The Growth of Cambridge 



169 



built over until the nineteenth century. On the east, Parker's Piece, Christ's 

 Pieces and Butt's Green marked the edge of the built-up area and are 

 shown as cornlands. No buildings of note extended beyond Jesus College; 

 and north of the river the gravel-spread towards Chesterton was entirely 

 open; but houses had crept down the west side of Castle Hill to the edge 

 of the alluvium of the Bin Brook. The Backs are shown as completely 

 rural on the maps; grazing animals on the alluvium suggest meadow, 

 conventional grain fields on the flanking terrace suggest arable land. The 

 river was bridged at Silver Street, but, beyond the bridges, the road was 

 replaced by field paths leading to the small settlement around the Mill at 

 Newnham. 



Cambridge at the end of the sixteenth century, then, covered much the 

 same area as the medieval town; the further changes in area, as shown on 

 the plans of Loggan (1688) and Cunstance (1798), are so shght as to be 

 perforce omitted from the Growth of Cambridge map (Fig. 39). These 

 show a few more buildings on the outskirts of tlie town; but the rural 

 environs as sketched for the sixteenth century remain essentially the same. 

 This almost complete halt in territorial growth during the seventeenth 

 and eighteenth centuries is most striking. 



During these centuries, however, there is evidence of a large increase 

 in population within the existing built-up area. The Poll Tax Returns for 

 1377 record 1902 persons more than fourteen years of age for the Cam- 

 bridge Borough.' Cooper quotes estimates and counts of population 

 out of the Colleges' during the early modem period wliich may be 

 summarised thus: 



These figures suggest a considerable increase during the later Middle 

 Ages, followed by a period of slow growth during the seventeenth century 

 changing to relatively rapid growth in the second half of the eighteenth 

 century. The details of the figures for the eighteenth century show that, 

 although there was a general increase of population density, the changes 

 in the central parishes, where the density of population was laighest, were 

 not great. A marked increase, however, characterised the parishes with 

 land on the outskirts; the figures for the parish of St Giles show the first 



' E. Powell, The East Anglia Rising in 1381 (1896), p. 121. 

 ' C. H. Cooper, op. cit. ii, 435 (1842); iv, 203, 274,451, 470 (1852). 

 number of hearths in the town in 1662 was recorded as 4031. Ibid, iii, 501. 



The 



