Cambridgeshire History On The Net

BOURN, anciently “Brune,” or “Brunne,” is a parish about 1 ½ miles north-east from the Old North Road station (which is in this parish) on the Bedford and Cambridge line of the London and North Western railway, 10 north from Royston and about 9 west from Cambridge, in the Western division of the county, hundred of Longstow, union and petty sessional division of Caxton and Arrington, county court district of Cambridge, rural deanery of Bourn and archdeaconry and diocese of Ely. The Bourn brook flows through the parish. The church of St. Mary, picturesquely situated on the rising ground, is a spacious cruciform edifice of stone in the Transition Norman, Early English and later styles, consisting of chancel, clerestoried nave of six bays, aisles, transepts, south porch and an embattled western tower with turret stair and containing 6 bells : the chancel has good sedilia of the 15th century and some carved oak benches with poppy heads, one of which bears the inscription, “A.P. of B.A. 1534 :” the roof is Perpendicular and has hammer beams with modern figures of angels; the chancel arch is modern, and there remains a Perpendicular rood screen : the nave arcades are lofty and belong to the Transition Norman period, the piers being alternately circular and octagonal : the clerestory is lighted by quatrefoil openings with circles : in the north transept is a Late niche and an aumbry : the south transept has a raised floor : the tower, which is overlapped by both aisles, opens into these and to the nave by very fine and lofty Early English arches, with an ascent of three steps under the western arch : the south porch, also Early English, has a fine cross on the gable : in the nave are some good oak benches with tracery in panels, and the south transept contains several slabs and tombs, with arms to members of the Hagar family, lords of this manor about 1750, and a memorial to the late Henry Lyell esq. : the church plate includes a silver salver, presented by Francis Hagar in 1594, and a silver chalice with the date 1569 : Dowsing, the Puritan iconoclast, visited this church and destroyed two angels, some brasses and crosses on the tower and chancel : it was partly restored in 1875-8 at a cost of £1,480 : there are 420 sittings. The register dates from the year 1564. The living is a vicarage, net yearly value £150, with residence and 32 acres of glebe, in the gift of Christ’s College, Cambridge, and held since 1892 by the Rev. Frank Ricardo Williams M.A. of that college. There is a Wesleyan chapel, restored and enlarged in 1880, with about 150 sittings. The charities amount to £5 15s. yearly. The scenery around this village is pretty and picturesque, affording a pleasing variety of hill and dale, finely interspersed with thick woods and shady groves. The moat and some other vestiges remain of a castle erected here by Picot, or Pigot, a Norman, to whom the Conqueror gave lands here and whose descendant, George Pigot esq. was in 1766 created baron Pigot of Patschull, a title extinct at his death, 17 April, 1777 : the castle was burnt during the barons’ war in the reign of Henry III by Richard de Insula or de L’Isle, being then in possession of the Peverells, from whom it descended to the Peche (now Peachey) family, and was subsequently held by the Riggesbys and others. Bourn Hall, formerly the property of the Earl De La Warr, stands on the site of the old castle and together with the surround estate was sold to John James Briscoe esq. D.L. who is joint lord of the manor : the Hall is an excellent specimen of the Elizabethan style, and was formerly surrounded by a moat, part of which still remains : the park contains about 80 acres with good plantations. John James Briscoe esq. of Thornton Hall, near Chester; Christ’s College, Cambridge and the trustees of Charles Dawson esq. are the principal landowners. The soil is clay; subsoil, gault. The chief crops are wheat, oats, barley and some land in pasture. The area is 4,175 acres ; rateable value, £3,421 ; the population in 1891 was 785. Parochial school (mixed), erected in 1866, for 150 children; average attendance, 100; Frederick Charles Rowe, Master.