Facts about Ramsey
General Info
Ramsey is a small market town and civil parish in Cambridgeshire, England. The town is about 9 miles north of Huntingdon in the non-metropolitan district and former county of Huntingdonshire, which since 1974 has been part of Cambridgeshire. The town manor is built on the site of the ancient Abbey and is the seat of the Lords de Ramsey, major landowners in Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire.
History
For the later Anglo-Saxon period, documentary evidence for the foundation of the 10th-century Benedictine abbey at Ramsey has been recently substantiated by the archaeological evidence for activity associated with the pre-Conquest monastery. Tradition has it that Ailwyn, foster brother of King Edgar, founded a hermitage at Ramsey. It received a series of substantial grants of land by King Edgar who confirmed all the privileges in 975, including the banlieu.
The mediæval economy was dominated by garden produce, cloth trade and alehouse keeping. Fisheries also played an important part in the fen economy, along with livestock. Throughout the Middle Ages, the waterways of the fenland formed commercial transport routes that ran through the heart of the region. The enclosure of the land was piecemeal and prompted by the abbey.
