25 April: Huntingdonshire Day

25 April is Huntingdonshire Day. 10 things you didn't know about Huntingdonshire.

1. Huntingdonshire is a district of Cambridge, and a historic county of England. It lost its official county status in 1974.
2. In the 1990s there was a campaign for it to become an administrative county again although the Local Government Commission found that while some people were quite vocal in wanting an independent Huntingdonshire most of the people living there were content to remain part of Cambridgeshire.
3. Some of the people who'd wanted Huntingdonshire to become a county again set up the Huntingdonshire society to promote awareness of the historic county. It was they who decided that 25 April should be Huntingdonshire Day Because it is the birthday of Oliver Cromwell, who was born in the town of Huntingdon.
4. The society also established a county flag for the area, a hunting horn on a Green field, in 2009.
5. Its boundaries haven't changed since Anglo Saxon times.
6. In 1154, Henry II declared that the whole of Huntingdonshire was a royal forest, meaning one reserved for hunting. His proclamation didn't last – by the 18^th century it was mostly farmland.
7. The administrative centre is in the market town of Huntingdon, which means “Huntsman's Hill.” A couple of facts about Huntingdon – it has a cultivar of elm tree named after it, and it was hit by a Tornado during the largest ever tornado outbreak in the UK in 1981.
8. Other major towns are Ramsey, St Ives (not to be confused with the one in Cornwall), St Neots and Yaxley.
9. Huntingdonshire includes part of the Fens of East Anglia, which in years gone by used to freeze in winter and people would skate on them and play a game similar to ice hockey, a forerunner of the game of bandy, now an IOC accepted sport.
10. As well as Oliver Cromwell, other people associated with the area include Samuel Pepys, who went to school there, former Prime Minister John Major, who was the MP for Huntingdonshire and Catherine of Aragon, who died there.

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