John Ferrar of LIttle Gidding by D. R. Ransome

John Ferrar of LIttle Gidding (by D. R. Ransome)

John Ferrar of Little Gidding

In 2000 Records of Huntingdonshire (Vol.3, No.8, 2000), the Journal of the Huntingdonshire Local History Society, included an article about John Ferrar of Little Gidding by D. R. Ransome.  The article has been updated, notes by the author and also supplementary notes were added to this digital copy. The Society is pleased to be able to republish this article with the kind permission of the author D. R. Ransome.

‘For a century and a quarter Little Gidding was the home of the Ferrar’s. When they came there in 1625 the family consisted of the old Mrs Ferrar, her married daughter Susanna and her family, and two of Mrs Ferrar’s sons. The younger was Nicholas, who is famous, but the elder, John, is undeservedly less well known. This article is an attempt to redress the balance and tell something of John’s life.

His parents were a formidable pair. His father was born in 1544 or 1545 at Hertford, the son of a draper who died when Nicholas was 12 or 13. ………….’

To read the article click on the picture above.

2018 Goodliff Awards

The 2018 Goodliff Awards were presented on 15th November 2018 to recipients at a reception in the Assembly Room of Huntingdon Town Hall. For details click on the picture below:

2018 Goodliff Award Recipients

Map of the Little Gidding Estate of Sir Gervase Clifton by John Hexham of January 1596/7

Cambridgeshire Archives and Local Studies has acquired for Huntingdonshire Archives a map of the Little Gidding Estate of Sir Gervase Clifton by John Hexham of January 1596/7. The map was has purchased with equal funding from Central Government (the ACE/V&A Purchase Grant Fund) and the Huntingdonshire Local History Society,

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This map is a magnificent addition to our local archives and the society’s committee was easily persuaded to support its purchase for a number of reasons:

a. It is one of the earliest maps of a Huntingdonshire village, the earliest of a whole parish within the ancient county in local repositories.

b. It is by the one surveyor of the Elizabethan ‘golden age’ of English map-making, John Hexham, who elsewhere calls himself ‘of Huntingdon’, who plainly deserves further research which this map may stimulate.

c. It provides clear cartographic evidence of what existed of Little Gidding village, a shrunken settlement that has been categorised by landscape historians as a ‘deserted medieval village (DMV)’ in 1597.

d. It shows the village, and the manor house itself in elevation, as it existed during the lifetime of Nicholas Ferrar, just 27 years before Ferrar purchased the estate and arrived to make it the centre of his extraordinary if short-lived religious community.

e. Little Gidding has iconic status in our national history thanks to the visit of the poet T.S. Eliot, who made it the subject of the best-known of his Four Quartets.

To celebrate the acquisition Huntingdonshire Archives has mounted a display about the map in Huntingdon Library which lasts until the end of September. I encourage you to go. The society’s assistance is prominently and properly acknowledged there. There will also be a privileged opportunity for members to see the original map at close quarters when it will be brought to a society meeting, probably the society’s AGM next May. Further details will be circulated in due course.

Philip Saunders
Chairman, Huntingdonshire Local History Society