Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire

Description
Whittlesey, a town and two parishes in Cambridgeshire. The town stands on the Old Nen river, with a station on the G.E.R., 82 miles from London, and a post, money order, and telegraph office. It was known at Domesday as Witesie, is a seat of petty sessions, and has two banks, a hotel and several inns, a town-hall, reading and news rooms, a public hall and institute, a fine ancient church of different dates, restored in 1862, another ancient church chiefly Decorated English, five dissenting chapels, two endowed schools, a workhouse, a weekly market on Friday. The parishes are St Mary and St Andrew; they have long lost their mutual boundaries, so as to be now intermixed, and they include the hamlet and chapelry of Coates and the hamlet of Eastrea. Acreage, 26,051 of land and 155 of water; population of the ecclesiastical parish of St Andrew, 2171; of the ecclesiastical parish of St Mary, 2451. Traces of a Roman road are at Eldemell, and several antiquities, including a massive gold ring, have been found there. The livings of St Mary and St Andrew are vicarages in the diocese of Ely; net value of St Mary, £200 with residence; of St Andrew, £250 with residence. The living of Coates was formerly a perpetual curacy, but is now a rectory, and it has been separately noticed. A small new church is at Ponders Bridge, and Wesleyan chapels are at Coates and Eastrea.