St Neots 5.35

St Neots is a town and civil parish in the non metropolitan county of Cambridgeshire, England, within the historic county of Huntingdonshire, next to the Bedfordshire county border. It lies on the banks of the River Great Ouse in the Huntingdonshire District, 15mi west of Cambridge and 49mi north of central London. St Neots is the largest town in Cambridgeshire with a population of approximately 40,000 in 2014. The town is named after the Cornish monk Saint Neot, whose bones were subject to translation from the hamlet of St Neot on Bodmin Moor on consecration of the Priory of St Neots c. 980.Pilgrimage to St Neots brought prosperity for the town, and it was granted a market charter in 1130. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the town enjoyed further prosperity through corn milling, brewing, stagecoach traffic and railways. After the Second World War, the town and its industry grew rapidly as London councils paid for new housing to be built in the town to rehouse families from London. The first London overspill housing was completed in the early 1960s.