Little Gidding

For the poem from the Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot, see Little Gidding (poem).

Little Gidding
Little Gidding is located in Cambridgeshire
Little Gidding
Little Gidding
Location within Cambridgeshire
Population362 (with Great Gidding and Steeple Gidding)[1]
OS grid referenceTL131819
Shire county
Region
CountryEngland
Sovereign stateUnited Kingdom
Post townHUNTINGDON
Postcode districtPE28
Dialling code01832
PoliceCambridgeshire
FireCambridgeshire
AmbulanceEast of England
List of places
UK
England
Cambridgeshire
52°25′N 0°20′W / 52.42°N 0.33°W / 52.42; -0.33
St John's Church, Little Gidding

Little Gidding is a small village and civil parish in Cambridgeshire, England.[2] It lies approximately 9 miles (14 km) northwest of Huntingdon, near Sawtry, within Huntingdonshire, which is a district of Cambridgeshire as well as a historic county.

A small parish of 724 acres (293 hectares), Little Gidding recorded a population of 22 in the 1991 British Census. With the neighbouring villages of Great Gidding (where the population was in 2011 included) and Steeple Gidding, the total population was 362 in 2001.[1] The driving distance between Little Gidding and Cambridge, to the southeast, is 30 miles.

Mary Ferrar had a tablet placed in the family's parlour. Sir Thomas Hetley requested a copy, so, although the original has long been lost, the wording and the arrangement of the original text was preserved. Here it is as published in The Life and Times of Nicholas Ferrar by H. P. K. Skipton.[3]

St John's Church, the Church of England parish church, is a Grade I listed building.[4][5]

Little Gidding was the home of a small Anglican religious community established in 1626 by Nicholas Ferrar, two of his siblings and their extended families. It was founded around strict adherence to Christian worship in accordance with the Book of Common Prayer and the High Church heritage of the Church of England. Charles I visited Little Gidding three times. The community continued for 20 years after Ferrar's death, until after the deaths of his brother and sister in 1657.

In the 20th century, the poet T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) was inspired by the legacy of the religious community at Little Gidding. He incorporated historical elements and symbols of it into his long poem, "Little Gidding", as part of his collection Four Quartets (1945).

  1. ^ a b Cambridge County Council Research Group. 2001 Census Profile: Great Gidding, Little Gidding and Steeple Gidding Parishes – Huntingtdonshire Archived 18 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine from 2001 Census Key Statistics for Local Authorities (Published: October 2003). Retrieved 5 January 2013. Note: These three parishes are combined because one of them, Little Gidding, is too small to be enumerated separately in accordance with British privacy laws.
  2. ^ Ordnance Survey: Landranger map sheet 142 Peterborough (Market Deeping & Chatteris) (Map). Ordnance Survey. 2012. ISBN 9780319229248.
  3. ^ Skipton, Horace Pott Kennedy (1907). The Life and Times of Nicholas Ferrar. London: A. R. Mowbray. p. 136.
  4. ^ "Parish Church of St John the Evangelist, Little Gidding". Retrieved 13 December 2019.
  5. ^ Historic England. "Parish Church of St John the Evangelist (1130115)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 6 February 2017.