We could not match "COTTENHAM" in our simplified list of the main towns and villages, or as a postcode. There are several other ways of finding places within Vision of Britain, so read on for detailed advice and 11 possible matches we have found for you:

• If you meant to type something else:
  
  



• If you typed a postcode, it needs to be a full postcode: some letters, then some numbers, then more letters. Old-style postal districts like "SE3" are not precise enough (if you know the location but do not have a precise postcode or placename, see below):
  
  
  
  
  
• If you are looking for a place-name, it needs to be the name of a town or village, or possibly a district within a town. We do not know about individual streets or buildings, unless they give their names to a larger area (though you might try our collections of Historical Gazetteers and British travel writing). Do not include the name of a county, region or nation with the place-name: if we know of more than one place in Britain with the same name, you get to choose the right one from a list or map:
  
  
  
  
  
• You have just searched a list of the main towns, villages and localities of Britain which we have kept as simple as possible. It is based on a much more detailed list of legally defined administrative units: counties, districts, parishes, wapentakes and so on. This is the real heart of our system, and you may be better off directly searching it. There are no units called "COTTENHAM" (excluding any that have already been grouped into the places you have already searched), but administrative unit searches can be narrowed by area and type, and broadened using wild cards and "sound-alike" matching:
  
  



• If you are looking for hills, rivers, castles ... or pretty much anything other than the "places" where people live and lived, you need to look in our collection of Historical Gazetteers. This contains the complete text of three gazetteers published in the late 19th century — over 90,000 entries. Although there are no descriptive gazetteer entries for placenames exactly matching your search term (other than those already linked to "places"), the following entries mention "COTTENHAM":

  Place name	County	Entry	Source
  CAMBRIDGESHIRE	Cambridgeshire	Cottenham and Soham, for cream cheese. The heathlands are depastured by short wooled sheep; the fenpastures, by long wooled sheep	Imperial
  CHESTERTON	Cambridgeshire	Cottenham, Landbeach, and Water-beach; and the sub-district of Great Shelford, containing the parishes of Great Shelford, Little Shelford	Imperial
  Copse Hall	Surrey	Copse Hall , seat of the Earl of Cottenham, near Wimbledon, mid. Surrey.	Bartholomew
  COPSE-HALL	Surrey	COPSE-HALL , the seat of Earl Cottenham, near Wimbledon, in Surrey.	Imperial
  Cottenham	Cambridgeshire	Cottenham , par. and vil., in co. and 6½ miles N. of Cambridge, 7107 ac., pop. 2458; P.O., T.O.	Bartholomew
  COTTENHAM	Cambridgeshire	COTTENHAM , a village and a parish in Chesterton district, Cambridgeshire. The village stands 2 miles S of the Old West	Imperial
  CROWHURST	Surrey	Cottenham. The church has parts from transition Norman to perpendicular English; and contains brasses of the Gaynesfords. A hollow yew tree	Imperial
  ELY	Cambridgeshire	Cottenham, Dry Drayton, Girton, Landbeach, Rampton, Long Stanton-St. Michael, and Willingham; a the vicarages of Chesterton, Histon, Impington, Madingley	Imperial
  RAMPTON	Cambridgeshire	Cottenham, under Cambridge. Acres, 1, 312. Real property, £1, 966. Pop., 240. Houses, 50. The manor belongs to H. Effingham	Imperial
  RIDLEY	Cheshire	belongs to Lord Cottenham. R. Hall, a fine old building, is now a farm-house. Lord Chancellor Egerton was anative.	Imperial
  Tandridge	Surrey	Tandridge Court is the seat of the Earl of Cottenham; a priory was founded here in time of Richard I.	Bartholomew

  It may also be worth using "sound-alike" and wildcard searching to find names similar to your search term:
  
  



• Place-names also appear in our collection of British travel writing. If the place-name you are interested in appears in our simplified list of "places", the search you have just done should lead you to mentions by travellers. However, many other places are mentioned, including places outside Britain and weird mis-spellings. You can search for them in the Travel Writing section of this site.



• If you know where you are interested in, but don't know the place-name, go to our historical mapping, and zoom in on the area you are interested in. Click on the "Information" icon, and your mouse pointer should change into a question mark: click again on the location you are interested in. This will take you to a page for that location, with links to both administrative units, modern and historical, which cover it, and to places which were nearby. For example, if you know where an ancestor lived, Vision of Britain can tell you the parish and Registration District it was in, helping you locate your ancestor's birth, marriage or death.