Diddington
| Diddington | |
|---|---|
 St Lawrence's Church, Diddington |
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 Diddington
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| Diddington shown within Cambridgeshire | |
| Population | 139 (2011) |
| OS grid reference | TL194646 |
| District | |
| Shire county | |
| Region | |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | St Neots |
| Postcode district | PE19 |
| Dialling code | 01480 |
| EU Parliament | East of England |
Diddington is a small village and civil parish in Cambridgeshire, England. Diddington lies approximately 5 miles (8 km) south-west of Huntingdon, near to Buckden. Diddington is situated within Huntingdonshire which is a non-metropolitan district of Cambridgeshire as well as being a historic county of England. Its population at the time of the 2011 census was 139.
In 1085 William the Conqueror ordered that a survey should be carried out across his kingdom to discover who owned which parts and what it was worth. The survey took place in 1086 and the results were recorded in what, since the 12th century, has become known as the Domesday Book. Starting with the king himself, for each landholder within a county there is a list of their estates or manors; and, for each manor, there is a summary of the resources of the manor, the amount of annual rent that was collected by the lord of the manor both in 1066 and in 1086, together with the taxable value.
Diddington was listed in the Domesday Book in the Hundred of Toseland in Huntingdonshire; the name of the settlement was written as Dodinctun and Dodintone in the Domesday Book. In 1086 there were two manors at Diddington; the annual rent paid to the lords of the manors in 1066 had been £5 and the rent had increased to £6.5 in 1086.
The Domesday Book does not explicitly detail the population of a place but it records that there was 14 households at Diddington. There is no consensus about the average size of a household at that time; estimates range from 3.5 to 5.0 people per household. Using these figures then an estimate of the population of Diddington in 1086 is that it was within the range of 49 and 70 people.
The Domesday Book uses a number of units of measure for areas of land that are now unfamiliar terms, such as hides and ploughlands. In different parts of the country, these were terms for the area of land that a team of eight oxen could plough in a single season and are equivalent to 120 acres (49 hectares); this was the amount of land that was considered to be sufficient to support a single family. By 1086, the hide had become a unit of tax assessment rather than an actual land area; a hide was the amount of land that could be assessed as £1 for tax purposes. The survey records that there were six ploughlands at Diddington in 1086. In addition to the arable land, there was 40 acres (16 hectares) of meadows and 1,146 acres (464 hectares) of woodland at Diddington.
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