Bassingbourn History
From the Norman Conquest until the 1600's, a large part of the village, Richmond manor, was owned by the monarch or a 
close family member. To each of its owners, Richmond was one asset in a string of similar possessions,acquired merely to generate revenue to support their position and status. Possibly not a situation to inspire much loyalty from the local villagers!
One such owner was John of Gaunt, who was a target for the resentment felt by a large proportion of the nation during the peasants revolt. His steward’s house in Guilden Morden was attacked in 1381 in one of the few local incidents. An earlier steward of Richmond manor was Warin De Bassingbourne, a supporter of King John in the baronial rebellion of 1212, which led to the signing of Magna Carta. For his support he was rewarded with much land, making the De Bassingbournes important in their own right for many generations. Warin and his descendants lived at Castle manor, now known as John O’Gaunts castle, off Fen Road. Having a family with the same name as the village may have increased community pride, but that probably depended on the relationship between the family and the village; Mutual benefit or exploitation? No clues remain today!
Over successive generations many of the De Bassingbournes moved away, to marry or seek their fame and fortune elsewhere, and the name crops up in Essex, Suffolk and Lincolnshire as bishops, knights, landowners and heiresses right through to the 1500\'s. The last local De Bassingbourne died in 1420, and if there was ever any feelings of pride and community spirit linking the village with the family of the same name, nearly 600 years have passed since that link.
These two manor houses, Richmond and Castle, faced each other over the Fillance, an open space then called the Kyllands, meaning Queens lands or field lands. Richmond was behind the trees, west of the moat near the Pear Tree. In December 1999, English Heritage scheduled the site, meriting recognition because it had been a double moated manor house. Part of the moat has recently received attention from the village conservation group, who in true community spirit, have cleared the banks.
Because Richmond manor was only ever a pawn for the rich and powerful, the clergy appointed to the church, by the patron, were of a similar type, with duties elsewhere and permission to be absent. An exception came around 1500 when a religious guild, the Guild of the Trinity, was in occupation, and with it seems to have come a peak in community spirit. John Hubbard, the guild priest, whipped up a storm of local enthusiasm when he organised the performance of a Mystery Play about St George and the Dragon, to which twenty seven local communities contributed! He provided for the building of the church porch and he and his mother are buried there, where a coffin lid of this era can still be seen. The play, performed in 1511, was one in a series of events, to raise money to buy a statue of St George. It was performed in honour of the patron, Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII. She had died the year before, but had been the holder of Richmond manor for many years, although she probably only visited the village once in 1501-2. At this time, our church was particularly well endowed with vestments and plate, as befitted a church with such good connections. But all its riches, as well as the statue of St George, and even the guild itself were lost in the religious turmoil in the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.
Margaret Beaufort's vice chamberlain, an important position in those days, was a Bassingbourn man, Richard Lynne. The Lynnes had lived here from the mid 1400's into the 1600's, but they also had property in the city of London where they were merchants. They seem to have bought or married their way into owning most of the village that was not part of the royal manor, namely Castle manor and the three other manors; Goyshes, Seymours and Rouses. Richard may have been the pick of the bunch, as one of them, John, was a rogue, involved in dubious local land deals.
By the 1600’s and the Civil War, the only papist items left in the church were some windows and these were destroyed in 1644, by William Dowsing, the notorious iconoclast.
Across the country, many families and communities were divided in their loyalties, and our village would have been no different. It is interesting to speculate where local allegiance lay during this era. Historically the village had strong royal connections, but East Anglia was largely for Parliament and religious reform. There is an interesting additional twist to this speculation. One of the last of the Lynnes, a William Lynne, married Elizabeth Steward of Ely and they reputedly lived at what is now Church farm. Unfortunately William and their first child died very soon and Elizabeth went on to remarry and become the mother of Oliver Cromwell! She retained some land in the parish, which passed to Richard the Lord Protector.
Religious dissent was very strong in East Anglia, and Bassingbourn was no exception. The minister at the parish church in 1655 was Francis Holcroft, a leading Dissenter, who was forced to leave the church in 1660 and was persecuted and imprisoned for his beliefs.
These must have been very peculiar times as a churchwarden in 1650 was an anabaptist who was using the altar rails to fence his hogs. In 1674, he sold the church clock and refused to collect the tithes!
By this time all royal connections were severed, the Lynnes had left and most of Bassingbourn was owned by Sir Christopher Hatton, with whose descendants it remained well into the 20th Century. The Hattons owned land all over the country and do not seem to have been residents. In Kneesworth, from the 1600’s to the 1800’s, the Nightingale family were the local gentry followed by the Worthams. By 1791, the local Dissenters were large enough in number to finance the building of the "Independent Meeting House", the old chapel in the recreation ground.
Church against Chapel seems to have been the order of the day and in 1840 there was the case of the "unburied child". Dissenters were by then allowed to baptise their own but not yet to bury them. This poor unfortunate child had been baptised at the Meeting House, and because of this the vicar at the church refused to bury her. The controversy and litigation went on for five years, with the body taken to the churchyard five times before she was finally buried, by the Whaddon vicar, early in 1845.
By the early 1800's there was hardship all over the country, the wars with France had cost a great deal, grain was expensive and to make it worse there were many bad harvests. Enclosure had removed the working man’s common rights and they now needed to earn wages to support themselves. Many local people chose to emigrate and make a better life elsewhere.
Resentment and ill-feeling was so great that farms at the Limes, near the Hoops, at Clear Farm and elsewhere, all suffered arson attacks. The man prosecuted for some of these fires and later transported, was William Smith alias Broggie who lived in the oldest part of 40 High Street.
The 1860's brought the Coprolite industry and prosperity for the village, although not without problems as the diggers were not known for their gentility! New families came to the village to trade and many improvements followed - a gas works and splendid new cemetery with two chapels and a lodge for a cemetery keeper. The legacy of the church/chapel divide lived on however, because the chapels, although identical, were sectarian, the one on the west unconsecrated for chapel use, the one on the east, consecrated, for church use.
A better example of community spirit seems to have come in the shape of an outsider, a William Ten Broeke Crole, farm manager at the Grange in Kneesworth. In 1858, he established a choir of fifty labourers, many of whom were “disreputable” coprolite workers. It lasted twenty years and received many glowing reports in the local newspaper. Mr Crole was obviously an upstanding member of the community as he married the widow of the vicar of Bassingbourn, and was later chairman of the Kneesworth parish meeting.
The 19th Century rather ended in decline, the coprolite boom over, the gas works bankrupt, and another period of emigration before and after WW1.
Modern residents would notice most, the levels of self-sufficiency in the village during this era. Shopping was done daily from the bakers, grocers and butchers, of which there were several of each. Vegetables were grown in the garden or on one of the many allotments. Fruit was obtained from villagers’ own trees or a local orchard, and the surplus sold at market. Milk came from local farms, delivered by the farmer himself and many families kept chickens and possibly a pig. Not only were there cobblers, haberdashery, barbers, a saddlers, blacksmiths and wheelwrights, but an agricultural engineering yard, wood yard and watermill. Between these businesses and the local farms, most of the men were employed in the village. The mill was still grinding corn in the late 60’s although then powered by other means.
WW2 heralded the beginning of the end for this rural way of life, and although today, such a way of life sounds very utopian, life was extremely hard for many local families. However there was much good feeling and community spirit and everyone helped each other out.
Henry Morris was the Secretary of State for Education in Cambridgeshire from 1922 to 1954 and the concept of involvement of the community in local education was at the heart his concept of Village Colleges. Bassingbourn Village College, the first of the post-war village colleges, opened in September 1954.
It is into this very close knit community that “outsiders” have slowly descended, causing a substantial increase in population, from 1050 in the 1920’s, 2625 in 1970’s to close to 3500 today, and with it a much changed pattern of life with few people working in the village.