Great Shelford

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Coordinates: 52°09′01″N 0°08′09″E / 52.15038°N 0.13575°E

Great Shelford
Village centre and post office
Great Shelford Great Shelford shown within Cambridgeshire
Population	3,949 (2001)
OS grid reference	TL464521
District	South Cambridgeshire
Shire county	Cambridgeshire
Region	East
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	Cambridge
Postcode district	CB22
Dialling code	01223
Police	Cambridgeshire
Fire	Cambridgeshire
Ambulance	East of England
EU Parliament	East of England
UK Parliament	South Cambridgeshire
List of places UK England Cambridgeshire

Great Shelford is a village located approximately four miles (6 km) to the south of Cambridge, in the county of Cambridgeshire, in eastern England. In 1850 Great Shelford parish contained 1,900 acres (7.7 km²)^{[citation needed]} intersected by the river Cam. The population in 1841 was 803 people.^{[citation needed]} By 2001, this had grown to 3,949. The village was deemed Britain's twenty-second richest village by The Daily Telegraph in 2011.^[1]

Great Shelford is twinned with Verneuil-en-Halatte, in the Oise département of France. President of the United States Barack Obama traced his ancestry to the village in 2009, bringing the village into the national media.^[2]^[3]

Local Services and Culture

Village sign

Great Shelford has a wide range of shops and services, including two public houses, two restaurants, a library, several estate agents, two banks, a building society, a chemist, a dentist, a solicitor, an accountant, two cycle shops, a shoe shop, a delicatessen, a bakery and a garden centre . 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. The old Great Shelford library has been demolished and is being replaced by a new building which incorporates affordable housing by Bedfordshire Pilgrims Housing Association.^[4]

A large country house in the village was used for a concert named 'The Tea Set' in October 1965, which featured performances from Pink Floyd, Jokers Wild and Paul Simon. The same house was also used as the location for the cover art of Pink Floyd's album Ummagumma.^[5]

The Shelford Delicatessen features in a 2008 list by The Independent of The 50 Best Delicatessens in Britain.^[6]

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;^{[citation needed]} 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 ^{[citation needed]}.

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 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 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^{[citation needed]}. 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^{[citation needed]}.

One example is Richard Tunwell (1645–1713) who acquired land at Great Shelford, his first acquisition being a mere 1-acre (4,000 m²) 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 142 acres (0.57 km²) of arable, 10 acres (40,000 m²) and a half a rood of meadow, 8.5 acres (34,000 m²) 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 0.5-acre (2,000 m²) 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 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.

Sport & Activities

Shelford's Rugby Union team, Shelford RFC, competes in the R.F.U.'s National League 2 South, and plays its home fixtures at its ground on Cambridge Road, in the North of the village. Great Shelford Cricket Club plays in the Cambridgeshire Cricket Association's Senior League Division 3 and shares a ground with Cambridgeshire League football club, Great Shelford F.C..

Shelford has a very active Scouts group with a Beaver Colony, a Cub Pack and a Scout Troop all meeting in the Scout Hut within the village.^[7]

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 has a house in the village.

Local Events

The "Shelford Festival and Feast" takes place every year in the 2nd week of July. The Shelford Feast goes back to medieval times. The Feast continued until the Second World War, the last one being held in 1938 until revived in 1994.

References

History, Gazetteer and Directory of Cambridgeshire, published by Robert Gardner, Peterborough, 1851.
Bullwinkle, Alan (February 1984). "The Tunwells of Fulbourn and Great Shelford". Cambridgeshire Family History Society Journal (Cambridge) 4 (5): 123–125.
Mee, Arthur, The King's England, New revised edition, London, 1965, p. 140.

External links

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