Caxton, Cambridgeshire

Description
Caxton, a decayed town and a parish in Cambridgeshire. The town stands on Ermine Street, 2 1/2 miles NNW of Old North Road station on the L. & N.W.R., and 9 1/2 W of Cambridge, under which it has a post, money order, and telegraph office. It is the head of a union and petty sessional division, and is a polling place for the western division of the county. It had a market from the 13th century till the middle of the 18th, and it still has a fair in the beginning of October. Acreage, 2242; population, 515. The manor belonged to the D'Eschallerses, the Freviles, the Burgoynes, and others, and belongs now to the Gape family. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Ely; net yearly value, £228 with residence, in the gift of the Dean and Canons of Windsor. The church, which is a building of stone and fiint partly Early English and partly in the Perpendicular style, contains some old tombs, and was restored in 1874. There is a workhouse with accommodation for about 200 inmates. Matthew Paris the historian was a native.