Geograph - photograph every grid square

This article is about the village of Conington in the historic county (and modern district) of Huntingdonshire, which lies between the Great North Road and the East Coast mainline railway, about 6 miles south of the city of Peterborough. Confusingly, since the local government reorganisation in 1974 when Cambridgeshire absorbed the historic county of Huntingdon, there have been two villages with the same name within the administrative county. Even more confusingly, both are associated with the Cotton family, descendants of Robert the Bruce and other Scottish royalty, who built grand houses in both villages and are commemorated by fine memorials in the respective parish churches.

The other village (Conington juxta Cantab, or Conington St Mary) is in South Cambridgeshire District a few miles north-west of Cambridge and south of the A14 road. It has its own shared description Link

The Kings of Scots were also Earls of Huntingdon in the later Norman period. A moated site about a mile south of the church of All Saints with an adjoining farm is still called Bruce's Castle after King Robert the Bruce, and a modern residential road in the village is named Bruce's Close. The Cotton family inherited the estate in 1460 but began to build their own castle at Conington only around 1600. There is a tradition that they reused stone from Fotheringhay Castle, the last prison and scene of execution of Mary Queen of Scots, which was slighted after Mary's son James VI of Scots came to the English throne as James I in 1603, in retaliation for his mother's treatment by the Tudors; her remains were transferred from Peterborough Cathedral to Westminster Abbey about the same time.

The Cottons were involved in draining the nearby Fens during the 17th century and were also notable collectors of books, contributing one of the major early sources of what is now the British Library. In 1752 the castle was bought out by the Heathcote family who enlarged it, but it was completely demolished in 1956. The present Conington Hall is the surviving 18th-century stable block of the old house.

Wikipedia Link