Bluntisham

Village in Cambridgeshire, England

Bluntisham is a village and civil parish in Cambridgeshire, England. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 census was 2,003. Bluntisham lies approximately 8 mile (13 km) east of Huntingdon. Bluntisham is situated within Huntingdonshire which is a non metropolitan district of Cambridgeshire as well as being a historic county of England. The villages of Earith, Colne, Woodhurst, and Somersham are all close by. The prime meridian passes through the western edge of Bluntisham.

The village was known as Bluntersham between the 10th and 13th centuries, Blondesham in the 14th century, and Bluntysham, Bluntsome and Blunsham in the 16th century. Due to the close proximity of Bluntisham and Earith, the two formed the parish of Bluntisham cum Earith, with the parish church in Bluntisham and a chapelry in Earith. However, the civil parish of Bluntisham cum Earith was dissolved in 1948 when the two were separated.

There is evidence to suggest that Neolithic and Roman inhabitants once settled in Bluntisham. The manor of Bluntisham goes back to the early part of the 10th century, when it was seized by Toli the Dane, who is said to have been the jarl or alderman of Huntingdon. Toli was killed at the Battle of Tempsford in 917, at which point the county returned to the rule of Edward the Elder. Bluntisham later became the property of Wulfnoth Cild who sold it circa 970–75 to Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester and Brithnoth, the first Abbot of Ely, for the endowment of Ely Abbey. The sale was confirmed by King Edgar, but when he died in 975 a claim was made by the sons of Bogo de Hemingford, who believed that it was the inheritance of their uncle. Their claim was declared false at the county court, and the sale to Ely Abbey went ahead. In 1085 William the Conqueror ordered that a survey should be carried out across his kingdom to discover who owned which parts and what it was worth. The survey took place in 1086 and the results were recorded in what, since the 12th century, has become known as the Domesday Book. Starting with the king himself, for each landholder within a county there is a list of their estates or manors; and, for each manor, there is a summary of the resources of the manor, the amount of annual rent that was collected by the lord of the manor both in 1066 and in 1086, together with the taxable value. Bluntisham was listed in the Domesday Book in the Hundred of Hurstingstone in Huntingdonshire; the name of the settlement was written as Bluntesham in the Domesday Book. In 1086 there were two manors at Bluntisham; the annual rent paid to the lords of the manors in 1066 had been £5 and the rent had increased to £5.25 in 1086. The Domesday Book does not explicitly detail the population of a place but it records that there was 16 households at Bluntisham. Using these figures then an estimate of the population of Bluntisham in 1086 is that it was within the range of 56 and 80 people. The Domesday Book uses a number of units of measure for areas of land that are now unfamiliar terms, such as hides and ploughlands. In different parts of the country, these were terms for the area of land that a team of eight oxen could plough in a single season and are equivalent to ; this was the amount of land that was considered to be sufficient to support a single family. By 1086, the hide had become a unit of tax assessment rather than an actual land area; a hide was the amount of land that could be assessed as £1 for tax purposes. The survey records that there was 6 ploughlands at Bluntisham in 1086 and that there was the capacity for a further 2.62 ploughlands. In 1341 the wood was recorded as the boundary of the Bishop of Ely's right of hunting. Bluntisham was in the historic and administrative county of Huntingdonshire until 1965. From 1965, the village was part of the new administrative county of Huntingdon and Peterborough. Then in 1974, following the Local Government Act 1972, Bluntisham became a part of the county of Cambridgeshire. The second tier of local government is Huntingdonshire District Council which is a non metropolitan district of Cambridgeshire and has its headquarters in Huntingdon. Huntingdonshire District Council has 52 councillors representing 29 district wards. Huntingdonshire District Council collects the council tax, and provides services such as building regulations, local planning, environmental health, leisure and tourism. Bluntisham is a part of the district ward of Earith and is represented on the district council by two councillors. District councillors serve for four year terms following elections to Huntingdonshire District Council. For Bluntisham the highest tier of local government is Cambridgeshire County Council which has administration buildings in Cambridge. The county council provides county wide services such as major road infrastructure, fire and rescue, education, social services, libraries and heritage services. Cambridgeshire County Council consists of 69 councillors representing 60 electoral divisions. Bluntisham is a part of the electoral division of Somersham and Earith and is represented on the county council by one councillor. County councillors serve for four year terms following elections to Cambridgeshire County Council. At Westminster, Bluntisham is in the parliamentary constituency of North West Cambridgeshire and elects one Member of Parliament (MP) by the first past the post system of election. The gravel soil is used to grow fruit trees, barley and oats, while wheat is grown in the loam and clay soil.

The parish was once home to the most successful Bandy club in British history, the Bury Fen Bandy club. From this famous club came Charles Goodman Tebbutt, who was responsible for the first published rules of Bandy in 1882. Bury Fen is still popular for ice skating when it floods and freezes over in colder winters. The author and agricultural reformist H. Rider Haggard visited the village in 1901, while travelling through Huntingdonshire. He commented on the "very excellent dwellings", built for local agricultural workers. The Barograph in the centre of the High Street was erected in 1911 as a memorial to some of the Tebbutt family and is kept in working order by the Bluntisham Feoffees charity.

Local buses are provided by local company Dews Coaches (route 301 to St Ives Mon Sat, route 21 to St Ives Mon Fri) and Vectare (route 22 to St Ives Sat).

Bluntisham has its own primary school, St Helen's, which educates children aged 4–11. The school is linked to the secondary school Abbey College, in Ramsey.

The oldest church in Bluntisham is St Mary's Church on Rectory Road. It is likely to be the church mentioned in the Domesday record for Bluntisham, however the original building no longer exists. The chapel was built in the 1330s, and the west tower from 1370 to 1380. Part of the church was rebuilt in 1450, and restoration work was carried out from 1850 to 1913. The church has eight bells, three of which date from the 1500s. There is also a Baptist Church on the High Street, which has existed in Bluntisham in some form since the 18th century. John Wheatley, a local carpenter, was a member of the Church and built the Meeting House and School buildings in the 19th century. In the School he placed a number of hand carved wooden heads, thought to be likenesses of himself and his friends. He was also a teacher at the Sunday School.