Cherry Hinton is a former village on the south-eastern edge of Cambridge, a little over two and a half miles east-south-east of Cambridge city centre as the crow flies. Unlike most of the villages around the city, it is not a civil parish. It has been part of Cambridge since 1934 and lies in the unparished area of the city, so local services come from Cambridge City Council and Cambridgeshire County Council and there is no parish council.
Cherry Hinton is also the name of a Cambridge City Council electoral ward. The 2021 Census recorded about 9,300 people living in the Cherry Hinton ward. This is the ward figure, not a figure for the historic village. Within the city the ward adjoins Queen Edith's, Coleridge, Romsey and Abbey wards. Beyond the city boundary lie the South Cambridgeshire parishes of Teversham and Fulbourn to the north-east and east, with Great Shelford and Stapleford meeting the ward's southern tip.
Cherry Hinton Hall was built in 1839 for John Okes, a surgeon at Addenbrooke's Hospital, in a Tudor style of gault brick with stone dressings. It is listed Grade II. Cambridge borough council bought the Hall between 1933 and 1939, and the ornamental fish ponds and weir to the north of the house were created in 1855.
The grounds are the home of the Cambridge Folk Festival, which is organised by Cambridge City Council. The festival's next event at Cherry Hinton Hall is due to finish on 1 August 2027. The Hall itself is now the address of Holme Court School, an independent special school.
The chalk pits at Cherry Hinton were a source of clunch, a hard chalk building stone, for churches and colleges in Cambridge during the Middle Ages. The great gateway at Trinity College and parts of Peterhouse in the late 15th century, and the chapel at Corpus Christi College in the 16th century, were built from Hinton stone.
Today East Pit, the largest of the former quarries, is managed by the Wildlife Trust for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire as Cherry Hinton Chalk Pits nature reserve. It covers 11 hectares, is open at all times, and is part of a Site of Special Scientific Interest as well as a Local Nature Reserve. The Trust notes that the rare moon carrot grows here and at only two other places in the country. Visitors are asked not to climb the cliffs and to keep away from their base.
People lived on Limekiln Hill long before the village existed. In 1894 archaeologists excavated an Iron Age hill fort there, known as the War Ditches, an enclosure about 55 metres across with a ditch up to 8 metres wide. By 110 AD the hill was occupied by a Roman farm.
In 1066 Hinton was held by Eddeva the fair, and by 1086 it had passed with her lands to Count Alan, lord of Richmond. The Domesday Book records 47 households at Hinton in 1086, including 19 villagers and 22 smallholders. The name Cherry is first recorded in 1576 and may come from the cherry trees that once grew here.
The old village had two centres: Church End to the north and Mill End to the south, separated by marshland until it was drained after inclosure in 1810. Houses and shops then spread along the road between them, forming the High Street, and the junction of Mill End Road and the High Street became the new heart of the village. The parish population grew from 474 in 1821 to 2,597 in 1901 and 11,201 in 1961, much of it through suburban building spreading out from Cambridge.
In 1911, 338 acres of the parish were transferred to the borough of Cambridge, and in 1934 the whole parish was incorporated within the city's boundaries. In the 1980s around 600 houses were built on land north-east of Church End. By the late 1990s the area of the former parish was divided between Cherry Hinton, Queen Edith's and Coleridge wards.
Cherry Hinton is not a conservation area. It is not among the 18 conservation areas designated by Cambridge City Council. Several individual buildings are listed, however.
St Andrew's Church at the northern end of the old village is listed Grade I. Historic England describes it as dating from the late 12th century, with a fine 13th-century chancel with good internal wall arcading, and records that it was drastically restored and rebuilt by Gilbert Scott in 1880. The Victoria County History calls it one of the finest and most complete Early English parish churches in the county.
Uphall on Church End, north of the church, is listed Grade II. Historic England describes it as externally of early 19th-century character but in fact a 16th-century timber-framed building, cased in grey gault brick around 1830.
The Red Lion on Mill End Road is listed Grade II. Historic England dates it to the 16th century, with 18th-century and later additions.
There are four state primary schools in the Cherry Hinton ward:
Full reports are available on the Ofsted website. Families should check secondary school catchment arrangements with Cambridgeshire County Council admissions.
Cherry Hinton once had its own station. The railway from Cambridge towards Six Mile Bottom, completed in 1851, ran through the north of the parish, and a station near the High Street level crossing opened in 1852 but closed in 1854. Check National Rail for current train times before you travel.
Cherry Hinton's housing ranges from timber-framed buildings in the old village, some dating from the 16th century, to the council estates built around the village from the 1960s and the private housing that followed in the 1970s and 1980s.
HM Land Registry recorded 184 standard residential sales in the Cherry Hinton ward between October 2024 and August 2026. The median price was £450,000. Of those sales, 64 were semi-detached houses, 47 terraced, 40 detached and 33 flats or maisonettes, with prices ranging from £179,000 to £1,300,000. Because the mix of homes sold varies from year to year, these figures give a general picture rather than a precise valuation.
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Yes. The whole of the former parish was incorporated within Cambridge's boundaries in 1934. Cherry Hinton is now an electoral ward of Cambridge City Council and has no parish council.
The centre of Cherry Hinton is a little over two and a half miles east-south-east of Cambridge city centre in a straight line.
Not today. Its own station closed in 1854. Cambridge station is about one and three-quarter miles away, and Cambridge South, which opened in June 2026, is about two and a quarter miles away.
Cherry Hinton CofE VC Primary School, Colville Primary School, Bewick Bridge Community Primary School and The Spinney Primary School are all within the Cherry Hinton ward.
