Alconbury Weston – in

Huntingdonshire Huntingdonshire (; abbreviated Hunts) is a non-metropolitan district of Cambridgeshire and a historic county of England. The district council is based in Huntingdon. Other towns include St Ives, Godmanchester, St Neots and Ramsey. The popu ...

(now part of

Cambridgeshire Cambridgeshire (abbreviated Cambs.) is a county in the East of England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the north-east, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire to the ...

), England – is a village and

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 below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...

, lying just outside of

the Fens The Fens, also known as the , in eastern England are a naturally marshy region supporting a rich ecology and numerous species. Most of the fens were drained centuries ago, resulting in a flat, dry, low-lying agricultural region supported by a ...

, having just a few hills, but a significant change to the flat of the Fens. Alconbury Weston is situated north-west of

Huntingdon Huntingdon is a market town in the Huntingdonshire district in Cambridgeshire, England. The town was given its town charter by King John in 1205. It was the county town of the historic county of Huntingdonshire. Oliver Cromwell was born there ...

History

Alconbury Weston was listed as ''Westune'' in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manus ...

in the

Hundred 100 or one hundred (Roman numeral: C) is the natural number following 99 and preceding 101. In medieval contexts, it may be described as the short hundred or five score in order to differentiate the English and Germanic use of "hundred" to des ...

of Leightonstone in Huntingdonshire; the name of the settlement was written in the Domesday Book. In 1086 there was just one manor at Alconbury Weston; the annual rent paid to the lord of the manor in 1066 had been £1 and the rent was the same in 1086. There were four households with an estimated population of 14 to 20. There was one ploughland at Alconbury Weston in 1086 and that there was the capacity for a further one ploughland, and a total tax assessed of one

geld Geld may refer to: * Gelding, equine castration * Danegeld Danegeld (; "Danish tax", literally "Dane yield" or tribute) was a tax raised to pay tribute or protection money to the Viking raiders to save a land from being ravaged. It was call ...

Government

Alconbury Weston parish council is the lowest tier of government and consists of seven members. The second tier of local government is

Huntingdonshire District Council Huntingdonshire District Council is the local authority for the district of Huntingdonshire in Cambridgeshire, England. Based in Huntingdon, it forms the lower part of the two tier system of local government in the district, below Cambridgeshire ...

which is a

non-metropolitan district Non-metropolitan districts, or colloquially "shire districts", are a type of Districts of England, local government district in England. As created, they are sub-divisions of non-metropolitan county, non-metropolitan counties (colloquially ''shi ...

of Cambridgeshire and has its headquarters in Huntingdon. Alconbury Weston is a part of the district ward of ''Alconbury and The Stukeleys'' and is represented on the district council by one councillor. The highest tier of local government is

Cambridgeshire County Council Cambridgeshire County Council is the county council of Cambridgeshire, England. The council consists of 61 councillors, representing 59 electoral divisions. The council is based at New Shire Hall at Alconbury Weald, near Huntingdon. It is a me ...

. Alconbury Weston is a part of the electoral division of ''Huntingdon'' and is represented on the county council by two councillors. Alconbury Weston was in the historic and

administrative county An administrative county was a first-level administrative division in England and Wales from 1888 to 1974, and in Ireland from 1899 until either 1973 (in Northern Ireland) or 2002 (in the Republic of Ireland). They are now abolished, although mos ...

until 1965. From 1965, the village was part of the new administrative county of Huntingdon and Peterborough. Then in 1974, following the Local Government Act 1972, Alconbury Weston became a part of the county of Cambridgeshire. At Westminster, Alconbury Weston is in the parliamentary constituency of

. Since 2001 Alconbury Weston has been represented in the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. T ...

Jonathan Djanogly Jonathan Simon Djanogly (born 3 June 1965) is an English politician, solicitor and Conservative Party Member of Parliament (MP) for Huntingdon since 2001. Djanogly has been Trade and Industry Spokesman shadowing the Department for Business, En ...

(

Conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization in ...

Geography

The Alconbury Brook runs through the village then through Alconbury and on into Hinchingbrooke Park. The brook has a history of flooding, with the village being affected numerous times in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Location

Climate

The climate in the United Kingdom is defined as a

temperate In geography, the temperate climates of Earth occur in the middle latitudes (23.5° to 66.5° N/S of Equator), which span between the tropics and the polar regions of Earth. These zones generally have wider temperature ranges throughout ...

oceanic climate, or ''Cfb'' on the

Köppen climate classification The Köppen climate classification is one of the most widely used climate classification systems. It was first published by German-Russian climatologist Wladimir Köppen (1846–1940) in 1884, with several later modifications by Köppen, notabl ...

system, a classification it shares with most of northwest Europe. Eastern areas of the United Kingdom, such as East Anglia, are drier, cooler, less windy and also experience the greatest daily and seasonal temperature variations. Protected from the cool onshore coastal breezes further to the east of the region, Cambridgeshire is warm in summer, and cold and frosty in winter. The nearest Met Office climate station to Alconbury Weston is at Monks Wood, which is to the north-east. The average annual rainfall for the United Kingdom between 1981 and 2010 was but Cambridgeshire is one of the driest counties with around half of the national level. Regional

weather forecasting Weather forecasting is the application of science and technology to predict the conditions of the atmosphere for a given location and time. People have attempted to predict the weather informally for millennia and formally since the 19th cent ...

and historical summaries are available from the UK Met Office. Additional local weather stations report periodic figures to the internet such as

Weather Underground The Weather Underground was a far-left militant organization first active in 1969, founded on the Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan. Originally known as the Weathermen, the group was organized as a faction of Students for a Democr ...

, Inc.

Demography

Population

In the period 1801 to 1901 the population of Alconbury Weston was recorded every ten years by the

UK census Coincident full censuses have taken place in the different jurisdictions of the United Kingdom every ten years since 1801, with the exceptions of 1941 (during the Second World War), Ireland in 1921/Northern Ireland in 1931,https://www.nisra.gov. ...

. During this time the population was in the range of 281 (the lowest in 1801) and 561 (the highest in 1861). From 1901, a census was taken every ten years with the exception of 1941 (due to the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

). All population census figures from report ''Historic Census figures Cambridgeshire to 2011'' by ''Cambridgeshire Insight''. In 2011, the parish covered an area of and so the population density for Alconbury Weston in 2011 was 295.6 persons per square mile (114.1 per square kilometre).

Culture and community

The brook is home to a number of water birds such as Mallard, Swan and Wren and the stream is also home to small fish such as Roach and also larger predatory fish such as

Pike Pike, Pikes or The Pike may refer to: Fish * Blue pike or blue walleye, an extinct color morph of the yellow walleye ''Sander vitreus'' * Ctenoluciidae, the "pike characins", some species of which are commonly known as pikes * ''Esox'', genus of ...

. The village used to contain a Butchers, Farm Shop, Freezer Shop, post office and Master Saddlers which have all now shut down. It has one pub, The White Hart File:Village Green Alconbury Weston - geograph.org.uk - 1045994.jpg, Village Green Alconbury Weston File:Down Stream On The Alconbury Brook - geograph.org.uk - 1040635.jpg, Down Stream on the Alconbury Brook File:Flood Water Culvert Alconbury Weston - geograph.org.uk - 1045990.jpg, Flood Water Culvert Alconbury Weston

References

External links

{{authority control Villages in Cambridgeshire Huntingdonshire Civil parishes in Cambridgeshire