Netherhall Way, Cambridge

Notes on the history of Netherhall Way, Cambridge

The name of a farm at this location dates from as early as 1372. It was part of the manor retained as a demesne manor of the earls of Richmond for most of the time until the early 13th century. In 1235 Henry III assigned the manor to his servant Alan Neville. After a complicated series of land transfers, in 1508 Thomas Berkeley, brother of Maurice, Lord Berkeley, sold the manor to Robert Fenrother, a London goldsmith. It was subsequently included in the endowment of the Savoy Hospital, founded in 1510, with whose other possessions Edward VI granted it in 1553 to St Thomas’s Hospital.

In 1592 the farm was leased to William Catlyn. A series of tenants rented the land after this, including members of the Headley family (1774-1877). St Thomas’s sale of its lands north of Cherry Hinton Road and east and west of Perne Road was followed by successive sales of land between Cherry Hinton Road and Queen Edith’s Way in the 1930s and 40s. Its remaining land between Queen Edith’s Way and Wort’s Causeway was sold between 1962 and 1979.