Little Thetford .org

Along with Bob Young, I will be giving a presentation at the Library, 6 The Cloisters, Ely, Cambridgeshire, CB7 4ZH on Friday 11 February between 10:30 and noon on the subject Little Thetford: Two square miles of history. This presentation is part of Mike Petty‘s regular Fenland on Friday series. Tickets are available at the door for 2.50 GBP. (Numbers are limited. Arrive early to avoid disappointment.)

Bob will introduce the presentation which I will present. By using information from this website and other research, we will examine the contribution this small area has made to our English heritage. The presentation will be of interest to anyone who wishes to look deeper into their own town or village history and provide an amateur introduction to palaeontology, archaeology, geology, human history, UK heritage, zoology, botany and cartography. We will also briefly consider how much of this information was written into Little Thetford on Wikipedia.

John McCullough

Presentation: Little Thetford - Two square miles of history - Friday 11 February

Tuesday 25th January – The Little Thetford Wikipedia page is the Featured Article on the Wikipedia Main Page.

Well done John McCullough for all the hard work!

A New Year walk

Photo: Judy Young

Next time you are walking in Little Thetford, take your camera. You never know what you may find. If you are unsure what you have seen, send us your photograph and we will identify it for you.

Whilst walking from Little Thetford to Ely on New Years Day with six friends, Judy Young spotted this unusual goose enjoying a swim on the River Great Ouse. Colin Saunders, one of the party, was so intrigued he looked it up on his return. The large black dewlap and knob  distinguish this as a brown African Goose.

Photo: Judy Young

The African Goose is said by some breeders to be a distinct breed imported from Africa, but the evidence a large genetic part of the Chinese is indisputable; see Tegetmeir 1873. They were known as a pure breed in the USA from the 1850′s and although often crossed with the Toulouse as a commercial meat cross are a definite species descended from the Swan goose (Anser cygnoides) rather than the greylag (Anser anser).”

Also spotted. Well not spotted actually, crested! In any case, crested ducks were seen during the same walk. Unfortunately, we do not have a Little Thetford photograph of them, so Colin Saunders found this image on the web. Colin again “Crested ducks are basically an aberration appearing in any colour and as such have a mixed history. The crest is essentially a mutation associated with skull deformities and known for hundreds of years. There are those who claim that crested ducks first appeared in Britain, which is unlikely but they were certainly first shown here and appear in many early poultry books . Genetic mutations appear occasionally all over the world. Selective breeding would then have increased the numbers of birds with the same characteristic. 17th century Dutch paintings show crested ducks on wildfowl such as Melchior d’Hondecoeter (1636 -1695) and Marmaduke Craddock (1660 – 1717) from Somerset in the UK showed them”

John McCullough