Thorney is a village in the Peterborough unitary authority in the ceremonial county of Cambridgeshire, England. Located around eight miles (13 km) east of Peterborough city centre, on the A47. Historically in the Isle of Ely, Thorney was transferred to the short-lived county of Huntingdon and Peterborough in 1965 and became part of the Peterborough district in 1974, on the merger into Cambridgeshire; the city became a unitary authority area in 1998. History Thorney began as a Saxon settlement in about 500 AD. The existence of Thorney Abbey made the settlement an important ecclesiastical centre, and until 2014 was the most northerly point of the Anglican Diocese of Ely. By 2007 the previous Thorney Abbey church, now the Church of St Mary and St Botolph, was part of the Deanery and Diocese of Peterborough. Following the Dissolution of the Monasteries the estate became crown property and it was granted to John Russell, 1st Earl of Bedford in 1550. At this time only a few hundred acres of the land was cultivatable. In the 1630s Francis Russell, 4th Earl of Bedford spent a reputed £100,000 draining the fens, bringing almost all of the estate and parish of nearly into agricultural use. A community of Walloon Protestant refugees, originally from areas of Flanders that are now northern France, was settled here in the 17th century with their own church and minister, employing the ruins of the abbey for services in their own language. The Walloons had expertise in fenland drainage. The Russell family's rents from the Thorney estate increased from £300 in 1629 to £10,000 by the early 19th century. The family, whose main seat was at Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire, occasionally resided at the manor house in Thorney village, which was known as Abbey House. The estate was sold to the tenants in 1910. Much of the village was built at the command of the Dukes of Bedford, who wished to have a healthy place in which their estate workers could live. In the mid-19th century many buildings were added to the designs of the architect S.S. Teulon, himself a descendant of Huguenots. The 7th Duke of Bedford's model agricultural village included a modern water supply and sewerage scheme. The neo-Jacobean Tankyard building, now known as Bedford Hall, included a 96 ft high water tower, erected in 1855, that supplied fresh water to the village. The building houses Thorney Heritage Museum,