Great Staughton and its People

Great Staughton and its People is a rich and vivid tapestry of the great events of England's history as witnessed by a fascinating cast of characters from this village. The story begins with a Roman official building his villa here. Five centuries later, an Anglo-Saxon nobleman bequeaths the village to his goldsmith. Valentine Wauton, regicide, was born here. From his pulpit in the church, John Gaule preached the sermons that helped bring about the downfall of Matthew Hopkins. Captain Anson's epic voyage is the subject of Richard Walter's influential account. Fanny Duberly here receives her due as a heroine of the Crimea. The book also covers: a scandalous Georgian divorce case; the solution to a 200-year-old mystery; a rebuttal of John Henry Newman and John Howey's Staughton Manor Railway. The thread that binds these 2,000 years of history is the people from this little village in rural Huntingdonshire.