The modern replica of a gibbet stands on a knoll near the Caxton Gibbet Inn at the crossroads on the main road (A428) from Cambridge to St Neots. The original gibbet is long gone, but the story behind it was told to Enid Porter in 1948 by Miss Catherine Parsons of Horseheath, who learned the local tradition concerning it from Dr. W. Palmer of Linton.
Miss Parsons said that, about 250 years before, a man named Partridge was murdered in Monk Field in Bourn. The murderer managed to escape detection and fled to America. Years later, he returned to the scene of his crime, and one day, as he sat drinking in an inn at Caxton, fell into conversation with villagers who very soon realized that he was no stranger to the parish. They began to ask him questions, and the man, who had been drinking freely, boasted of how he had once robbed a nest of partridges but managed to evade the gamekeepers.
The publican, recalling the Partridge murder, put two and two together, and sent for the police. The stranger was identified by a birthmark, brought to trial and eventually strung up alive in an iron cage on the gibbet at the crossroads. A passing baker, taking pity on him, gave him a load of bread, for which act of huma kindness he was unfairly hanged from Caxton Gibbet himself.
According to the Reader’s Digest Folklore, Myths and Legend of Britain (2nd ed. 1977), the gibbet was probably erected to expose to public view the body of a Royston highwayman named Gatwood, who was hanged in 1752 for robbing mail coaches and the Great North Road. Other sources say the gibbet was used to hang three men for sheep-stealing, who were them buried beneath it.