[2] It lies approximately 9 miles (14 km) northwest of Huntingdon, near Sawtry, within Huntingdonshire, which is a district of Cambridgeshire as well as a historic county.

[4][5] Little Gidding was the home of a small Anglican religious community established in 1626 by Nicholas Ferrar, two of his siblings and their extended families.

[8] Little Gidding is notable as the home of a Church of England lay religious community established by the Ferrar family in 1626.

With the collapse of the Virginia Company and the loss of a large portion of their fortune, the Ferrar family retreated to Little Gidding to take on a spiritual life of prayer, eschewing the world.

The following year, in 1626, Nicholas Ferrar was ordained as a deacon by William Laud, then Bishop of St David's and later Archbishop of Canterbury.

When they purchased it, the property consisted of a decayed manor house and the village's medieval parish church of St John.

The Ferrar household lived a Christian life according to High Church principles and the Book of Common Prayer.

The Ferrar household attracted visitors: Richard Crashaw came a number of times, and was on good terms with Mary Collet.

[15][16] King Charles I visited three times, the last occasion being on 2 May 1646, seeking refuge after the Royalist defeat at the Battle of Naseby.

[20] With the Oxford Movement and the revival of Anglican religious orders, Little Gidding and its Ferrar household were "much idealized by nineteenth-century Anglo-Catholics".

According to ascetical theologian Martin Thornton, Nicholas Ferrar and the Little Gidding community exemplified an appeal based in a lack of rigidity (representing the best Anglicanism's via media can offer) and "common-sense simplicity" coupled with "pastoral warmth" related to Christian origins.

From 1965, the parish was part of the new administrative county of Huntingdon and Peterborough and, in 1974, following the Local Government Act 1972, of Cambridgeshire.

Eliot, a convert to Anglicanism who identified as an Anglo-Catholic and was a life member of the Society of King Charles the Martyr,[27][28] visited Little Gidding church on 25 May 1936.

Eliot intends to portray this suffering as restorative — that it was necessary to experience catastrophic pain before life can be renewed and begin anew.

[31] Eliot draws imagery from the history of the Little Gidding community and its role in the Civil War and the fall of Charles I (whom Eliot calls the "broken King"), relating this past to a present in which Britain was struggling with the devastation of The Blitz during World War II.

Upon reaching Nicholas Ferrar's grave, prayers are offered followed by Choral Evensong in St John's parish church.

[32] On the Saturday closest to the anniversary of Nicholas Ferrar's death on 4 December 1637, a commemorative service is held at St John's Church.