Concept

West Wratting

Summary
West Wratting is a village and civil parish 10 miles southeast of Cambridge in Cambridgeshire. At above sea level, it can claim to be one of the highest villages in Cambridgeshire. The parish covers 3,543 acres in south east Cambridge, a thin strip, less than two miles wide, stretching from the London to Newmarket road to the border with Suffolk. Much of its western border follows the Fleam Dyke. It is bordered by Weston Colville to the north and east, and by Balsham and West Wickham to the south. The parish is believed to have been formed as an offshoot of Great Wratting in Suffolk. Land at the village is recorded in the Domesday Book (1086) as belonging to one Harduin de Scalers. The same family owned the land until it was granted by Stephen de Scalariis and his wife, Juliana, to the Nunnery of St Mary and St Radegund, Cambridge, on the placement there of their daughter Sibil before 1161. It houses a smock mill dated to 1726, the oldest confirmed in the country. Two 18th century manor houses, West Wratting Hall and West Wratting Park, remain standing. West Wratting Hall was home to E.P. Frost who built an unsuccessful flapping-wing flying machine ("ornithopter"), powered by steam. Frost was president of the Aeronautical Society from 1908 to 1911, and a later version of his machine can be seen in the Shuttleworth Collection. West Wratting Park was home to Lady Ursula d'Abo in her later life. Towards the end of World War II an airfield was set up outside the village at RAF Wratting Common, and part of No. 195 Squadron RAF was posted there equipped with Avro Lancasters. After the war in the late 1940s, the station was used to host foreign displaced persons and workers in the Westward Ho! and North Sea scheme work programmes. According to Ordnance Survey, West Wratting is the second highest village in Cambridgeshire (390 feet, 120 m above sea level) after Great Chishill (479 ft. 146 m above sea level). Listed as Wreattinge in the 10th century and Waratinge in the Domesday Book, the village's name means "place where crosswort or hellebore grows".
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