Kimbolton

Kimbolton, in the west of the district, on the road from St. Neots into Northamptonshire, is a visually
delightful little town and one whose history goes back hundreds of years. The Saxons called the place Cynebealdstun after its founder, and with the Normans, came fair and market charters which led to the town's importance as a trading centre.

Today Kimbolton with its very wide street retains old and charming houses, and its church set in the heart of the place, is of the 13th to 15th C. - although the font is a Saxon relic. King Harold probably worshipped at the original church on this site when he visited his nearby hunting lodge. The major feature, however, is the castle - a mansion on the site of the original stronghold that was built in the 13th C. and later was the prison for two long years of Catherine of Aragon before her death there. A Tudor house replaced the original castle but this was almost wholly rebuilt in the early 18th C. to designs by the famous Vanbrugh with Hawksmoor as his assistant - these two had also worked together at Blenheim. The mansion, a splendid building with superb wall paintings by
Pellegrini in the chapel and on the staircase, an earlier courtyard and a later Robert Adam gatehouse, is now used by Kimbolton School, itself an early foundation, having been set up originally in 1600. The building can, however, be visited between 1400-1800 at Easter and Spring and Summer Bank Holidays and on Sundays from late July to late August.

Kimbolton, which with the neighbouring hamlet of Stonely, successfully bridges the centuries, for it has modern houses and up-to-date shops which merge unobtrusively into the attractive and mellowed buildings of the past. Indeed the most modern wares are sold from behind the multi-panel 'olde worlde' shop windows. The Mandeville Hall is a focal point of life and here meet, amongst others, the Women's Institute and Royal British Legion.