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 River Great Ouse in the Huntingdonshire District, 15 miles (24 km) west of Cambridge and 49 miles (79 km) north of central London. St Neots is the largest town in Cambridgeshire (Cambridge and Peterborough are both cities) with a population of 30,580. The town is named after the Cornish monk Saint Neot whose bones were stolen from the village of St Neot on Bodmin Moor and concealed in the nearby priory of the same name.
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. Up until 1974 St Neots was part of Huntingdonshire. Today, St Neots is a thriving commuter town.
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