A Prime Location

Photograph | Hidden Lives: a story of discovery

Archaeologists studying the Wellcome Genome Campus site believe that the landscape has remained largely unchanged since the last ice age, about 15,000 years ago. With the River Cam flowing through it, and crossed by the ancient Icknield Way, the land around Hinxton has been a prime location for settlement for thousands of years.

In part, the land has held onto its archaeological riches for so long because, for centuries, it has been an estate. Archival records date the first ownership of the land to 1506. Hinxton Hall was built in 1748 and still stands in the grounds today. Passed from family ownership to business use in the 1950s by the firm Tube Investments Ltd, and then to the Wellcome Trust in the 1990s, there has been the rare opportunity to extensively study and uncover the history of the site. This not only tells us about an area of land in South Cambridgeshire, but gives us another piece of understanding in the large jigsaw of our ancient past – and what this might reveal about ourselves.