A Short History of Farmer Merrington and Family

The research for this article was at the request of the developers of Merrington Place. The information was compiled from The Cambridge Chronicle, 1806 Enclosure Documents, Impington Church Registers and family stories.

Sometime in the distant past, St Andrew’s Manor, Histon purchased a large close (enclosed village field) just over the boundary in Impington. Histon locals came to call this field Impington Close. By 1801 it had been subdivided and sold off to various farmers. One such allotment, which ran alongside Impington Lane (in the past variously described as Dog Kennel Lane, Green Hill, Mill Hill Lane) was called Ratcatchers. Until recently, this was associated with the Unwin seed packing factory. Today it is the site of the Merrington Place development. In 1801 it was owned by John Merrington.

John Merrington was born in 1755 in Essex. In 1780 he married Frances Ostler, a member of what appears to be a well off Impington family. By 1801 John Merrington was an established farmer, who could afford to employ a shepherd and several farm hands. He lived with his wife and five children (John Ostler, Lettice, Frances, Richard and Mary) in a farmhouse on Clay Close Lane, where a pair of 19th C brick cottages now stand (Nos. 3&4). All his children survived into adulthood and his daughters married well. References to Farmer Merrington survive in letters, newspapers and documents of the period. In 1799 he drove the wagon which returned the badly frost bitten Eliza Woodcock to her home after her 8 day burial in snow. Someone stole 25 of his sheep in 1810. Earlier in 1809 the Cambridge Chronicle reported –

“John Love was charged with milking a cow belonging to Mr Merrington of Impington. He was imprisoned for one week and publically whipped at Impington.”

The fortunes of the family took a serious turn for the worst in 1814 when his eldest son John Ostler died.

By 1815 his farm, a tenement and 55 acres of land were put up for sale. In 1822 he lost his wife, closely followed by his eldest married daughter Lettice. Richard, his remaining son, followed his siblings and mother into Impington churchyard in 1824. Mary, first wife of John French of Burgoyne’s Farm, died in 1829. John Merrington appears to have left the village and died in Fulbourn aged 84 in 1838. He was buried in Impington. No permanent memorial to the family survives. Most tomb stones were cleared when the churchyard was lowered later in the 19th C in order to improve drainage.

John Merrington’s sons apparently died without issue. However, there is circumstantial evidence that a child of the male Merrington line did survive and thrive. Richard Christmas, carpenter and builder of Christmas Bridge, always maintained that he was born in Impington and his father was called Richard. He went on to name his first son Merrington. Richard Christmas is not recorded in the Church register. There is no record of his mother though the unmarried midwife Elizabeth Christmas could be his mother for she and her unmarried midwife sister Phoebe, had several illegitimate children. In addition, Richard, as a young man in 1837, is recorded as a carpenter in a petition sent to Queen Victoria. This means he had served an apprenticeship. This did not come cheap. Richard would have been ten years old when Richard Merrington died. On observing how Farmer Merrington married his girls into established farming families, it is likely that he had ambitious plans for his sons. A union with a local girl with no connections would not be deemed appropriate. Someone, however, sponsored young Richard Christmas and he certainly inherited the drive to do well.