River Cam near Baits Bite Lock (MoC128.57)

Wildfowl Cottage, Baits Bite Lock, Pike and Eel, Fen Ditton

History of Wildfowl Cottage

Listed building:

House. Probably late C17 with early C19 addition and some later alterations. Whitewashed brick and timber-frame with old plain-tile roof of two colours in wide bands.

In the C18 the house appears to have been part of the lands owned by the Wollard famiy including nearby Biggin Abbey (q.v.), and was perhaps always associated with river traffic. In the C19 and early C20 it was a public house known as the Pike and Eel, no doubt serving barge traffic as it stands very close to Baites Bite Lock.

Baits Bite Lock illustrates the importance of the River Cam as a working waterway linking rural Cambridgeshire with Cambridge and the wider fenland region. The lock played a key role in navigation, commercial transport, and river management, enabling goods, agricultural produce, and people to move along the river while also reflecting the engineering changes that reshaped the waterways during the nineteenth century.