COCKAYNE HATLEY village is near the Cambridgeshire border, six  miles north-east of Bigglesvvade and has literary associations. In the  churchyard is the grave of the poet William Ernest Henley remembered for his " Invictus." In the adjacent  grave lies his wife and his five-year-old daughter. It was him who suggested to  Sir J. M. Barrie the name of Wendy for the little sweetheart of Peter Pan.

The church of St. John the Baptist is a fourteenth-century structure in  the Decorated and Perpendicular styles. It was thoroughly renovated in the early  part of the last century and was ornanented with some beautiful Flemish  woodwork. There are some good stained glass windows and four sixteenth-century  brasses to the Bryan and Cockayne familys