Swaffham Bulbeck is a parish in the ancient Hundred of Stain, 6 miles south-west of Newmarket, and the same distance from Six-Mile-Bottom railway station. Swaffham Bulbeck is located about 8 miles from the city of Cambridge, and 6 miles from the famous horse-racing town of Newmarket. The parish of Swaffham Bulbeck is part of the Diocese of Ely and the Deanery of Fordham and Quy. The benefice consists of five parishes, Swaffham Bulbeck, Swaffham Prior, Bottisham, Lode and Quy.
The village is situated on Swaffham Lode, a navigable cut or canal, from the river Cam.
It is located just beyond the end of Swaffham Bulbeck Lode, a man-made waterway connected to the River Cam. The Hamlet of Commercial End, at the northern edge of the village, was an important inland port from medieval times, although the waterway had been in use since Roman times. It was the Romans who dug this canal to allow trade between their various farms and villages. The history of the area however can be traced back to the Bronze Age, at least a thousand years before the Roman occupation of Britain. Nearby are the remains of a Benedictine nunnery, founded by one of the Bolebecks/Bolebecs in the reign of King John [of Magna Carta fame] hence ‘Bulbeck'. That line came over from Rouen in Normandy, soon after the Norman Conquest and they established a manor house and founded a small convent of nuns in about 1150. Some remains of the convent still exist at `The Abbey.' Swaffham means a farm or settlement of the Swabians, a tribe from south-west Germany who settled in the area in the sixth century.

The church is dedicated to St Mary the Virgin. The west tower was built in the early 13th century and is the most ancient part of a very ancient building. The tower is 12.5 feet square with three storeys and is supported by eight buttresses. It is built of locally quarried clunch (from Burwell).

There is also a cemetery in the village which opened in 1877.