Cambridgeshire genealogy links

Genealogical and historical information and links for anyone researching their ancestors in England and the British Isles

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Themes	Explorers and Adventurers	Nobel Prize Winners
Actors and Directors	Famous People	Places of Interest
Anglo-Saxons and Danes	Historic Events	Prime Ministers
AONB (National Landscapes)	Inventors and Scientists	Royal Consorts and Heirs
Artists and Architects	Monarchs	World Heritage Sites
Composers and Musicians	National Parks	Writers and Poets

Nature

Bedfordshire,
Cambridgeshire &
Northamptonshire
Wildlife Trust

Books
WATERLAND by Graham Swift (1983)	History teacher Tom Crick grew up in a lockkeeper's cottage in the Fens of eastern England. One day a body is found in the river.

Cambridgeshire

Cambridgeshire lies in eastern England. In 1974 the ancient county of Huntingdonshire was incorporated into the county as was the Isle of Ely and the Soke of Peterborough, an area formerly part of Northamptonshire.

Towns include the county seat of Cambridge.

Actors and Directors

The film actor, director and producer Richard Attenborough was born in Cambridge in 1923. In 1969 after a nearly three decade-long acting career he began to direct. In 1987 he filmed the story of the South African activist Steve Biko in Cry Freedom and in 1993 the story of C.S. Lewis' relationship with the US poet Joy Gresham in Shadowlands. His film of the life of Mohandas Gandhi was a project which took him several decades to realise. In 1982 Gandhi was released and went on to be awarded 8 Academy Awards.

Richard Attenborough with Ben Kingsley

Artists and Architects

The landscape gardener Capability Brown was buried at Fenstanton in 1783.

Capability Brown

Famous People

Oliver Cromwell was born in Huntingdon in 1599.

Oliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell

The abolitionist Thomas Clarkson was born in Wisbech in 1760. From 1785 he became determined to end slavery and together with a group of abolitionists which included Granville Sharp and William Wilberforce campaigned against the trade in people. In 1833 he was the only one of the three still alive to see Parliament pass a law which finally ended slavery in the British Empire and its colonies.

Thomas Clarkson

The economist John Maynard Keynes was born in Cambridge in 1883.

John Maynard Keynes

Born in Vienna in 1889, the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein died in Cambridge in 1951. He first stayed there in 1911 returning to settle in the university town in 1929 and becoming a British citizen in 1939. He is buried at the Ascension Burial Ground in the town.

What is your aim in philosophy?
To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.
Philosophische Untersuchungen (1953)

Inventors and Scientists

The physicist Stephen Hawking died in Cambridge in 2018. He is buried in Westminster Abbey near Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin.

Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking website

Nobel Prize Winners

Chemistry

The physical chemist Ronald G.W. Norrish was born in Cambridge in 1897 and died there in 1978. In 1967 he shared the Nobel Prize for Chemistry with George Porter and the German Manfred Eigen for their development of the flash photolysis technique.

The New Zealand-born pioneer nuclear physicist Ernest Rutherford died in Cambridge in 1937. In 1908 he had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. His ashes were interred at Westminster Abbey.

Ernest Rutherford

Famous people buried at Westminster Abbey

The physicist Francis Aston died in Cambridge in 1945. In 1922 he had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his invention of the mass spectograph.

The chemist Harold W. Kroto was born as Harold Krotoschiner in Wisbech in 1939. In 1996 he shared the Nobel Prize for Chemistry with the Americans Robert F. Curl junior and Richard E. Smalley.

Harold W. Kroto

The chemist Alexander Todd died in Cambridge in 1997. In 1957 he had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

Alexander Todd

In 1997 the molecular biologist John C. Kendrew also died in Cambridge. In 1962 he had shared the Nobel Prize for Chemistry with his colleague the Austrian-born Max Perutz who had emigrated to England in 1936 and become a British citizen.

John C. Kendrew

Economics

The economist James E. Meade died in Cambridge in 1995. In 1977 he had shared the Nobel Prize for Economics with the Swedish scientist Bertil Ohlin.

James E. Meade

The economist Richard Stone died in Cambridge in 1991. In 1984 he had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics.

Physics

The physicist George Paget Thomson was born in Cambridge in 1892. In 1937 he shared the Nobel Prize for Physics with the American Clinton Davisson for their discovery of electron diffraction by crystals. The son of the Nobel Prize Winner J.J. Thomson, he died in Cambridge in 1975. The Thomsons were one of only 5 fathers and sons to have received the award.

George Paget Thomson

His father and one of the pioneers of nuclear physics, the physicist J.J. Thomson died in Cambridge in 1940. His ashes were interred at Westminster Abbey. In 1906 he had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for his revolutionary discovery of the electron. The Thomsons were one of only 5 fathers and sons to have received the award.

J.J. Thomson

Famous people buried at Westminster Abbey

The physicist John Cockcroft died in Cambridge in 1967. In 1951 he had shared the Nobel Prize for Physics with the Irishman E.T.S. Walton for their study of alpha particles. He is buried at the Ascension Burial Ground in the town.

John Cockcroft

The physicist James Chadwick died in Cambridge in 1974. In 1935 he had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for his discovery of the neutron.

James Chadwick

The physicist and radio astronomer Martin Ryle died in Cambridge in 1984. In 1974 he had shared the Nobel Prize for Physics with Antony Hewish for their research in radio astrophysics.

Physiology or Medicine

The biochemist Frederick Hopkins died in Cambridge in 1947. In 1929 he had shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with the Dutch scientist Christiaan Eijkman for his research into vitamins. He was father-in-law to the writer J.B. Priestley. He is buried at the Ascension Burial Ground in the town.

The physiologist Henry Dale died in Cambridge in 1968. In 1936 he had shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with the German Otto Loewi for research into nerve impulses.

Henry Dale

The physiologist Archibald V. Hill died in Cambridge in 1977. In 1922 he had shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with the German Otto Meyerhof for his research into heat production in muscles.

Archibald V. Hill

In 1977 the physiologist Edgar D. Adrian also died in Cambridge. In 1932 he had shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Charles Sherrington for their research into neurons.

Edgar D. Adrian

The physiologist Alan Lloyd Hodgkin died in Cambridge in 1998. In 1963 he had shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Andrew Huxley and the Australian John Eccles for their research into nerve membranes.

Alan Lloyd Hodgkin

Places of Interest

Cathedrals and Abbeys

Ely Cathedral

Cathedrals of England and Wales

Universities

Cambridge University is England's second oldest after Oxford. Peterhouse College opened in 1284.

Cambridge University

Royal Consorts and Heirs

House of Tudor

Henry VIII's first wife Catherine of Aragon died at Kimbolton Castle in 1536 and was buried at Peterborough Cathedral. She had married Henry's elder brother Prince Arthur in 1501 but he died the following year. In 1509 she married Henry VIII giving birth to the future Mary I in 1516. She remained Queen until 1533 when Henry secretly married Anne Boleyn in frustration at the Catholic Church in Rome not granting him a divorce. This was to lead to the Reformation when Henry broke with the Pope and set about creating the Church of England.

Catherine of Aragon

Writers and Poets

The poet William Whitehead was born in 1715 in Cambridge. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1757, succeeding Colley Cibber. On Whitehead's death in 1785 Thomas Warton was awarded the post.

William Whitehead

Poets laureate

The philosopher and writer William Godwin was born at Wisbech in 1756. He was married to the writer Mary Wollstonecraft and their daughter was Mary Shelley.

William Godwin

Love of our country is another of those specious illusions, which have been invented by impostors in order to render the multitude the blind instruments of their crooked designs.
An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Political Justice (1793)

It is a most mistaken way of teaching men to feel they are brothers, by imbuing their mind with perpetual hatred.
An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Political Justice (1793)

What can be more shameless than for society to make an example of those whom she has goaded to the breach of order, instead of amending her own institutions which, by straining order into tyranny, produced the mischief?
An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Political Justice (1793)

In 1895 the novelist L.P. Hartley was born as Leslie Poles Hartley in the village of Whittlesey near Peterborough (then in Northamptonshire).

L.P. Hartley

The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.
The Go-Between - Opening line of novel (1953)

It all began with the weather defying me.
First line of chapter 3

The thermometer stood at eighty-four: that was satisfactory but I was confident it could do better.
First line of chapter 7

Meteorologically Saturday was a disappointing day;...
First line of chapter 11

County Links

Genealogy in England