Hunts Post columnist writes about Anglo Saxon St Neots

Elizbeth St Hill Davies is a local historian. (Image: Liz Davies)

The era of British history known as the Anglo-Saxon period began when Roman rule ended in Britain around AD 400 and we know so little about the early part of this period that it is still called the Dark Ages.

However, when St Neots expanded in the Victorian period builders began to discover tantalising evidence of the past Anglo-Saxon occupants of the town.

In 1886, workmen uncovered several Anglo-Saxon burials at the bottom of Avenue Road. Two of the skeletons had been buried with spears (male burials) and another female grave contained two large cruciform brooches which were worn either in pairs or individually to secure a dress or a cloak.

These large brooches date from AD 500 – 550 and tell us that relatively wealthy people were living here in the early Anglo-Saxon period. 

In the early 1930s, gravel digging behind Hall Place in Cambridge Street (where the Ford garage currently stands opposite Lidl today) revealed Anglo-Saxon buildings and a type of coarse local pottery which became known as ‘St Neots Ware’.

This confirmed that people were already living on the site which was to become St Neots town centre in the early Saxon period.

Later, in the 1960s, further excavations behind Cambridge Street revealed more evidence of Anglo-Saxon buildings in this area.

However, during this period what would become St Neots town centre was still part of the village of Eynesbury, and in the AD 970s a wealthy Anglo-Saxon couple, Leofric and Leoflaed, obtained permission from the Abbot of Ely to found a small monastery on their land.

To give added prestige to their new monastery the body of a Cornish saint, St Neot was moved from Cornwall to Eynesbury and installed in a shrine inside the monastery.

Pilgrims began to visit the shrine and by the time the Domesday Book was compiled in 1086 this part of Eynesbury was already being named ‘St Neots’ and recognised as a separate place.

Sadly, the priory was demolished after Henry VIII closed the monasteries and all the buildings were sold off as building materials, only the entrance gatehouse remained, close to the present day Bridge House, and eventually that was also demolished in 1814.