About Dry Drayton

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About Dry Drayton, Our Place

 

Dry Drayton lies six miles to the North West of the University City of Cambridge, in the County of Cambridgeshire.

 

The village area has been in human habitation since the iron age, and now has a population of around 600. The current Parish of Dry Drayton is smaller than in earlier ages. In the second half of the 20th Century the northern part of the Parish became the new settlement, now parish, of Bar Hill.

 

In our village the church is dedicated to St Peter and St Paul and dates from the 13th Century. The church faces a village green, bisected by the main road through the village which is called Park Street. Park Street gets its name from a field close to the church called The Park, where horses now graze over traces of previous occupation. Here once stood an impressive manor house, owned by the Duke of Bedford, which was demolished in 1817. A smaller, more modern Methodist Church stands nearby.

 


[stile leading to The Park]

 

In the centre of our village is the Black Horse, our one and only, much loved, public house.

 


[Black Horse Pub]

 

Once most local residents derived their living from the land. Earlier in the 20th century there were numerous orchards here, only tiny fragments of which have survived. Today the area around the village comprises a small number of large and very efficient farms and the majority of residents work elsewhere. At Scotland Farm, one of the largest farms in the Parish, farm buildings have been converted into homes for a variety of small businesses, known collectively as Dry Drayton Industries.

 

The Greenwich Meridian and the Pathfinder Long Distance Footpath pass through the village, while the traffic continually rumbles past to our North on the busy A14 road, and to our South on the well-used A428. This is the official website for the annual Pathfinder March, and it has its own Wikipedia entry.

After much discussion, traffic calming measures were introduced into the village to ensure that drivers travel at a sensible speed when using the village as a route between these two roads.

 

slow down sign
[new signs triggered by speeding cars]

 

There is a real sense of community spirit in this village. Many local organisations meet in the Village Hall in the High Street, and the Village School is at the heart of a great deal of community activity, much of which is organised by the School and Village Association and reported in the Village Newsletter. The Village is well known locally for many successful theatrical and musical productions staged at the Village Hall and for regular fund-raising charity auctions.

In the leafy lanes and well tended gardens of our village, people still have time to talk to their neighbours and to offer them a helping hand when it is needed.