It’s 10.30am on the first Monday in August and Histon Recreation Ground, home to the Cambridgeshire village’s facilities for tennis, bowls, cricket and football, is looking barren. Today’s forecast was originally predicted as 26 degrees with cloud cover, but it has shifted overnight and now the dusty, yellowed sports field is once again baking in full sunshine. The few residents there to exercise are already sweating and sheltering in the shade while they still can.
Histon, a small village in North Cambridge, was voted one of the best places to live in Cambridgeshire by Muddy Stilettos in 2025, with 1,300 people making the move from London every year. But as of the end of July, Histon is also the bearer of a very 2026 accolade: the driest village in the UK.
According to the Cambridgeshire weather station, located at the National Institute of Agricultural Botany on the outskirts of Histon, the area has recorded 203.6 mm of rainfall since 1 January this year – beating out Shoeburyness in Essex (216.2mm) and Weybourne in Norfolk (219.2mm).
It’s no wonder then that last week, Cambridgeshire was one of the seven regions across the country declared to be in drought by the Environment Agency. And getting through every day of this historically hot and dry summer has become something of an endurance sport itself, especially for the population’s most vulnerable.
