Abbots Ripton is situated within Huntingdonshire which is a non-metropolitan district of Cambridgeshire as well as being an historic county of England.
[1] The village is also notable as the location of the Abbots Ripton railway disaster in 1876 in which a Flying Scotsman train was wrecked during a blizzard.
The civil parish includes the nearby hamlet of Wennington, which lies one mile north of Abbots Ripton.
[2] Abbots Ripton was listed in the Domesday Book of 1086 in the Hundred of Hurstingstone in Huntingdonshire; the name of the settlement was written as Riptune.
Abbots Ripton is a part of the electoral division of Upwood and The Raveleys and is represented on the county council by one councillor.
At Westminster, Abbots Ripton is in the parliamentary constituency of North West Cambridgeshire,[11] and has been represented in the House of Commons since 2005 by Shailesh Vara (Conservative).
The village of Abbots Ripton lies on the B1090, a minor road that runs from St Ives to the south-east to a junction with the B1043, north-west of the parish, close to the A1(M) motorway and just south of Sawtry.
Around 2 miles (3 km) north of the parish the land slopes down close to sea-level and The Fens start.
[18] Above this bedrock are superficial deposits characterised as Oadby Member Diamicton, that has formed within the last two million years during Ice Age conditions by glaciers scouring the land.
Close to the streams the superficial deposits are of loose soil or sediments called alluvium that have formed during the last 12,000 years.
To the north-east of Wennington, there are sand and gravel deposits formed by glacio-fluvial processes in the mid-Pleistocene period.
[18] The soil is classified as lime-rich loamy and clayey, which has impeded drainage and is high in natural fertility; it is suitable primarily for arable farming with some grassland.
There is a Church of England primary school in Abbots Ripton for children between the ages of four and eleven years old.
[9] The chancel was rebuilt at the start of the 16th century, a north chapel was added and the present tower was constructed.
[26] Abbots Ripton Hall is a Grade II listed building that was built on the site of the old manor house.
The one at Abbots Ripton is 19 metres (21 yd) in diameter, 1–1.5 m high with signs of a ditch 4 m wide to the north and west.
[28] There is a moated site in a small wood at Bellamy's Grove, 1 mile (2 km) south of Abbot's Ripton.
According to the English Heritage Listing, the moated site at Bellamy's Grove is one of the best preserved of its kind in the region.
[29] The village hall was also designed by Peter Foster, Surveyor of Westminster Abbey; it was built in 1988 and opened by John Major.
[33] Since its inception in 2004, the Secret Garden Party summer music festival has been held annually at a rural location near the village.