The two “Jeremiah’s Tea Houses” in Little Abington and Lagdon’s Grove (a wood near Bourne Bridge) perpetuate the memory of Jeremiah Lagden, an eighteenth-century highwayman.
He was the son of Emma Lagden, the proprietress of the White Hart Inn at Bourne Bridge. She was a Quaker, but an unusual one; the antiquary William Cole wrote that she “laid herself out to attract men… gallantry was her ruling passion.”
Jeremiah began as a post-boy at the White Hart, enriching himself with stolen money. He progressed to robbing coaches on the Newmarket to London road. In later life, he lived at the Old House, Little Abington, where a hiding place in the chimney and a well under a living-room floor are said to have been where he hid his loot.
Tradition said that Jeremiah himself was eventually captured on the Newmarket road as he lay in waiting for the coach to pass, and was hanged in a field opposite his house. The ghost of the highwayman is said to have been seen here. In the garden is a vault known as ‘Jeremiah’s Grave’, although it is his wife who is said to be buried there.