Conington, Huntingdonshire facts for kids

Place name sign in Conington

Quick facts for kids Conington
Conington
Population	209 (2011)
OS grid reference	TL176860
District	Huntingdonshire
Shire county	Cambridgeshire
Region	East
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	Peterborough
Postcode district	PE7
Police	Cambridgeshire
Fire	Cambridgeshire
Ambulance	East of England
EU Parliament	East of England
UK Parliament	North West Cambridgeshire
List of places UK England Cambridgeshire 52°27′30″N 0°16′12″W / 52.45831°N 0.27°W / 52.45831; -0.27

Conington (Conington All Saints, or "Conington-juxta-Petriburg") is an English village and civil parish in the Cambridgeshire district of Huntingdonshire. Conington lies about 10 km (6 miles) south of Peterborough and 3 km (2 miles) north of Sawtry. It is within earshot of the A1(M), part of the Great North Road, which follows the course of the Roman Ermine Street. Conington lies within Huntingdonshire, which is a non-metropolitan district of Cambridgeshire and one of the historic counties of England.

History

Conington was listed in the Domesday Book in the Hundred of Normancross in Huntingdonshire; the name of the settlement was written as Coninctune in the Domesday Book. In 1086 there was just one manor at Conington; the annual rent paid to the lord of the manor in 1066 had been £9 and the rent was the same in 1086.

The Domesday Book does not explicitly detail the population of a place but it records that there was 27 households at Conington. There is no consensus about the average size of a household at that time; estimates range from 3.5 to 5.0 people per household. Using these figures then an estimate of the population of Conington in 1086 is that it was within the range of 94 and 135 people.

The Domesday Book uses a number of units of measure for areas of land that are now unfamiliar terms, such as hides and ploughlands. In different parts of the country, these were terms for the area of land that a team of eight oxen could plough in a single season and are equivalent to 120 acres (49 hectares); this was the amount of land that was considered to be sufficient to support a single family. By 1086, the hide had become a unit of tax assessment rather than an actual land area; a hide was the amount of land that could be assessed as £1 for tax purposes. The survey records that there was 15 ploughlands at Conington in 1086. In addition to the arable land, there was 40 acres (16 hectares) of meadows at Conington.

The total tax assessment in the Domesday Book for the manor at Conington was nine geld.

By 1086 there was already a church and a priest at Conington.

The Cotton Baronetcy of Conington was created in the Baronetage of England on 29 June 1611 for the antiquary Robert Bruce Cotton (1570–1631), who also represented five constituencies in the House of Commons. The novelist and editor Henrietta Maria Bowdler was born in Conington in 1750.

In the Second World War, Conington was located next to Royal Air Force Station Glatton. RAF Glatton was constructed to Class "A" standards to support heavy bombers in 1943 with the intent of being used by the US Army Air Forces. The 457th Bombardment Group (Heavy) arrived on 21 January 1944. The recognisable tail code of the 457th was the "triangle U" painted on the vertical stabilizers of the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses which operated from the air base. The 457th Bomb Group operated RAF Glatton from January 1944 until 20 April 1945, when it completed its 237th and last combat mission at the conclusion of the war. In All Saints Church, Conington is a memorial to the 457th Bomb Group.

Demography

Population

The historical UK census population of Conington in the period 1801 to 1901 ranged between 154 in 1801 and 319 in 1851. The subsequent ten-year census results were as follows:

All population census figures have been taken from the report Historic Census figures Cambridgeshire to 2011 by Cambridgeshire Insight. In 2011, the parish covered an area of 3,173 acres (1,284 hectares), so that the population density for Conington in 2011 was 42.2 per square mile (16.3 per km²).