Owell is a parish adjacent to a Roman road, 3 miles north-west from Shepreth station on the Hitchin, Royston and Cambridge line of the London and North Eastern railway, 8 south-west from Cambridge and about 7 north from Royston, in the hundred of Wetherley, petty sessional division of Arrington and Melbourn, union of Caxton and Arrington, county court district of Cambridge, rural deanery of Barton and archdeaconry and diocese of Ely.

The soil is clayey and chalky, and the subsoil clay, gault and limestone. The crops are wheat, barley beans and fruit. The acreage is 2,083 ; the population in 1921 was 469.