Little Thetford

Little Thetford

Little Thetford is a small village 3 miles south of Ely in Cambridgeshire, England. The village is built on a boulder clay island surrounded by flat fenland countryside. There is evidence of human settlement on the island since the late Neolithic Age. A Bronze Age causeway linked the village with the nearby Barway.

About Little Thetford in brief

Summary Little ThetfordLittle Thetford is a small village 3 miles south of Ely in Cambridgeshire, England. The village is built on a boulder clay island surrounded by flat fenland countryside. There is evidence of human settlement on the island since the late Neolithic Age. A Bronze Age causeway linked the village with the nearby Barway, to the south-east. The Roman road Akeman Street passed through the north-west corner of the parish, and the lost 7th century Anglo-Saxon village of Cratendune may be nearby. The draining of the land, which began in the 17th century, enabled arable farming activity that continues to this day. The Cambridge station to Ely station section of the Fen Line passes through the east of the village. The river flooding, which affected 30 counties in England during March 1947, caused the Great Ouse to break its banks at Little thetford. The dismantled Ely and St Ives Railway crossed the A10 road at the Thetfords’ corner. Little Thefords is the smallest civil parish in the ward of Stretham; notable buildings in the village date from the 14th century. There have been a number of Bronze Age finds in the area, including a pre-Roman Iron Age ring and palst–701BC Bronze Age sherd. A single skeletal human remains as well as well-flue pottery was found on the site of a Romano-British pottery site in 1994. A late Bronze Age flesh-hook-hook was found in 1929 in 1929, largely built upon a Roman-British farm around 200 AD, dating from 200BC–100BC.

In 1007, an Anglo- Saxon noblewoman named Ælfwaru granted her lands in Cambridge and Norfolk to the abbots of Ely Abbey; the village was still listed as a fishery in the Domesday Book, 79 years later. During the late 19th Century, coprolite, a phosphate-rich fossil used as a fertiliser, was mined in shallow pits around the village, which is still used to produce fertiliser today. A more substantial Bronze Age settlement is known to have existed; the remains of a causeway were discovered in 1934, in the form of wooden piles unearthed by a farmer between Little Thet Ford and nearby Bareyway. In 1994, during the 1994 developments in the parish, a Bronze Age ring was discovered at a nearby farm, and later excavated at the nearby Ford, Fordeyway, and Barey Way. A Neolithic polished flint axe was found in 1984 at Bedwell Hey Farm. Fourteen pre- Roman flints of various finishes were also discovered in 1998 at the same site. A 1996 search along the Anglian Water pipeline at Little The tford—Cawdle Fen uncovered an important and unusually dense concentration ofLate Neolithic remains. This is unusual because, although the fenlands basin was dry and forested during the Mesolithic era, the area was sometimes subject to marine incursions, and at other times, fresh-water flooding.