Bedwell
Hey
"How To Find A Lost Village" |
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by
Brian Watson |
Preliminary Research. My first step was to ask around as to whether anyone had any knowledge of the places, and this I did in the Ely On-line e-list. A couple of the readers kindly gave me my start by telling me that on the A10 Ely to Cambridge road there are still both a Bedwell Hey Farm and a Braham Farm. Further information supplied to the e-list was that there is a Bedwell Hey Lane in Witchford - it's the lane that leads to, and past, Witchford Village Hall - and that it used to be a favourite, and quite well used, cut-through to the A10 Cambridge-Ely Road just north of Little Thetford. Armed with this preliminary information that some clues do still exist on the ground, the first village I chose to look for was Bedwell Hey as it seemed to be the easier option. No sense in knocking myself out... I contacted Ely Museum on what they had there, but was told that all their material on Bedwell Hey and/or Brame has been passed to Cambridgeshire County Records Office (see the end of this article for their, and other, contact details). I obviously needed a map for my walk, so I took a trip into Burrows' Bookshop in Ely and purchased the Ordnance Survey Explorer Map 226 (Ely & Newmarket, Mildenhall & Soham). It has an orange overwrap cover in its latest edition. It's scale is 1:25,000 which is approximately 4cm to 1Km, or 2.5 inches to the mile for those who have not yet gone metric. The map cost me £6.99 but it really is a must for anyone interested in the "what's where and what used to be where?" of this area. |
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