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Hobson's Conduit is a sixteenth-century water supply system constructed in Cambridge to serve the town's needs. Built by Thomas Hobson, a prominent Cambridge carrier and benefactor, the conduit brought fresh water from springs near Nine Wells to the marketplace and other parts of the town, with the work largely completed by the early seventeenth century. The system comprised a series of underground pipes and channels, with visible structures including a conduit head and distribution points that became important civic infrastructure. Hobson's legacy as the creator of this public water supply remained significant to Cambridge's development, and elements of the conduit survive as important monuments to early modern civic engineering and charitable provision.
Hobson's Conduit is a scheduled monument protected by Historic England under reference 1006912. View the official record →
Hobson's Conduit is a sixteenth-century water supply system constructed in Cambridge to serve the town's needs. It is designated a Scheduled Ancient Monument by Historic England (NHLE) under reference 1006912.
Hobson's Conduit is a Scheduled Ancient Monument, legally protected by Historic England (NHLE) — the body responsible for designating and safeguarding heritage sites in England. The official designation reference is 1006912.
Several scheduled monuments lie within 10 km, including Settlement NW of Little Shelford (5.6 km), Money Hill Round Barrow Cemetery (7.5 km), Settlement site at Manor Farm (8.3 km).
This page is just one thread. A full Aubrey report pulls together 15 strands of Hobson's Conduit's history, each drawn from the record and mapped to the exact spot:
Every location is different. Not every section appears for every place, only what the historical record actually holds turns up in a report.
Hobson's Conduit stands on Gault Formation And Upper Greensand Formation (Undifferentiated), bedrock that formed in the Cenomanian. The rock here is mudstone, sandstone and limestone.