Yaxley (Huntingdonshire) 

The Yaxley Village Website allows local organisations and businesses to become members and thus manage their own online information. Membership for non-profit organisations is FREE. Commercial membership is low cost and allows members to display there services and products over a significant part of the district as this website is part of a group serving the towns and villages of Huntingdonshire. The website of the group are all joined together to share information.

Please follow the link below to visit the Yaxley Vilage Website:

Visit Yaxley Parish Website

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Historical notes about the Parish of Yaxley (Huntingdonshire)

Yaxley has a grim witness of the days of Napoleon in the two imposing stones at the churchyard gate, for they come from an old prison close by at Norman Cross, now marked on the spot by an impressive column with a French eagle above it. Only a few mounds remain to show us where the prison stood, but for 17 years French sailors and soldiers poured into it, thousand after thousand, and 1800 went home no more. The column with the eagle has been put up this century in memory of those men, and the stones at the churchyard gate are all we see hereabouts of the prison of those tragic days.

The few military prisons of those days were horribly crowded with 800 men to the acre, and this prison on the Great North Road was built to cover 40 acres, planned like a Roman camp with low timbered buildings, each holding 500 men. After Nelson’s victory at Cape St Vincent there arrived here the first body of 6000 seamen from many European coasts, hardy Bretons and Provencals, dark Spaniards, Danes and Dutchmen, the Dutchmen being brought along the River Nene and its canals, which their engineering grandparents may have helped to make. Often in antique shops today we come upon ships made of bone and many of them must have been made by the prisoners at Norman Cross, carved from the bones saved at their meals, with rigging made from hair from their own heads.

Norman Cross was a mushroom town for twenty years and when the Napoleon wars were over its possessions were scattered through the countryside, a nine day auction disposing of the whole place, and bringing in ten thousand pounds to a Government which was very glad to have it as the end of an exhausting war.

The 13^th century tower of Yaxley is remarkable for its great windows and the flying buttresses from the pinnacles to the spire. The buttresses have open quatrefoils in them, giving us a fairylike peep of the sky through them.

The church has one of the best interiors in the county, with fine transepts about 700 years old. The font has been here all the time. The oak chancel screen is the fine work of a 15^th century craftsman who probably carved the chancel stalls, and the Jacobean pulpit stands on a trumpet shaped stem beautifully enriched with carving 500 years ago. Four bench ends have been here 400 years. There is a 17^th century chest big enough for a man to sleep in, and there are two 16^th century doors and one of the 17^th century. One of the older ones has fine ornamental hinges, and the other is the rood-stair door with linenfold.

Here master masons were at work 600 years ago, and one left behind him a remarkable stone carving of two hands holding a heart. It is under a small arch and is believed to be in memory of William of Yaxley, an abbot of Thorney about 1293. Heart shrines are rare, and we have come upon only one with the heart still in it – at Leybourne in Kent. Here the heart has gone, but this memorial is perhaps unique for having a small oak box which once held the heart of William of Yaxley; it is now in a small recess. When this heart shrine was new the masons of Yaxley were carving queer animals over the porch, grotesques guarding the south chapel, and with these a creature rarely found in churches, a repellent crocodile.

Through all the centuries since the masons carved these fancies on the walls, the medieval paintings which enriched the north chapel have been slowly fading away. Traces can be seen of Christ rising from the tomb with Mary Magdalene kneeling before him. There is a picture of the Road to Emmaus, and another with Thomas kneeling. Above the tower arch have been painted a Roman soldier with his bow and arrow, a man with two cloaks, and a very quaint gravedigger, all 17^th century; and from the 16^th century is a wall painting of a Resurrection scene in the nave, in which we see three shrouded figures rising from their tombs.

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Historic images from around the Parish of Yaxley

This small selection of historic images of Yaxley (Huntingdonshire) are from our British National Image Library. You may click on the thumbnail pictures to view larger versions and read what information we have regarding the image.

Original Norman Cross Memorial

Yaxley Parish Church

Yaxley Parish Church

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Public Events in and around Yaxley

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Hotels, Apartments and B&B's in Yaxley

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Map of accommodation in the Huntingdonshire area