114 Villages 



The shapes of parishes are so varied, that they defy classification. The 

 chances of topography and of time cannot be reduced to generahsation. 

 But the configuration of parishes in the south-east of the County certainly 

 stands out as sometliing peculiar. The upland villages of Fig. 24 are seen, 

 on Fig. 26, to form a group of long narrow parishes lying side by side. 

 They are oriented down the slope and not along it. This arrangement 

 gives to each parish a variety in soil and vegetation. If the parishes had 

 been, say, square, any single one might have contained nothing but clay 

 (and woodland), while its neighbour could have consisted entirely of open 

 chalk down. Beyond the boundary M-N, there is a second tier of parishes, 

 lower down the slope. This side-by-side arrangement secures for them, 

 also, two types of terrain — an area of chalk and an area of fen. South of the 

 hne E-F the parishes are oriented at right angles to the Via Devana; this 

 gives to each a stretch of chalk upland as well as a share in the valley 

 alluvium. A somewhat similar arrangement is foimd in the parishes of the 

 Bourn Brook Valley. 



All these indications of order in the parish map are but stray hints and 

 ghmpses ; from them, however, we can see reason at work when the early 

 settlers laid down the foundations of the present village geography of the 

 County. 



PARISH CHURCHES 



The prominent centre in every village was the parish church, and it is 

 interesting to see how the churches, like their parishes, reflect the geo- 

 graphical circumstances of their environment. The four maps of Fig. 27 

 show the main types of material used in their construction ; naturally this 

 classification is based only upon the chief materials used. Very often, a 

 clunch or flint church has imported stone pillars and arches. For it should 

 be remembered that Cambridgeshire is not very rich in good building 

 stone. Even so, facilities of transport have not destroyed the local back- 

 ground. Fhnt churches are located mainly along the southern boundary 

 of the County, where the flint was obtained from the Upper Chalk (see 

 Fig. 4). Clunch, out of the Lower Chalk, is easily weathered, but, in the 

 absence of better stone, it has been used to help build a number of churches. 

 Rubble, probably consisting of stones gatliered from the Boulder Clay and 

 mixed with mud, has been used in thirty churches, but these often have 

 stone dressings. The remaining churches are built of imported stone; most 

 of the fen churches come within this category, for transport was com- 

 paratively easy along the fen waterways. 



