The village lies 2.6 miles (4.2 km) north of St Neots in the Great Ouse river valley.

In 1085 William the Conqueror ordered that a survey should be carried out across his kingdom to discover who owned which parts and what it was worth.

[4] The Domesday Book does not explicitly detail the population of a place but it records that there was 69 households at Great Paxton.

The Domesday Book uses a number of units of measure for areas of land that are now unfamiliar terms, such as hides and ploughlands.

In different parts of the country, these were terms for the area of land that a team of eight oxen could plough in a single season and are equivalent to 120 acres (49 hectares); this was the amount of land that was considered to be sufficient to support a single family.

[4] The tax assessment in the Domesday Book was known as geld or danegeld and was a type of land-tax based on the hide or ploughland.

The manor of Great Paxton was held by Countess Judith who was a niece of William the Conqueror.

A parish council is responsible for providing and maintaining a variety of local services including allotments and a cemetery; grass cutting and tree planting within public open spaces such as a village green or playing fields.

For Great Paxton the highest tier of local government is Cambridgeshire County Council which has administration buildings in Cambridge.

[12] Great Paxton is part of the electoral division of Buckden, Gransden and The Offords[10] and is represented on the county council by one councillor.

The village lies on the eastern side of the Great Ouse river valley on a subsoil that is mainly Oxford clay.

The village stands on the B1043 that runs between St Neots in the south and Offord D'Arcy in the north.

In the period 1801 to 1901 the population of Great Paxton was recorded every ten years by the UK census.

The East Coast Main Line between London and Edinburgh passes through the parish of Great Paxton.