The Stukeleys Parish
The Parish of The Stukeleys lies to the north-west of Huntingdon. It includes the villages of Great and Little Stukeley and part of Hinchingbrooke which is now a newly developing residential area on the edge of Huntngdon. The Parish also includes the Huntingdon Racecourse, part of the former Alconbury Airfield (although there are proposals to move the rest of the Airfield into the Parish) and the Ermine Business Park.
The Parish has been reduced in area as development on the edge of Huntingdon, such as the residential neighbourhood of Stukeley Meadows and the nearby Stukeley Meadows Industrial Estate, have been incorpororated into the area of Huntingdon Town Council. It is also proposed to move the Hinchingbrooke development into the area of Huntingdon Town Council.
The main East Coast London-Edinburgh railway line runs through the Parish as does the A14 Trunk Road. The villages of Great and Little Stukeley lie astride Ermine Street, the Old Roman Road (now the C339).
Great Stukeley is a hill-top village which originally comprised of the three 'ends', Church End, Owl End and Green End, grouped around the parkland of Stukeley Hall, a late Georgian country house. There is a fine medieval church, St Bartholomew’s, a Post Office, Village Hall and Recreation Ground. Great Stukeley also has a public house, the Three Horseshoes, and The Stukeleys Country Hotel converted from a 16th Century farmhouse.
Little Stukeley lies in a shallow valley leading down from the higher ground into the wide valley of the Alconbury Brook. There are a number of interesting cottages around the church of St Martin form a Conservation A. The large Georgian Old Rectory was the scene of a famous murder in the nineteenth century.
To the immediate north of the two villages and forming the northern boundary of the Parish lies the former World War Two airfield of Alconbury. Today this site is jointly occupied by a range of commercial storage activities and the United States Air Force domestic accommodation area for RAF Molesworth some miles to the west of the Parish.
New housing areas at Hinchingbrooke, part of the estate of Hinchingbrooke House, formerly the home of the Earls of Sandwich but previously owned by the Cromwell family, have been developed since the mid 1990s and lie within the Parish. There is a primary school, Cromwell Park and a small shopping development is also planned.
