Towns, Cities, Villages and Hamlets

Samuel Lewis's Topographical
Gazeetter 1831

CHEVELEY, a parish in the hundred of CHEVELEY, county of CAMBRIDGE, 3¼ miles (E. S. E.) from Newmarket, containing 521 inhabitants. The living is a rectory, in the archdeaconry of Sudbury, and diocese of Norwich, rated in the king's books at £10. 8. 1½., and in the patronage of James Thomas Hand. The church is dedicated to St. Mary. A free grammar school was founded, in 1558, by John Ray, Esq., with an endowment of forty-nine acres and a half of land in the parish, producing an annual income of about £35, to which, in augmentation of the master's salary, Lord Dover added a farm at Worlington in Suffolk. In 1748, Mr. John Warren bequeathed £300 New South Sea annuities, for teaching girls to read and sew.

For the Family Historian details available records can be found on the Cheveley page of GENUKI Cambridgeshire.

Domesday Book Entry

CHEVELEY is a parish and village, 3 miles south east from Newmarket station on the Cambridge and Bury branch of the London and North Eastern railway: it gives its name to a hundred, and is in the Newmarket union, petty sessional division and county court district, rural deanery of Cheveley, archdeaconry and diocese of Ely..

The church of St. Mary and the Holy Host of Heaven is an ancient cruciform building of flint in the Decorated and Perpendicular styles, and consists of chancel, nave, transepts, south porch and a central tower containing a clock and 5 bells; there is a magnificently carved alabaster reredos, and several tablets of the 18th century to the Hand and Folkes families: the organ was given by Miss Ellen Priscilla Bradley in 1874 and the pulpit by the parishioners: the church was restored in the year 1873, at a cost of £4,000, and again in 1902 by Col. H. L. B. McCalmont on his return from South Africa, at a cost of about £3,000: an alabaster tablet, in memory of Col. McCalmont, to which all the parishioners contributed, was erected in 1903; there are about 300 sittings. The register dates from the year 1559.

There is a Congregational chapel, erected in 1868, having 120 sittings.

The endowment for a Free Grammar School for boys, now producing a yearly income of about £80, derived from lands in the parishes of Cheveley & Worlington, Suffolk, devised by John Raye, of Cheveley, in 1552, & by Lord Dover in 1709, is administered by governors under a scheme approved by the Charity Commissioners & portions were assigned for the maintenance of the elementary school & free scholarships: the old Grammar school building & master's house, presented by John Henry, 5th Duke of Rutland K.G. d. 20 Jan. 1857, were purchased by the late Col. H. L. B. McCalmont, & the purchase money was incorporated with the other property of the charity.

Chevelev Park is now the property of various owners, and a large portion is being developed as a building estate. The soil is chalk and clay ; subsoil, clay. The chief crops are wheat, oats and barley. The area is 2,559 acres; the population in 1921 was 599.

Broad Green is a place in the parish.

[Extracts from Kelly's Directory - Cambridgeshire - 1929]