Water Newton - WikiHQ

Water Newton is a village and civil parish in Cambridgeshire, England. Water Newton lies approximately west of Peterborough. Water Newton is situated within Huntingdonshire which is a non-metropolitan district of Cambridgeshire as well as being a historic county of England. As the population of the village was 88 only at the 2011 Census it is included in the civil parish of Chesterton.

The village is sandwiched between the River Nene to the north and the A1 trunk road to the south. The River Nene marks the boundary between Huntingdonshire and the City of Peterborough.

History

Roman archaeology

:Main articles: Durobrivae and Water Newton Treasure

During ploughing in February 1975, a hoard of 4th-century Roman silver was discovered, which is known as the 'Water Newton Treasure'. They were probably buried by an inhabitant of the nearby Roman fortified garrison town of Durobrivae. The silver plates and bowls, votive tokens engraved and embossed with the labarum (the chi-rho cross), and an unengraved standing two-handled cup of the form (cantharus) later used as chalices comprise the earliest group of Christian liturgical silver yet found in the Roman Empire. Due to the importance of this find, it is now in the British Museum, with replicas at Peterborough Museum.

Middle Ages

In 1085, William the Conqueror ordered that a survey should be carried out across his kingdom to discover who owned which parts and what it was worth. The survey took place in 1086 and the results were recorded in what, since the 12th century, has become known as the Domesday Book. Starting with the king himself, for each landholder within a county there is a list of their estates or manors; and, for each manor, there is a summary of the resources of the manor, the amount of annual rent that was collected by the lord of the manor both in 1066 and in 1086, together with the taxable value.

Water Newton was listed in the Domesday Book in the Hundred of Normancross in Huntingdonshire; the name of the settlement was written as Newtone in the Domesday Book. In 1086 there was just one manor at Water Newton; the annual rent paid to the lord of the manor in 1066 had been £5 and the rent had increased to £7 in 1086.

The Domesday Book does not explicitly detail the population of a place but it records that there were 22 households at Water Newton. Using these figures then an estimate of the population of Water Newton in 1086 is that it was within the range of 77 and 110 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 ; 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 were seven ploughlands at Water Newton in 1086 and that there was the capacity for a further ploughland. Huntingdonshire District Council collects the council tax, and provides services such as building regulations, local planning, environmental health, leisure and tourism. Water Newton is a part of the district ward of Elton and Folksworth and is represented on the district council by one councillor. Cambridgeshire County Council consists of 69 councillors representing 60 electoral divisions. Water Newton is part of the electoral division of Norman Cross

From 1901, a census was taken every ten years with the exception of 1941 (due to the Second World War).

{|class="wikitable" style="text-align:center;"

!width="150"|Parish

!width="30"|1911

!width="30"|1921

!width="30"|1931

!width="30"|1951

!width="30"|1961

!width="30"|1971

!width="30"|1981

!width="30"|1991

!width="30"|2001

!width="30"|2011

|align=left|Water Newton

|align="center"|91

|align="center"|105

|align="center"|78

|align="center"|79

|align="center"|69

|align="center"|51

|align="center"|72

|align="center"|74

|align="center"|88

All population census figures from report Historic Census figures Cambridgeshire to 2011 by Cambridgeshire Insight.