County town: Huntingdon
Huntingdonshire was established as a shire by the early 10th century, a small county centred on Huntingdon at the crossing of the Ouse. It incorporated territory that had been part of the Danelaw.
Huntingdonshire was one of England's smallest counties, a compact area of river meadows and fen-edge farmland along the Great Ouse. Ramsey Abbey, founded in 969, was one of the wealthiest and most influential monasteries in medieval England, dominating the county's ecclesiastical and economic life. Oliver Cromwell was born in Huntingdon in 1599, giving the county a pivotal role in the 17th-century history of Britain. The county's Great North Road connections made Huntingdon and Godmanchester important staging posts. Much of the eastern county was occupied by the Fens before the great drainage schemes of the 17th century transformed the landscape.
Huntingdonshire was surveyed in the Domesday Book of 1086, William the Conqueror's great census of England. The survey recorded 98 settlements in the county, with details of their lords, landholders, population, and resources.
Browse 98 Domesday settlements in HuntingdonshireEngland's 39 historic counties, established between the 9th and 12th centuries, are the framework through which English local history, legal records, and landscape have been organised for a thousand years. Most survive today as ceremonial counties, their boundaries deeply embedded in place identity.
An Aubrey report for a specific location in Huntingdonshire draws on historical maps, archaeological records, Domesday data and landscape history to tell the full story of any site in the county.
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