Towns, Cities, Villages and Hamlets

Samuel Lewis's Topographical
Gazeetter 1831

COTON, a parish in the hundred of WETHERLEY, county of CAMBRIDGE, 3 miles (W. by N.) from Cambridge, containing 228 inhabitants. The living is a discharged rectory, in the archdeaconry and diocese of Ely, rated in the king's books at £6. 12. 11., and in the patronage of the Master and Fellows of Catharine Hall, Cambridge. The church is dedicated to St. Peter. Dr. Andrew Downes, Greek Professor at Cambridge, and translator of the Apocrypha, died here in 1687.

Domesday Book Entry

War Memorial

The war memorial and the men on it have been documented on the Genweb Cambridgeshire page

COTON is a parish, a quarter of a mile off the road from Cambridge to St. Neots, 4 miles west from Cambridge station in the hundred of Wetherley, union of Chesterton, petty sessional division and county court district of Cambridge, rural deanery of Barton and archdeaconry and diocese of Ely.

The church of St. Peter, which stands in the centre of the village, is a small building of stone and flint, chiefly in the Decorated and Perpendicular styles, and consists of chan-cel, nave, aisles, north and south porches and a Per-pendicular embattled western tower, carried on arches and finished with pinnacles and spire; it contains 3 bells: the font, of Norman work, consists of a square basin on a circular stem: the church was restored in 1880, and affords 150 sittings. The register dates from the year 1538.

There is a Baptist chapel here with 120 sittings.

In the village stands a monolith, 7 feet high, but whether a village cross or a boundary stone is uncertain. The Cambridge Preservation Society, John Hunt esq. and King's, Queen's, St. John's and Corpus Christi Colleges, Cambridge, are the principal landowners. A reading room was opened in 1913. The soil is clayey; subsoil, gault; there is also a greensand stratum, which crops out and yields ex-cellent water. The chief crops are wheat, barley, oats and beans. The area is 970 acres; the population in 1921 was 340.

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