Huntingdonshire survived as a political unit and a social institution for some eleven hundred years until 1974, when it was absorbed into Cambridgeshire. That is survives still, in the hearts and minds of its people, is evidenced by the sustained demand for a new edition of this book. When it was first publishing, in 1985, it was the first account of this historic county to have appeared since the ‘Victoria County History’ in 1926. In the final sentence of that first edition the author expressed the hope that knowledge of the existence of Huntingdonshire would survive for ‘at least one more decade’. He need not have worried--Huntingdonshire suffers no shortage of local patriots who wish to keep alive the memory of one of the vanished--and smallest--of the ancient counties of England.
Though always small, rural and sparsely populated, Huntingdonshire had its moments of glory and produced far more than its share of historical characters who made an impact of the historical scene. In his vivid and very readable text, the author takes the county’s story from prehistoric times to the present day, revealing how the tides of political, economic and social history have shaped it communities and its landscape; while successive waves of invaders created its indigenous population. Huntingdonshire has always been a county of contrasts, despite its small size, with the fertile peat of the wolds, with the bustling villages of the Ouse valley and the depopulated upland hamlets. Huntingdonshire’s past offers a rich tapestry, colourfully revealed in the author’s compelling narrative and carefully chosen illustrations.
This new edition has been fully revised, updated and re-designed, a decade after the book’s first appearance, and it will remain the standard work on the county well into the next century ..... an entertaining account of the lives of its people, century after century, and the heritage they left for those who live and work in old Huntingdonshire today.
Contents:
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Foreword by the Rt Hon John Major, MP, Prime Minister
Introduction
1. Prehistoric Huntingdonshire
2. Roman Huntingdonshire
3. Anglo-Saxon Huntingdonshire
4. Medieval Huntingdonshire: The Years of Expansion
5. Medieval Huntingdonshire: The Years of Decline
6. The Medieval Monasteries
7. The Tudor Era
8. Oliver Cromwell and the English Civil War
9. Agriculture and the Rural Community (1540-1750)
10. Towns and Trade
11. The County Community of Gentry
12. Religious Dissent
13. Huntingdonshire Schools
14. Agriculture in the 19th Century
15. Railways, Reforms and Redcoats
16. The 20th Century
Select Bibliography
Index
