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33-723: Robert Seeley was born in Bluntisham-cum-Earith , Huntingdonshire , England in 1602. His father William was a joiner (cabinet maker) . In 1623 Robert moved to London , where he became an apprentice cordwainer (shoemaker). He married Mary (unknown maiden name) Heath Mason, widow of William Heath, widow of Walter Mason, in 1626 and began attending the church of the Puritan minister John Davenport that same year. Robert and Mary had one son Nathaniel 16 September 1627, baptized at St Stephen's Parish, Coleman Street, London. In 1630 Robert, Mary and Nathaniel sailed with John Winthrop as

66-463: A chalybeate spring, where more than one attempt was made in the 18th century to establish a spa . The "healing" properties of its waters were recommended by John Addenbrooke , founder of Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, among others. The Old Rectory, now known as Bluntisham House, was built circa 1720, with wings added in the 18th century and further alterations in the 19th century. The doorway

99-439: A civil parish, Bluntisham has a parish council . Bluntisham Parish Council has eleven members and normally meets on the first Monday of every month in the village hall. The second tier of local government is Huntingdonshire District Council which is a non-metropolitan district of Cambridgeshire. Bluntisham is a part of the district ward of Earith and is represented on the district council by two councillors. For Bluntisham

132-428: A further parish, Ealing, unusually so for a medieval town. From the outset the townspeople of New Brentford, founded around St Lawrence's Hospital in the manorial land of Boston Manor in 1179, were "to worship at Hanwell on the four principal feasts and to be buried there", except "the infirm, chaplains, and their servants". Offerings, tithes (but a smaller portion after c. 1660) and an annual donation of wax went from

165-489: A lesser rate than mission rooms, which were usually cheaply built and declined after the invention of different modes of private wheeled transport. The vestry , whether a joint board with the whole parish or dedicated in each chapelry, was empowered under an Act of Parliament in the reign of Henry VIII to collect rates to improve the roads, other general purposes, and administer the Poor Law (e.g. indoor and outdoor relief ,

198-683: A member of the Church and built the Meeting House and School buildings in the 19th century. In the School he placed a number of hand-carved wooden heads, thought to be likenesses of himself and his friends. He was also a teacher at the Sunday School. Chapelry A chapelry was a subdivision of an ecclesiastical parish in England and parts of Lowland Scotland up to the mid 19th century. A chapelry had

231-478: A part of the original Puritan expedition to Massachusetts. Soon after arriving in the New World, Seeley became one of the original forty settlers of Watertown , one of Massachusetts' earliest Puritan communities. He employed his training in surveying by laying out many of the plots for the settlers. He was granted freeman status in 1631. In 1633 or 1634, Seeley joined a ten-man expedition led by John Oldham to

264-519: A similar status to a township , but was so named as it had a chapel of ease (chapel) which was the community's official place of assembly in religious and secular matters. The fusion of these matters – principally tithes – was heavily tied to the main parish church. However, the medieval church's doctrine of subsidiarity when the congregation or sponsor was wealthy enough, supported their constitution into new parishes. Chapelries were first widespread in northern England and in larger parishes across

297-521: A suit which Seeley had filed 60 years earlier after settling in Wethersfield. In the suit he had claimed that he had not been given the area promised to the original settlers of Watertown. Seeley's son Nathaniel was killed in the build-up to the Great Swamp Fight 1675. Scott, C. S. (2012). The Eel Catcher's Travels: Robert Seeley, 1602-1667. Carol Seeley Scott. Bluntisham Bluntisham

330-587: Is a village and civil parish in Cambridgeshire, England. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 census was 2,003. Bluntisham lies approximately 8 miles (13 km) east of Huntingdon . Bluntisham is situated within Huntingdonshire which is a non-metropolitan district of Cambridgeshire as well as being a historic county of England. The villages of Earith , Colne , Woodhurst , and Somersham are all close by. The prime meridian passes through

363-414: Is grown in the loam and clay soil. The village was once home to many orchards, and fruit farming was very profitable. Some residents still sell fruit on roadside stalls, but oilseed rape is the more popular crop nowadays. Traditionally water was derived from gravel springs, but later wells were fed by surface water. A hand water pump , now defunct, still stands on the high street. Somersham Road yielded

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396-455: Is still popular for ice skating when it floods and freezes over in colder winters. The author and agricultural reformist H. Rider Haggard visited the village in 1901, while travelling through Huntingdonshire. He commented on the "very excellent dwellings", built for local agricultural workers. The Barograph in the centre of the High Street was erected in 1911 as a memorial to some of

429-683: The Connecticut River . The group soon established Wethersfield , the first English settlement on the Connecticut River. Oldham's death in 1636, presumed by the colonists to be at the hands of the Pequot , helped touch off the Pequot War in 1637. Seeley served as second-in-command to Captain John Mason in the war. He was severely wounded by an arrow to the head in an attack on a Pequot fort along

462-672: The Great Ouse ) to the south-west. Colneway Field lay to the north-east of Higham Field, with Old Mill (or "Inhams") Field located between Colneway and Bury Fen, stretching to Earith. A large wood known as "Bluntisham Hangar" once existed south of Highams Field, and is probably that mentioned in the Domesday Book . In 1341 the wood was recorded as the boundary of the Bishop of Ely's right of hunting. Bluntisham's woodland declined from 68 acres (28 ha) in 1843 to 10 acres (4.0 ha) by 1925. As

495-597: The Local Government Act 1972 , Bluntisham became a part of the county of Cambridgeshire. At Westminster, Bluntisham is in the parliamentary constituency of North West Cambridgeshire . Since 2005 the constituency has been represented in the House of Commons by Shailesh Vara of the Conservative Party . The area is low-lying and very flat. The gravel soil is used to grow fruit trees, barley and oats, while wheat

528-750: The Mystic River . Captain Mason, who called Seeley a "valiant soldier", wrote of the incident, "Lieutenant Seeley was shot in the eyebrow with a flat headed Arrow, the Point turning downwards. I pulled out the arrow myself." Seeley carried a permanent scar from the wound. When his old friend John Davenport arrived in Massachusetts, Seeley joined his group and helped establish the New Haven Colony in 1638. Seeley served as New Haven's first town marshal and lieutenant of

561-724: The Speenhamland system and other wages systems) until the establishment of Poor Law Unions in the 19th century. The Poor Law Amendment Act 1867 declared that all areas that levied a separate rate should become civil parishes; thus their number approximately equalled the sum of ecclesiastical parishes and chapelries. Civil parishes have been abolished in many urban areas, removing the third tier of British local government. Pinner , Harrow and New Brentford , Hanwell were medieval-founded chapelries in Middlesex , constituted parishes in 1766 and 1660 respectively. Equally Old Brentford, as part of

594-439: The "curate/curacy" (dubbed sometimes the chaplain) to the rector, namely the parish priest, of Hanwell. Around 1660 New Brentford, already governed by its own vestry , was made a separate parish. In 1714 the rector of Hanwell managed to assert his right to the hay tithes from Boston manorial demesne but in 1744 he gave up the small tithes of New Brentford, all hay tithes except those from Boston demesne , and all offerings. In 1961

627-454: The 1500s. The church can list its rectors back to 1217, and counts among them Henry Sayers, father of the crime novelist Dorothy L. Sayers . St Mary's is a Grade I listed building with an organ and regular bell ringing sessions. There is also a Baptist Church on the High Street, which has existed in Bluntisham in some form since the 18th century. John Wheatley, a local carpenter, was

660-589: The Tebbutt family and is kept in working order by the Bluntisham Feoffees charity. Local buses are provided by local company Dews Coaches (route 301 to St Ives Mon-Sat, route 21 to St Ives Mon-Fri) and Vectare (route 22 to St Ives Sat). Bluntisham has its own primary school, St Helen's, which educates children aged 4–11. The school is linked to the secondary school Abbey College , in Ramsey . As of December 2022,

693-450: The arable land, there was 20 acres (8 hectares) of meadows and 194 acres (79 hectares) of woodland. For the manors at Bluntisham the total tax assessed was seven geld . There was already a church and a priest at Bluntisham. Bluntisham remained under ownership of the Bishop of Ely until the dissolution of the monasteries , when it was granted to the dean and chapter of Ely. Valentine Walton

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726-411: The chapelry: typically an area roughly equal to the old extent of the manor or a new industrious area. The chapels, as opposed to mission churches or mission rooms, had a date of consecration, dedication to a saint or saints, and typically their own clergy. They were by and large upgraded, that is (re-)constituted, into parishes. A small minority fell redundant and were downgraded or closed, though at

759-471: The country which had populous outlying places. Except in cities, the entire coverage of the parishes (with very rare extra-parochial areas ) was fixed in medieval times by reference to a large or influential manor or a set of manors . A lord of the manor or other patron of an area, often the Diocese, would for prestige and public convenience set up an additional church of sorts, a chapel of ease which would serve

792-423: The highest tier of local government is Cambridgeshire County Council . Bluntisham is a part of the electoral division of Somersham and Earith and is represented on the county council by one councillor. Bluntisham was in the historic and administrative county of Huntingdonshire until 1965. From 1965, the village was part of the new administrative county of Huntingdon and Peterborough . Then in 1974, following

825-890: The militia. He was generally known in the community as Lieutenant Seeley. He also participated in Theophilus Eaton 's exploratory expedition in Long Island Sound . In 1659 Seeley briefly returned to England, living there until 1662 when he returned to the New World and settled in New Amsterdam (present-day Huntington, New York ) on Long Island . He married second Mary Manning Walker December 22, 1666 in New York City. He died in New York City in 1668. In 1695 his heirs received 40 acres (160,000 m) of land in Watertown, resolving

858-432: The parish of St. Lawrence, New Brentford, was amalgamated with St. George's and St. Paul's, Old Brentford, to form the united parishes of Brentford in the Church of England. In Cornwall the parish of St Minver had chapelries of Porthilly and St Enodoc; Probus had chapelries of Cornelly and Merther and there were others. St Ives was a chapelry of Lelant before it was granted parochial status (until 1902 Towednack

891-458: The rule of Edward the Elder . Bluntisham later became the property of Wulfnoth Cild who sold it circa 970–75 to Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester and Brithnoth, the first Abbot of Ely , for the endowment of Ely Abbey . The sale was confirmed by King Edgar , but when he died in 975 a claim was made by the sons of Bogo de Hemingford , who believed that it was the inheritance of their uncle. Their claim

924-511: The village has the following amenities: The oldest church in Bluntisham is St Mary's Church on Rectory Road. It is likely to be the church mentioned in the Domesday record for Bluntisham, however the original building no longer exists. The chapel was built in the 1330s, and the west tower from 1370 to 1380. Part of the church was rebuilt in 1450, and restoration work was carried out from 1850 to 1913. The church has eight bells, three of which date from

957-482: The western edge of Bluntisham. The village was known as Bluntersham between the 10th and 13th centuries, Blondesham in the 14th century, and Bluntysham , Bluntsome and Blunsham in the 16th century. Due to the close proximity of Bluntisham and Earith, the two formed the parish of Bluntisham-cum-Earith, with the parish church in Bluntisham and a chapelry in Earith. However, the civil parish of Bluntisham-cum-Earith

990-543: Was appointed governor of Ely in 1649 for his services to Oliver Cromwell 's Parliament. Upon the Restoration , it was restored to the dean and chapter. In 1869, it was taken over by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners , who remain lords of the manor . The village was built up around four fields. The north-western part of the parish contains Higham Field, with Gull Field (named for the gills which slope towards

1023-526: Was declared false at the county court, and the sale to Ely Abbey went ahead. Bluntisham was listed as Bluntesham in the Domesday Book of 1086 in the Hundred of Hurstingstone in Huntingdonshire. There were two manors and 16 households at Bluntisham, giving an approximate population of 56 to 80 people. The survey records that there was 6 ploughlands with the capacity for a further 2.62. In addition to

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1056-514: Was dissolved in 1948 when the two were separated. There is evidence to suggest that Neolithic and Roman inhabitants once settled in Bluntisham. The manor of Bluntisham goes back to the early part of the 10th century, when it was seized by Toli the Dane, who is said to have been the jarl or alderman of Huntingdon . Toli was killed at the Battle of Tempsford in 917, at which point the county returned to

1089-639: Was taken from the Old Slepe Hall in St Ives, the former home of Oliver Cromwell . The building, once the childhood home of the writer Dorothy L. Sayers , has a Grade II* listing. The parish was once home to the most successful Bandy club in British history, the Bury Fen Bandy club. From this famous club came Charles Goodman Tebbutt , who was responsible for the first published rules of Bandy in 1882. Bury Fen

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