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Clifton may first have been mentioned in about 944 in an Anglo-Saxon charter. However, the charter was recorded by a monastic institution in about 1250 and maybe a forgery of that date. The name is rendered as Cliftune, and has the meaning a settlement by a cliff or slope of a river. Other forms of the name include Cliftone and Clistone, both in the Domesday Book of 1086 and Clyfton in about 1350.
Administrative History
Clifton is an ancient parish in the Clifton Hundred. The boundary between Clifton and Shefford used to be the River Ivel, meaning that a large part of what is now Shefford used to be part of Clifton and was known by such names at Clifton Fields and Shefford End.
The present boundary was established in 1933 is as follows. It is the southern arm and drain of the River Ivel running behind Clifton Fields to a point just east of Ashdown Road (which is in Shefford), south across the Clifton Road/Shefford Road and along the western boundary of Samuel Whitbread Upper School, which is in Clifton. It then runs behind Southfields, in Shefford, in a dog-leg to Hitchin Road and the middle of the road then forms the boundary. To a point just south of the Business Park, where it runs east along the runways of Henlow Airfield, which is, thus partly in Clifton.
Clifton is bordered to the west by Shefford, to the south-west by Meppershall, to the south and east by Henlow, to a small part of the extreme north-east by Langford and to the north by Stanford in the parish of Southill. The main settlement lies in the centre and west of the parish with Clifton Caravan Park to the south and the sewage works in a long pan handle heading north-east.
Population
The population of Clifton has grown greatly in the past two hundred years. There was a spike of 1,700 in 1871 which declined in the next ten years down to 1,458 and, due to the boundary change in 1933 a large part of the parish was lost to Shefford. The town went through another growth period in the late 1960s, the population nearly doubling in ten years from 1,354 in 1961 to 2,570 in 1971.
1801: 329;
1811: 399;
1821: 483;
1831: 664;
1841: 865;
1851: 1,053;
1861: 1,478;
1871: 1,700;
1881: 1,458;
1891: 1,374;
1901: 1,283;
1911: 1,223;
1921: 1,215;
1931: 1,309;
1951: 1,161;
1961: 1,354;
1971: 2,570;
1981: 2,693;
1991: 2,580;
2001: 2,729;
2011: 2,878.