[2] The history of Barnwell effectively began with the creation of the house of Canons Regular in 1092 by Picot, Lord of Bourn and Madingley and sheriff of Cambridgeshire at the time of the Domesday Book.

[4] By the mid-19th century, Barnwell was a rough area inhabited predominantly by railway workers and manual labourers such as those mining fossil beds.

The American author Charles Astor Bristed, writing about his experiences as a student at Cambridge in the 1840s, described Barnwell as synonymous with prostitution.

It closed in 1962 [6] but the station building including an old passenger car and about a hundred yards of track (disconnected) still exist and are privately owned.

Now part of Abbey Ward, there is no official geographical entity bearing the name and it no longer appears on Ordnance Survey maps of Cambridge.