COMBERTON IS A DELIGHTFUL small village not far from Cambridge. A graveyard surrounds its parish church of St Mary, which stands south of the village. While looking around the graves in the churchyard, I came across a stone with the following inscription carved in it:
“In memory of the Barrons of the Manor of Birdlines 1400 – 1805, over 60 of whom lie buried here. Six within the church. R.I.P.”
I wondered about the Manor of Birdlines, and resorted to the Internet. After the Norman Conquest, Comberton was divided into three manors. One of these was Birdlines (also spelled as ‘Berdlines’, ‘Birdling’, and ‘Burdelins’). By 1300, the manor became owned by the Chambers family of Epping, following a marriage, Then, in 1514, the manor was sold to the Bishop of Winchester. Thus, it became part of the Savoy Hospital Estates, which were established by King Edward VI’s charter. The manor’s lands were allotted to London’s St Thomas Hospital, and its governors became titular Lords of the Manor. They continued in this role until 1974. All this information and much more can be found at https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/cambs/vol5/pp175-189 .
The memorial to the Barrons of Birdline
There is a Birdline manor house in Comberton. It was built in the eighteenth century on the site of an earlier one. What puzzled me was why the “Barrons of Birdline” continued to be buried in Comberton’s churchyard and church until 1805. I cannot explain that yet, but I wondered if, after that date, the “Barrons” no longer lived in the village. Or was the word ‘Barron’ on the memorial a family name, rather than a misspelling of the word ‘Baron’, which I had assumed when seeing it? A little more research revealed that there was a Barron family in Comberton. A website (https://ancestors.familysearch.org/en/G3LT-KYN/richard-barron-1560-1618) gives the following information:
“When Richard Barron was born about 1560, in Comberton, Cambridgeshire, England, United Kingdom, his father, Thomas Barron Snr, was 21 and his mother, Jeane Bonner, was 21. He had at least 1 son with Margaret Meads Feato BRUMSTED. He died in April 1618, in Comberton, Cambridgeshire, England, at the age of 59.”
Having discovered this, I now favour the idea that the monument commemorates not the barons of Birdline but members of the Barron family, who lived in the manor.
SINCE THE FOURTH OF JULY 2020, the anniversary of the day Britain lost a large American colony and when our worldly wise Prime Minister deemed it safe for all of us to be liberated from the constraints of ‘lockdown’ and encouraged us to ‘eat out to help out’, a policy that appears to have helped to spread the covid19 virus as well as restaurant owners, we have been roaming around the countryside, discovering what a beautiful country we inhabit. What has struck me when driving from A to B is the number of exceptionally attractive, yet not well-known, villages we have passed through. The village of Comberton in Cambridgeshire was one of these, which we nearly drove past without examining it. However, as time was on our side and it looked so lovely, we stopped there for a few minutes and took a stroll around.
We parked next to an oddly shaped small village pond in which clumps of reeds were growing. A small family of ducks wound its way between the vegetation, occasionally disappearing from view. At the far end of the pond, there is an old low brick wall. Behind it, there is a long two-storey house with a brick roof and decorative chimney stacks. Before describing some of the other lovely buildings in the village, let me give you a flavour of its history.
Sometime between 4000 BC and 2500 BC, someone dropped a polished Neolithic stone axe near where the village stands today. Somewhat later, the Romans built a villa near Comberton. Even later, the village’s name began to evolve, as is described on the village’s website (http://www.comberton.org/home/about-comberton/history-of-comberton/):
“A lot is said about the name of the village and its origins. It is believed that the name is of Celtic origin, possibly named after a landowner by the name of Cumbra. The Domesday Book (1086) has it recorded as Cumbertone. According to William Kip’s map of the area in 1607 Comberton is spelt as it is today and interestingly Barton is spelt Berton”
The village has several churches, which we will visit in the future. One of these is St Mary’s, is in the Early English style with later modifications. Another still extant place of worship is used by non-Conformists. There have been associations between non-Conformism and Comberton since as early as the 17th century. The Puritan William Dowsing (1596-1668), an iconoclast, visited the village in March 1643, and recorded:
“‘We brake downe a crucifix and 69 superstitious pictures we brake downe, and gave order to take downe 36 cherubims, and the steps to be taken down by March 25.’”
Prior to 1772, when a new road, a turnpike (now the A228), was built, Comberton was on the road connecting Oxford with Cambridge. Apart from the usual activities found in villages, such as butchery, bakery, saddlery, harness-making, inn keeping, blacksmithing, and so on, the place had one industry for a while. That was in the 19th century when Comberton became a small centre for mining coprolite, fossilised dung. This material used to be ground in a mill to produce a powder that made a good crop fertiliser. Judging by the good state of the houses and the high-quality cars parked near them, the inhabitants of Comberton appear make their living in reasonably well-paid jobs. Were I to have had a profitable career in or near Cambridge, this village might have been a good place to live.
Every village is unique, but many share the same features. In Comberton, we saw several houses with well-maintained thatched roofs. However, we also saw something I had never noticed before. Some of the houses had what you might describe as ‘hybrid’ roofs: partly thatched and partly tiled. One house near the village pond had something we have seen on thatched roofs in many other villages. That is, the ridge of the thatch is decorated with animals made of thatch. Here in Comberton, this one roof was adorned with thatch sculptures of four birds with long necks, that made me think they are supposed to be depicting geese rather than ducks or swans.
The village pond, which is across the road from a dental surgery and ‘Millionhairz’, a hairdresser’s salon, is encircled by an attractive low, neatly built stone wall that curves around the water in a visually pleasant way. On the green next to the pond, there is a timber post that supports a sign (erected 1977) with the name of the village and a two-sided picture above it. On one side, a priest is depicted handing fishes to three people with outstretched arms. This refers to years long past when herrings were handed out to the poor in the village soon before Easter. The other side of the picture above the village name depicts a farmer ploughing his field with a plough drawn by a horse. Behind the farmer high on a hill, there is a white coloured wooden windmill. This reminds us that once Comberton had two working mills.
Our visit to Comberton lasted no more than ten minutes partly because we had to reach somewhere to meet my cousin and because the weather was miserable: grey, cold, and wet. However, what little we saw of this delightful place made us realise that it was well worth stopping en-route to our destination. We have already driven through so many intriguing villages on our excursions through the English countryside. I would have liked to spend time in all of these, and hope to return to some of them in the future. I would rather spend time wandering around picturesque villages than sitting for hours in traffic jams, as happens so often these days.
yamey 