Brampton, Cambridgeshire

Suburban village in Cambridgeshire, England

Brampton is a village and civil parish in Cambridgeshire, England, about 2 mile (3 km) south west of Huntingdon. It lies within Huntingdonshire, a non metropolitan district of Cambridgeshire and a historic county of England. According to the 2011 UK census Brampton had a population of 4,862 (slightly down on the 2001 UK census figure of 5,030) A 2019 estimate puts it at 5,462.

Historically Brampton was variously known as Brantune (11th century), Brantone or Bramptone (12th–13th centuries), and Brauntone or Brampton (13th century). Scattered human remains dating back 1600–2000 years have been found in one or more gardens of houses near the local primary school. The origin of these has yet to identified. In the Domesday Book survey of 1086, Brampton was listed as Brantune in the Hundred of Leightonstone in Huntingdonshire. It had two manors, yielding aggregate rents to their lords of the manors in 1066 of £20, which had increased to £21.5 by 1086. Domesday recorded a total of 42 households, which suggests a population of 125–200. The area expressed in hides (variously defined as the area a team of eight oxen could plough in a season) – , thought to support a household – or as the area that could be assessed as £1 for tax purposes. Brampton was put down for 18 ploughlands in 1086.,

Brampton has associations with the diarist Samuel Pepys. Legend has it that his fortune is buried somewhere in the village: during the panic caused by the Dutch raid on the Medway in 1667 he buried his gold in the garden of Brampton House and was never sure how much of it he had succeeded in recovering. Its second local government tier is Huntingdonshire District Council based in Huntingdon. Brampton as a district ward has two councillors. Brampton's highest tier of local government is Cambridgeshire County Council based in Cambridge. (It belonged to the historic and administrative county of Huntingdonshire until 1965, then to the new administrative county of Huntingdon and Peterborough, and since 1974 to the county of Cambridgeshire.) Brampton has one county councillor in the electoral division of Brampton and Kimbolton. At Westminster, Brampton is in the parliamentary constituency of Huntingdon, represented in the House of Commons by Jonathan Djanogly (Conservative) since 2001. The previous member was John Major (Conservative, 1983–2001).

At one time the higher part of Brampton parish was forested as Brampton Wood, but it now has less than of woodland. It is generally low lying, about 33 feet (10 m) above sea level, but it rises to 164 feet (50 m) towards the south west boundary. Most of Portholme, the UK's largest meadow falls within the parish of Brampton.

Brampton, like most of the United Kingdom, has a temperate and oceanic, or Cfb under the Köppen climate classification Eastern areas such as East Anglia are drier, cooler and less windy, with greater daily and seasonal temperature variations than the rest of England. Cambridgeshire has cool onshore coastal breezes further to the east, keeping it warm in summer and cold and frosty in winter. The nearest weather station for long term data is at RAF Wyton, 3 mi (5 km) north east of Huntingdon town centre. More recently Monks Wood, to the north of Brampton, has also provided data. Typically 43.2 nights of the year report an air frost. The absolute minimum at Wyton was in January 1982. The mean for the annual coldest night of the year is
With annual rainfall at under a year, the Huntingdon area is among the driest in the UK – 103.4 days on average record at least 1 mm of rain. All averages mentioned refer to the period 1971–2000.

The Anglican church of St Mary Magdalene shares clergy with the parishes of Ellington and Grafham. The Methodist Church on The Green belongs to the St Neots and Huntingdon circuit.