The manor of Somersham was held by the Abbots (later Bishops) of Ely who obtained it from the Anglo Saxon Ealdorman
Byrhtnoth following his death at the
Battle of Maldon in Essex in 991 AD. Somersham was listed as
Summersham in the
Domesday Book in the
Hundred of
Hurstingstone in Huntingdonshire. In 1086 there was one manor at Somersham and 41 households. There were eleven
ploughlands with the capacity for a further one, of meadows, of woodland, and three fisheries. Following the
Restoration, the manor was returned to the Crown. There was a substantial manor house at Somersham with formal gardens dating to the 12th century and possibly earlier. A
Tudor palace was constructed over the mediaeval building by Bishop
James Stanley, of Ely, under
Henry VII.
John Lesley,
Bishop of Ross, a diplomat for
Mary, Queen of Scots, came to Somersham and
Fenstanton as a prisoner of
Richard Cox, Bishop of Ely in 1571 and wrote about a deer hunt in the park. In September 1588, a survey of the property was made, naming several rooms in house and noting a bridge from the moated house to the park. The estate came to the crown. In 1604, anticipating a visit,
James VI and I wrote to the keeper
Sir John Cutts requesting that he stock the park. By the time the Hammond family came into possession of the palace site in the late 17th century, the buildings were in a poor state of repair. They were pulled down in the middle of the 18th century. In the latter part of the 14th century, the church in Somersham was a living in possession of the English Cardinal and papal courtier
Adam Easton and he relied on its wealth until his death in 1397. During the 18th century there was a Spa just outside the town that was actively promoted by one of the royal surgeons.
James Hammond, an elegiac poet who died in 1742, was born and brought up in Somersham; his work remained popular throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, being reprinted several times, but is no longer well known today. == Government ==