Belsize Farmhouse, Castor Road

History of Belsize Grange and Village

Listed Building

Probably C16/17. Former grange of the Benedictine Abbey of Peterborough. In 1214 Abbot Robert of Lindsey built houses at Belsize. In C15, Belsize must have been a small village. At Dissolution it belonged to monastery of Peterborough and in 1650 it was sold by the Commissioners.

The Grange of Peterborough at Belsize was the centre of a new estate carved out of the fen wastes at edge of Castor in 13th century. At the beginning of the 15th century there were about 100 tenants and their families.

The policy of depopulation carried out by the abbey in the 15th century led to a serious riot here and when the estate was leased after the Dissolution in 1563, only a few tenants remained. No medieval buildings remain.

Peter Jeevar, Curiosities of Cambridgeshire (1977), describes a farmhouse in Castor having a wide doorway through which cattle could be led into a stout walled pen inside the kitchen.