Welcome to Fenstanton

The Clock Tower in the village of Fenstanton, Huntingdonshire

The village and parish of Fenstanton in Huntingdonshire.

Stantun, Stantone (11th century), Staunton, Stanton Gisbrit de Gant (13th century), Fenstanton, Fennystanton, Fen Stanton (14th century) and Fenstanton (Modern).

Fenstanton in the time of Domesday belonged to Gilbert de Gaunt, son of Baldwin, Count of Flanders. It came into the hands of King Henry III, who gave it to his sister Joan, Queen of Scotland, who gave part of it to the Abbey of Tarrant, in Dorset. The remainder again fell into the King’s hands, and he gave it to Stephen de Segrave. From the Segraves it passed through the families of Mowbray and Howard, Earls of Nottingham and Dukes of Norfolk, to the Lords Berkeley.

The parish church of St Peter and St Paul, Fenstanton, is a stone building of the Early English and Perpendicular periods, and consists of an unusually large and lofty chancel, nave with clerestory, nave-aisles, and a tower surmounted by a “broach” spire. Four of the windows in the chancel are filled with stained glass, as memorials respectively to Rev. Stanley Walton (a former vicar), Miss Cowling, Mr and Mrs Hewlins, and Mrs Haylock Watson. The east window is seventeen feet wide, and has seven lights showing beautiful tracery. There is also the chancel monument of the famous landscape gardener, well known in the early part of the 19th century as Lancelot "Capability" Brown (External website will open in a new window). The living is in the gift of the Master and Fellows of Trinity Hall Cambridge. More notes about the History of Fenstanton.

Fenstanton has many quaint and interesting houses and a curious clock-tower (see photograph above) on the Green which was formerly a 17th Century Market Hall of two storeys, the lower of which was adapted as a lock-up at a later date.

Fenstanton is one of the parishes of the District of Huntingdonshire, whose administrative centre is Huntingdon, the other principle towns being St Ives home of the Chapel on the Bridge, St Neots the largest town in the County of Cambridgeshire, the Roman town of Godmanchester and Ramsey site of the former Abbey.