St Neots Huntingdonshire Family History Guide

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St Neots is an Ancient Parish and a market town in the county of Huntingdonshire.

Other places in the parish include: Wintringham and Monks Hardwick.

Alternative names:

Parish church: St. Mary

Parish registers begin:

  • Parish registers: 1688
  • Bishop’s Transcripts: 1604

Nonconformists include: Baptist, Independent/Congregational, Particular Baptist, Primitive Methodist, Roman Catholic, and Wesleyan Methodist.

Adjacent Parishes

Parish History

The Imperial Gazetteer of England & Wales 1870

NEOTS (St.), a town, a parish, a sub-district, and a district, in Huntingdonshire. The town stands on the river Ouse, at the boundary with Beds, ¾ of a mile W of the Great Northern railway, and 8½ SSW of Huntingdon; takes its name from the same recluse who gave name to St. Neot in Cornwall; includes, on the S, the suburb of Eynesbury, where there was a Benedictine monastery; was the scene, in 1648, at a bridge on the Ouse, of the capture of the Earl of Holland, fighting for Charles I.

It consists of wide well-built streets, with handsome rectangular market-place; is a seat of petty sessions and county courts; and has a head post-office, a railway station with telegraph, three banking offices, three chief inns, a police station, a corn exchange, a church, three dissenting chapels, three public schools, and charities £91; and publishes a weekly newspaper. Eynesbury suburb is separated from the town by a streamlet called the Henbrook; and occupies the site of a Roman station.

The Benedictine monastery there was founded in 974, by Earl Alric and his wife Ethelfleda; became associated with St. Neot, by the furtive conveyance to it of his relics from Cornwall; was made a cell to Bec abbey in Normandy, in 1113, by Roisia de Clere; was given, at the dissolution, to the Cromwells; and has left some remains.

The police station of St. Neots is a neat building, and stands adjoined to an apartment in which the petty sessions are held. The corn exchange was built in 1863, at a cost of £4,000; and is a fine edifice, in the Tudor style. The church is later English, large, elegant, and symmetrical; includes St. Neot’s chapel, with an oak roof; and has a tower 150 feet high. The dissenting chapels are Independent, Baptist, and Wesleyan.

The national school is for boys, girls, an .infants; and has an average attendance of about 360. Newton’s free school adjoins the churchyard; was rebuilt in 1860; is in the pointed style, with a bell-turret; and has £60 a year from endowment. The Wesleyan school was recently built at a cost of about £1, 450; and is a neat structure, in a mixture of the pointed and the Tudor styles.

A weekly market is held on Thursday; and fairs, on Ascension day, on the day three weeks after Ascension day, on the Thursday after 11 Oct., and on 17 Dec. Extensive factory works and a foundry, for gas apparatus, gas-meters, steam-engines, and hot-water apparatus, are in the market-place; extensive paper mills are on a common about a mile from the town; and there are large breweries, steam flour-mills, and some maltings. Pop. of the town, exclusive of Eynesbury, in 1851, 2, 951; in 1861, 3,090. Houses, 642.

The parish contains also the hamlets of Monks-Hardwick and Wintringham. Acres, 4, 750. Real property, £14, 296; of which £700 are in canals. Pop. in 1851, 3, 157; in 1861, 3, 321. Houses, 681. The manor belongs to the Earl of Sandwich. Priory Hill is the seat of G. W. Rowley, Esq. Monks-Hardwick House was the residence of the Cromwells; stands within a large rectangular moated area; and is now a farm-house. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Ely. Value, £163. Patron, the Lord Chancellor. An ancient chapel stood at Wintringham. Friar Hugh of St. Neot’s, Bishop F. White, and lord-mayors Drope and Gedney were natives.

Source: The Imperial Gazetteer of England & Wales [Wilson, John M]. A. Fullarton & Co. N. d. c. [1870-72].

A Topographical Dictionary of England 1848

NEOT’S, ST. (St. Mary), a market-town and parish, and the head of a union, in the hundred of Toseland, county of Huntingdon, 9 miles (S. S. W.) from Huntingdon, and 56 (N. N. W.) from London; containing 3123 inhabitants.

The name of this place is derived from St. Neot, a learned Christian missionary, whose body was transferred hither from Neotstock, in Cornwall, and in honour of whom a monastery was founded here, which was subsequently endowed by Earl Leofric, as a priory of monks subordinate to Ely. About 1113, it became a cell to the abbey of Bec, in Normandy, but being afterwards made independent, it existed till the time of Henry VIII., when its revenue was £256. 1. 3¼.

The town is on the east bank of the navigable river Ouse, across which is a stone bridge of one central arch, with two smaller arches over the stream, and six others forming a causeway above the low lands adjoining; it consists principally of three streets, and from its low situation is exposed to occasional inundations, which have sometimes rendered it necessary to navigate the streets. The manufacture of paper is carried on to a considerable extent, in a mill upon the river.

The great railway from London to York will pass by. The market, held under a grant from Henry I., is on Thursday, for corn; and there are fairs on Holy-Thursday, on that day three weeks, and on December 17th, with a statutefair for hiring servants on August 1st: the market-place is very spacious and convenient. The powers of the county debt-court of St. Neot’s, established in 1847, extend over the greater part of the registration-district of St. Neot’s.

The living is a discharged vicarage, valued in the king’s books at £10, and in the patronage of the Crown; net income, £163; impropriator, Sir R. H. Bromley, Bart. The tithes were commuted for land and a money payment in 1770. The church is a remarkably good specimen of the later English style, with an elegant tower; it has a fine timber roof, also some ancient screen-work.

There are places of worship for Baptists and Wesleyans. A free school was founded in 1760, by Gabriel Newton, alderman of Leicester, who endowed it with a rent-charge of £26, subsequently augmented by Loftus Hatley with a rent-charge of £5, and by Elizabeth Bailey with £500 vested in the three per cent. consols.; the income is about £60.

The union of St. Neot’s comprises 30 parishes or places, of which 22 are in the county of Huntingdon, 7 in that of Bedford, and one in that of Cambridge; the whole containing a population of 18,035.

Source: A Topographical Dictionary of England by Samuel Lewis 1848

Parish Registers

Marriage Licences and Allegations

London Marriage Licences and Allegations 1521 to 1869

The following have been extracted from London Marriage Licences 1521 to 1869.
Abbreviations. — B. Bishop of London’s Office; D. Dean and Chapter of Westminster; F. Faculty Office of Archbishop of Canterbury; V. Registry of the Vicar-General of Canterbury.

Abbott, Joseph (Abbot), of St. Neots, Hunts, 26, and Ann Corington, of St. Giles, Cripplegate, spinster, 30 — at St. James, Clerkenwell. 31 March, 1691. B. 

Source: London Marriage Licences 1521 to 1869; Edited by Joseph Foster; London 1887

Administration

  • County: Huntingdonshire
  • Civil Registration District: St Neots
  • Probate Court: Court of the Commissary of the Bishop of Lincoln and of the Archdeacon in the Archdeaconry of Huntingdon
  • Diocese: Pre-1837 – Lincoln, Post-1836 – Ely
  • Rural Deanery: St Neots
  • Poor Law Union: St Neots
  • Hundred: Toseland
  • Province: Canterbury