Babraham was comparatively wealthy during medieval times due to its wool trade, with the highest tax returns in its hundred.

In the late 16th century the manor was the principal seat of the great Elizabethan merchant and financier Sir Horatio Palavicino.

[7] On 16 April 1556 he was burned at the stake on Jesus Green, Cambridge for refusing to renounce the Protestant faith.

[2] In the 19th century Babraham was home to Jonas Webb, a noted stock breeder who played a pivotal role in developing the Southdown breed of sheep.

The present parish church, dedicated to St Peter since the 12th century, consists of a chancel, an aisled and clerestoried nave with north and south porches, and a west tower.

With much local and antiquarian detail, it tells the story of Samuel Plampin, Doctor of Divinity at Cambridge and vicar of St Peter's Babraham, who brings to the vicarage as his housekeeper a young Frenchwoman he finds in Cambridge, a destitute refugee from the Terror.

Rupert Brooke's poem The Old Vicarage, Grantchester, include the line "Strong men have cried like babes, bydam, To hear what happened at Babraham."