Huntingdon

Coordinates: 52°20′11″N 0°10′18″W / 52.3364°N 0.1717°W / 52.3364; -0.1717

Huntingdon is a market town, located in Cambridgeshire, England. The town was chartered by King John in 1205. It is the traditional county town of Huntingdonshire, and is currently the seat of the Huntingdonshire district council. It is known as the birthplace of Oliver Cromwell, who was born in 1599 and was the member of parliament (MP) for the town in the 17th century. The former Conservative Prime Minister John Major was the MP for the town from 1979 to 2001.

History

Huntingdon was founded by the Anglo-Saxons and Danes. Mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, it seems that it was a staging post for Danish raids outside of east Anglia until 917, when the Danes relocated to Tempsford, before being crushed by Edward the Elder. It prospered successively as a bridging point of the River Great Ouse, as a market town, and in the 18th and 19th centuries as a coaching centre, most notably The George Hotel. The town has a well-preserved medieval bridge that used to serve as the main route of Ermine Street over the river. The bridge only ceased to be the sole crossing point to Godmanchester in 1975, with the advent of what is now the A14 bypass.

Huntingdon (disambiguation)

Huntingdon may refer to:

Geographic locations

Canada

New Zealand

United Kingdom

United States

People

Huntingdon (Boyce, Virginia)

Huntingdon, also known as The Meadow, is a historic plantation home located near Boyce, Clarke County, Virginia. The original section was built about 1830, and is a two-story, five bay, stone I-house dwelling with a gable roof. A rear ell was added around 1850, making a "T"-shaped house. Also on the property are a contributing pyramidal roofed mid-19th-century smokehouse and a stone-lined ice pit with a late 19th-century, square-notched log icehouse.

It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

References