Littleport, Cambridgeshire

History

With an Old English name of Litelport, the village was worth 17,000 eels a year to the Abbots of Ely in 1086.

The legendary founder of Littleport was King Canute. A fisherman gave the king shelter one night, after drunken monks had denied him hospitality. After punishing the monks, the king made his host the mayor of a newly founded village.

Littleport was the site of the Littleport Riots of 1816, after war-weary veterans from the Battle of Waterloo had returned home, only to find that they could get no work and the grain prices had gone up. They took to the streets and smashed shops and other buildings until troops were brought in. St George's church registers were destroyed during the riots. The remaining registers start from 1754 (marriages), 1756 (burials), and 1783 (baptisms). Some original documents relating to the riots are held in Cambridgeshire Archives and Local Studies at the County Record Office, Cambridge.

In 2003, a Harley-Davidson statue was unveiled in Littleport to commemorate the centenary of the motorcycle company. William Harley, father of the company's co-founder William Sylvester Harley, had been born in Victoria Street, Littleport, in 1835 and emigrated to the United States in 1859.

Governance

Littleport is a civil parish with an elected council. Parish council meetings are held in the Barn.

The second layer of local government in Littleport was Ely Rural District from 1894 to 1974, when East Cambridgeshire District Council was formed based in Ely. The third layer is Cambridgeshire County Council based in Cambridge.

The parish belongs to the Parliamentary constituency of North East Cambridgeshire. For the European Parliament, it is part of the East of England constituency, which elects seven MEPs using the d'Hondt method of party-list proportional representation.

Economy

Thomas Peacock, who founded the gentlemen's tailoring chain Hope Brothers, was born in Littleport in 1829. The first Hope Brothers shirt-making factory was opened in the village in 1882. For a period in the 1940s and 1950s, Hope Brothers were also manufacturers of the England football kit. The factory was eventually taken over by Burberry.

From 1979–83, Jim Burns guitars were based in Padnal Road in Littleport. They produced guitars such as the Steer, popularized by guitarist Billy Bragg.

Sport

The Littleport Ice Stadium Project is under way in Littleport. This will become a speed skating oval and the only indoors full-size bandy rink in England.

Little Ouse

Littleport covers the hamlet of Little Ouse which comes under the Littleport East ward. Little Ouse is now entirely residential: the former pub, the Waterman's Arms and church of St John the Evangelist have been converted into private dwellings.

The lowest trig point in Britain is near Little Ouse; it sits at 3 ft (1m) below sea level.

Climate

With an average annual rainfall of 24 inches (600 mm), Cambridgeshire is one of the driest counties in the British Isles. Protected from the cool onshore coastal breezes east of the region, Cambridgeshire is warm in summer and cold and frosty in winter.

The nearest Met Office weather station is Cambridge NIAB.

There are many additional local weather stations reporting periodic figures to the internet. For example, via Weather Underground, Inc.

Demography

Littleport is 28.46 square miles (73.7 km²) in size making it the largest village in East Cambridgeshire by area. The city of Ely itself has the highest East Cambridgeshire population with Soham second and Littleport third.

Notable people

Black dog hauntings

Littleport is home to two different legends of spectral black dogs, which have been linked to the Black Shuck folklore of the East of England but differ in significant aspects.

Local folklorist W.H. Barrett relates the story set before the English Reformation of a local girl gathering wild mint from a nearby mere who was rescued from a lustful friar by a huge black dog, both of which were killed in the struggle. The local men threw into the mere the body of the friar but buried with honour the dog, which was said to haunt the area after that.

Cambridgeshire folklorist Enid Porter relates stories dating from the 19th century of a black dog haunting the A10 road between Littleport and the neighbouring hamlet of Brandon Creek, according to which local residents would be kept awake on dark nights by the sounds of howling and travellers would hear trotting feet behind them and feel hot breath on the back of their legs. Local legend says that the dog was awaiting the return of its owner, who had drowned in the nearby River Great Ouse in the early 1800s. This haunting reportedly came to an end in 1906, when a local resident drove his car into something solid, which was never found, next to the spot where the dog's owner supposedly drowned.

Cultural reference

Littleport provided the inspiration for Great Deeping, the imaginary location of the Paradise Barn children's novels by Victor Watson, set in the Second World War.