Great Eversden is a village 6 miles south-west of

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

. The population of the

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

at the 2011 Census was 241. The

Prime Meridian A prime meridian is an arbitrarily chosen meridian (geography), meridian (a line of longitude) in a geographic coordinate system at which longitude is defined to be 0°. On a spheroid, a prime meridian and its anti-meridian (the 180th meridian ...

runs through the parish just to the east of the village, separating it from Little Eversden. Great Eversden is a small village of about 85 houses. It broadly takes the shape of a cross, with the

Harlton Harlton is a village and civil parish in Cambridgeshire in the United Kingdom. The village is south-west of Cambridge and neighbours Haslingfield. History The parish of Harlton covers an area of . Its southern border is marked by the ancient tr ...

Kingston Kingston may refer to: Places * List of places called Kingston, including the six most populated: ** Kingston, Jamaica ** Kingston upon Hull, England ** City of Kingston, Victoria, Australia ** Kingston, Ontario, Canada ** Kingston upon Thames, ...

road forming the East and West arms (called Church Street and the High Street), and the no-through-roads of Chapel Road and Wimpole Road forming the North and South arms.

History

The history of Great Eversden is closely related to that of its neighbour Little Eversden, though the two have formed distinct parishes since at least the 13th century. The parish of Great Eversden, covering 1400 acres, lies between the Bourn Brook to the north and Mare Way, the ancient ridgeway, to the south. Little Eversden lies to the east of the village. Prehistoric activity has recently been recorded in the parish in the form of a number of flint tools and waste flakes dating from the

Neolithic The Neolithic or New Stone Age (from Ancient Greek, Greek 'new' and 'stone') is an archaeological period, the final division of the Stone Age in Mesopotamia, Asia, Europe and Africa (c. 10,000 BCE to c. 2,000 BCE). It saw the Neolithic Revo ...

. One

Iron Age The Iron Age () is the final epoch of the three historical Metal Ages, after the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. It has also been considered as the final age of the three-age division starting with prehistory (before recorded history) and progre ...

Trinovantian coin has been recovered and a hitherto unknown Roman Farmstead is being recorded. Great Eversden was settled before Little Eversden and is the larger of the two. The name "Eversden" means "vale of a man named Eofory". The village is the birthplace of

John Tiptoft, 1st Earl of Worcester John Tiptoft, 1st Earl of Worcester KG (8 May 1427 – 18 October 1470), was an English nobleman and scholar who served as Lord High Treasurer, Lord High Constable of England and Lord Deputy of Ireland. He was known as "the Butcher of Englan ...

, sometimes known as 'The Butcher of England'.

St Mary's Church

There has been a church at Great Eversden since at least 1092, and dedicated to

St Mary Mary was a first-century Jewish woman of Nazareth, the wife of Joseph and the mother of Jesus. She is an important figure of Christianity, venerated under various titles such as virgin or queen, many of them mentioned in the Litany of Loreto. ...

since at least the 13th century, but the original church was replaced in the 13th century. The 13th century church was razed to the ground in the mid 15th century when it was struck by lightning. The current church was completed in 1470, consisting of a chancel, nave with north porch, and west tower, and includes two

misericord A misericord (sometimes named mercy seat, like the biblical object) is a small wooden structure formed on the underside of a folding seat in a church which, when the seat is folded up, is intended to act as a shelf to support a person in a p ...

s built at this time. One of the misericords shows the family crest of the Beauchamp family (a fess between six cross crosslets) which may indicate that the family paid for much of the church, or that the misericords were installed for canons to pray for the dead of that family.

Village life

The village contains a Village Hall, allotments, an open space known as the Fossey Field, an Indian restaurant, Cam Spice (which replaced The Hoops in February 2016), which for a short while was a Chinese restaurant. Prior to this the Hoops was the local pub which was open by 1851. The other former public house, The Fox, opened at the start of the 19th century at the north end of the village. The

Post Office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letter (message), letters and parcel (package), parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post o ...

closed in 2005 and the nearest shops are now in Orwell, Comberton, Toft and Haslingfield. The churches in Great and Little Eversden hold services on alternate Sundays.

References

External links

Great & Little Eversden Parish Council
{{authority control Villages in Cambridgeshire Civil parishes in Cambridgeshire South Cambridgeshire District