in 2014.

There were two mergers of counties in 1965 and 1974 which brought Huntingdonshire into Cambridgeshire. St. Neots was an urban district from 1894 to 1974 and, during most of the 19th century, a Registration District and Poor Law Union.

Although Roman and even pre-Roman finds have been made in and around St. Neots, there was no significant settlement until Saxon times. Early developments were in Eynesbury (in an area close to the centre of St. Neots), Eaton Socon and Eaton Ford (the latter two originally in Bedfordshire), which still exist as part of the town today; and also in Maltman's Green and Crosshall Ford which are no longer recognised.

The town is named after the Cornish monk Saint Neot whose bones were stolen from the village of St. Neot on Bodmin Moor and concealed in Hinchinbrooke priory close to what is now St. Neots, Huntingdonshire. Pilgrimage to St. Neots brought prosperity for the town, and it was granted a market charter in 1130. The Normans rebuilt the priory near the river and the town of St. Neots grew up against its southern wall.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, the town enjoyed further prosperity through corn milling, brewing, stagecoach traffic and railways. After the Second World War, the town and its industry grew rapidly as London councils paid for new housing to be built in the town to rehouse families from London. The first London overspill housing was completed in the early 1960s. .

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article History of St. Neots.

Image:St Neots RD recut SE.png

Research Tips

  • Original historical documents relating to Huntingdonshire 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 all the ancient parishes of Huntingdonshire and these can be purchased from the Society as pdfs.
  • A History of the County of Huntingdon in 3 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. The chapters are ordered by the divisions of the county called hundreds, but each chapter is linked to the volume's content page. Volume 2 (published 1932) covers Hurstingstone and Toseland hundreds (index of parishes); Leightonstone and Norman Cross Hundreds (index of parishes) are found in Volume 3 (published 1936). Volume 1 is a part-volume describing the religious houses of the county.
  • GENUKI has a page on Huntingdonshire 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.
  • 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" leads to analyses of population and organization of the county from about 1800 through 1974. There are pages available for all civil parishes, municipal boroughs and other administrative divisions.
  • Map of Huntingdonshire divisions in 1888 produced by UK Ordnance Survey and provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time
  • Map of Huntingdonshire 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 St. Neots. 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.