Patrick Comerford
St Neots is a pretty market town on the banks of the River Great Ouse in the lost county of Huntingdonshire but is now part of Cambridgeshire. It is more that half-way between Milton Keynes, about 50 km (31 miles) west and Cambridge, 30 km (18 miles) to the east.
I had passed through St Neots a few times last month, on my way to and from Cambridge and the USPG conference in High Leigh, and I noticed its impressive church, admired its riverside location and wondered about its Cornish sounding name.
I decided on a sunny day last week to take the 20 km bus journey from Bedford to St Neots, to explore the town and the neighbouring villages of Eaton Ford and Eaton Socon, to walk by the river, to visit the parish church and to learn a little more about the pre-Reformation cult of the Cornish saint who gives his name to the town.
St Neots stands on the east bank of the River Great Ouse. Historically, the town was in the county of Huntingdonshire, and the county boundary with Bedfordshire followed the course of the Great Ouse through the town.
The remains of Iron Age settlement have been found in the town centre. Later, a Roman encampment was located there, and in Anglo-Saxon times it became known as Eynesbury, after Ernulf, a local leader.
A priory was established immediately north of Eynesbury in the late 10th century. The landowners, Leofric and his wife Leoflaed, realised that the relics of a saint would attract pilgrims and their money to the priory. They obtained the remains of Saint Neot, a ninth century monk who had founded a monastery near the present-day Cornish village of St Neot, and moved the saint’s relics to the priory near Eynesbury ca 980 AD, leaving only his arm in Cornwall.
Soon, pilgrims were visiting the priory in large numbers and a separate town grew up around the priory. The priory became rich and famous, and the area became known as St Neots, which developed at the site of a ford on the river where overland routes met. St Neots subsequently became a separate parish from Eynesbury, sometime between 1113 and 1204.
The parish church in St Neots is dedicated to Saint Mary the Virgin, and has been called the ‘Cathedral of Huntingdonshire’. The late 12th-century parish church was almost completely rebuilt in the 15th century, and today it is one of the largest mediaeval churches in modern Cambridgeshire.
The priory was destroyed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 16th century, and the relics of Saint Neot were lost.
The town grew in prosperity the following century when the River Great Ouse was made navigable from St Ives to Bedford, through St Neots, in 1629, increasing river-borne trade in the town.
During the Second English Civil War, when a Royalist attempt to seize London failed, a group of Royalists retreated to St Neots and planned to rest for the night in the town on 9 July 1648. Parliamentary troops attacked early on 10 July, taking them by surprise, and the battle centred on the market square area. Many Royalists were killed or taken prisoner.
James Toller, the ‘Eynesbury Giant’ who lived in St Neots in the 18th century, was over 8 ft in height. John Bellingham (1769-1812), the only person to assassinate a British Prime Minister, was born in St Neots. Bellingham killed Spencer Perceval in the House of Commons on 11 May 1812, and was hanged for murder a week later.
Meanwhile, corn milling and brewing brought prosperity to the town in the 18th and 19th centuries, and it continued to grow thanks to stagecoach traffic and from its railway connection from 1850 on. George Bower’s Vulcan Iron Foundry was a major employer from 1851 to 1885, supplying equipment for gasworks.
The neighbouring villages of Eaton Socon and Eaton Ford on the west bank of the river were part of Bedfordshire until 1965, when they were incorporated into St Neots. At the same time, the historic county of Huntingdonshire was incorporated into a new but short-lived county of Huntingdon and Peterborough.
That new county was abolished in 1974 and the former Huntindonshire was absorbed into Cambridgeshire. Two other English counties, Rutland and Herefordshire (briefly), were also abolished at the same time.
St Neots is in the new parliamentary constituency of St Neots and Mid-Cambridgeshire, and elected Ian Sollom of the Liberal Democrats as its first MP this year. Previously, St Neots was part of Huntingdon constituency, whose MPs in the past have included Oliver Cromwell and John Major.
The Great Ouse river passes through the centre of the town, through Regatta Meadows and Riverside Park and linking to Eaton Socon. Riverside Park is close to the town centre and covers 29 ha (72 acres), with a beautiful mile-long waterside frontage, where I enjoyed a riverside stroll in the summer sunshine along part of the Ouse Valley Way.
Recent developments have brought the population of St Neots to over 35,000, and the planned East-West Rail linking Oxford and Cambridge is to have a station at Tempsford, south of St Neots.
But St Neots continues to enjoy its provincial charm. The Market Square, which is being redeveloped and has an interesting sundial set into the pavement, has a general market every Thursday, and there is a farmers’ market every second and fourth Saturday.
In the days to come, I hope to say a little more about Saint Mary’s Church, the ‘Cathedral of Huntingdonshire’, and its fine collection of 19th century stained-glass windows, about the neighbouring villages of Eaton Ford and Eaton Socon, and about the Great North Road, an old historic road that passed through the area in pre-motorway days.
Tranquility by the River in St Neots (Patrick Comerford, 2024)
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