Great Shelford

infobox UK place
static_

static_image_caption=Village sign
country = England
latitude=52.15038
longitude= 0.13575
official_name= Great Shelford
population = 3,949(2001)
dwellings = 1,829 (2001)
shire_district= South Cambridgeshire
shire_county = Cambridgeshire
region= East of England
constituency_westminster= South Cambridgeshire
post_town= Cambridge
postcode_area= CB
postcode_district= CB22
dial_code= 01223
os_grid_reference= TL464521

Great Shelford is a village located approximately four miles to the south of Cambridge, in the county of Cambridgeshire, in eastern England. In 1850 Great Shelford parish contained convert|1900|acre|km2 intersected by the river Cam. The population in 1841 was 803 people. By 2001, this had grown to 3,949.

Great Shelford is twinned with Verneuil-en-Halatte, in the Oise département of France.

Local Services

Great Shelford has a wide range of shops and services, including three public houses, a restaurant, a library, estate agents, a delicatessen and an Eaden Lilley department store. There is a weekly Country Market and monthly Farmers' Market. The villages of Great and Little Shelford are served by Shelford Railway Station on the line from Cambridge to London Liverpool Street. Currently there are plans to demolish the structurally unsound Great Shelford Library and replace it with a newer structure. [Display of future plans for library, Great Shelford Library]

Church

The churchyard is like a wayside garden, the porch embowered in greenery and an ancient window framed with hanging blooms of wisteria. The church has been much as it is now since Thomas Patesle rebuilt it in 1307; we see him in brass in his Vicar's robes on the chancel floor. The tower was rebuilt with the original materials after its collapse in 1798.

The church porch is two-storeyed with a splendid pelican in its fine vaulted roof, the doorway having an old niche with a Madonna. The spacious interior has tall arcades with mediaeval clerestories over them and heads between the arches, and eight fine oak angels look down from the hammerbeams of the roof. There is a 15th century screen with dainty tracery in the north aisle enclosing an altar in memory of a soldier killed on the Indian frontier; above the altar is a painting of two saints and a Roman soldier by the cross. The chancel stalls are finely carved with wild roses, the sedilia with grapes and acorns, and the reredos has a gleaming white sculpture of the Crucifixion with saints and angels under rich canopies. There are a few fragments of old glass, fragments of Norman carving set in a wall, and above the chancel arch a mediaeval painting of "Doom", fading away.

Local manors and families

Several great estates shared the two Shelfords, notably that of the de Freville family, whose manor house survives (and was resold in 2005) at Little Shelford, and who were there as early as 1300. But all appear to have generally had absentee landlords who sold copyhold lands and generally let others on long renewable leases. Farming survived at Great Shelford well into the 20th century. Several Yeoman families of note, the Deans, Howling, and Tunwell families, farmed here for centuries.

One example is Richard Tunwell (1645–1713) who acquired land at Great Shelford, his first acquisition being a mere acre of pasture, a copse and a close which was copyhold land belonging to the Bury manor. When Freville's Manor was purchased [as superior proprietor] by William Freeman in 1701, the lands in Great Shelford belonging to the Manor were described as convert|142|acre|km2 of arable, 10 acres and a half a rood of meadow, eight and a half acres of pasture, a sheepwalk or liberty of foldage and fold vourse for six store ewes, all by then in the occupation of Richard Tunwell. The Manor also had half an acre of meadow in Little Shelford which again was occupied by Richard Tunwell. A rent roll of the Manor of Granhams dated 1708 shows that Tunwell and his sons held copyhold land from that Manor as well. From 1678 onwards, Richard Tunwell served as a Juror on the Bury Baron Court. By 1705, as a landed proprietor, he had qualified as a parliamentary voter and the Poll Book for the election held in that year shows that he voted for Sir Richard Cullen and John Bromley.

The Killingworth family also owned land at Shelford, as when Richard Killingworth of Great Bradley in Suffolk, gentleman, made his Will on the 12 September 1586, he left the following legacies to the poor - of Fulbourne £10; Balsham (where his son John held the manor) £10; GREAT SHELFORD £5; LITTLE SHELFORD £5; and Cambridge £20.

port

Shelford's Rugby Union team, Shelford RFC, competes in the R.F.U.'s London 1 league, the highest regional division, and plays its home fixtures at its ground on Cambridge Road, in the North of the village. Great Shelford Cricket Club plays at the Cambridgeshire Cricket Association's Junior 1 level and shares a ground with Cambridgeshire League football club, Great Shelford F.C..

Notable residents

Great Shelford was home to children's author Philippa Pearce, who renamed it "Great Barley" (with the neighbouring village of Little Shelford becoming "Little Barley", and Cambridge itself becoming "Castleford" and losing its university) in her books, most notably "Minnow on the Say" (1955). In this and other books the River Cam, which flows through the village, became the River Say. The writer was brought up in Great Shelford and after some years in London lived there again from 1973 to her death in 2006. Sir Peter Hall, the theatrical director, lived in the station house as a child and the author Tom Sharpe is a current resident.

References

* "History, Gazetteer and Directory of Cambridgeshire", published by Robert Gardner, Peterborough, 1851.
*
* Mee, Arthur, "The King's England", New revised edition, London, 1965, p.140.

External links

* [http://www.shelford.org Village Website]
* [http://www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/B4E4D332-0D5E-4785-889E-4337E6F18C36/0/GreatShelford.pdf 2001 Census]
* [http://www.shelfordrugby.co.uk Shelford RFC]