railways, 59 m. N. of London. Pop. (1901) 4261. It consists principally of one street, about a mile long, in the centre of which is the market-place. Of the ancient religious houses in Huntingdon few traces remain. The parish church of St Mary occupies the site of the priory of Augustinian Canons already existing in the 10th century, in which David Bruce, Scottish earl of Huntingdon, was afterwards buried. The church, which was restored by Sir A. W. Blomfield, in 1876, contains portions of the earlier building which it replaced in 1620. All Saints’ church, rebuilt about a century earlier, has slight remains of the original Norman church and some good modern, as well as ancient, carved woodwork. The church registers dating from 1558 are preserved, together with those of the old parish of St John, which date from 1585 and contain the entry of Oliver Cromwell’s baptism on the 29th of April 1599, the house in which he was born being still in existence. Some Norman remains of the hospice of St John the Baptist founded by David, king of Scotland, at the end of the 12th century were incorporated in the buildings of Huntingdon grammar school, once attended by Oliver Cromwell and by Samuel Pepys. Hinchingbrooke House, on the outskirts of the town, an Elizabethan mansion chiefly of the 16th century, was the seat of the Cromwell family, others of the Montagus, earls of Sandwich. It occupies the site of a Benedictine nunnery granted by Henry VIII. at the Dissolution, together with many other manors in Huntingdonshire, to Sir Richard Williams, alias Cromwell, whose son, Sir Henry Cromwell, entertained Queen Elizabeth here in 1564. His son, Sir Oliver Cromwell, was the uncle and godfather of the Protector. Among the buildings of Huntingdon are the town hall (1745), county gaol, barracks, county hospital and the Montagu Institute (1897). A racecourse is situated in the bend of the Ouse to the south of the town, and meetings are held here in August. The town is governed by a mayor, 4 aldermen and 12 councillors. Area, 1074 acres.
Huntingdon (Huntandun, Huntersdune) was taken by the Danes in King Alfred’s reign but recovered c. 919 by Edward the Elder, who raised a castle there, probably on the site of an older fortress. In 1010 the Danes destroyed the town. The castle was strengthened by David, king of Scotland, after the Conquest, but was among the castles destroyed by order of Henry II. At the time of the Domesday Survey Huntingdon was divided into four divisions, two containing 116 burgesses and the other two 140. Most of the burgesses belonged to the king and paid a rent of £10 yearly. King John in 1205 granted them the liberties and privileges held by the men of other boroughs in England and increased the farm to £20. Henry III. further increased it to £40 in 1252. The borough was incorporated by Richard III. in 1483 under the title of bailiffs and burgesses, and in 1630 Charles I. granted a new charter, appointing a mayor and 12 aldermen, which remained the governing charter until the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 changed the corporation to a mayor, 4 aldermen and 12 councillors. The burgesses were represented in parliament by two members from 1295 to 1867, when the number was reduced to one, and in 1885 they ceased to be separately represented. Huntingdon owed its prosperity to its situation on the Roman Ermine Street. It has never been noted for manufactures, but is the centre of an agricultural district. The market held on Saturday was granted to the burgesses by King John. During the Civil Wars Huntingdon was several times occupied by the Royalists.
See Victoria County History, Huntingdon; Robert Carruthers, The History of Huntingdon from the Earliest to the Present Times (1824); Edward Griffith, A Collection of Ancient Records relating to the Borough of Huntingdon (1827).
HUNTINGDON, a borough and the county-seat of Huntingdon county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., on the Juniata river, about 150 m. E. of Pittsburg, in the S. central part of the state. Pop. (1890) 5729, (1900) 6053, (225 foreign-born), (1910) 6861. It is served by the Pennsylvania and the Huntingdon & Broad Top Mountain railways, the latter running to the Broad Top Mountain coalfields in the S.W. part of the county. The borough is built on ground sloping gently towards the river, which furnishes valuable water power. The surrounding country is well adapted to agriculture, and abounds in coal, iron, fire clay, limestone and white sand. Huntingdon’s principal manufactures are stationery, flour, knitting-goods, furniture, boilers, radiators and sewer pipe. It is the seat of Juniata College (German Baptist Brethren), opened in 1876 as the Brethren’s Normal School and Collegiate Institute, and rechartered as Juniata College in 1896, and of the State Industrial Reformatory, opened in 1888. Indians (probably Oneidas) settled near the site of Huntingdon, erected here a tall pillar, known as “Standing Stone”; the original was removed by the Indians, but another has been erected by the borough on the same spot. The place was laid out as a town in 1767 under the direction of Dr William Smith (1727–1803), at the time provost of the college of Pennsylvania (afterwards the university of Pennsylvania); and it was named in honour of the countess of Huntingdon, who had contributed liberally toward the maintenance of that institution. It was incorporated as a borough in 1796.
HUNTINGDONSHIRE (HUNTS), an east midland county of England, bounded N. and W. by Northamptonshire, S.W. by Bedfordshire and E. by Cambridgeshire. Among English counties it is the smallest with the exception of Middlesex and Rutland, having an area of 366 sq. m. The surface is low, and for the most part bare of trees. The south-eastern corner of the county, bounded by the Ouse valley, is traversed by a low ridge of hills entering from Cambridgeshire, and continued over the whole western half of the county, as well as in a strip about 6 m. broad north of the Ouse, between Huntingdon and St Ives. These hills never exceed 300 ft. in height, but form a pleasantly undulating surface. The north-eastern part of the county, comprising 50,000 acres, belongs to that division of the great Fen district called the Bedford Levels. The principal rivers are the Ouse and Nene. The Ouse from Bedfordshire skirts the borders of the county near St Neots, and after flowing north to Huntingdon takes an easterly direction past St Ives into Cambridgeshire on its way to the Wash. The Kym, from Northamptonshire, follows a south-easterly course and joins the Ouse at St Neots, while the Alconbury brook, flowing in a parallel direction, falls into it at Huntingdon. The Nene forms for 15 m. the north-western border of the county, and quitting it near Peterborough, enters the Wash below Wisbech, in Cambridgeshire. The course of the Old River Nene is eastward across the county midway between Huntingdon and Peterborough, and about 112 m. N. by E. of Ramsey it is intersected by the Forty Foot, or Vermuyden’s Drain, a navigable cut connecting it with the Old Bedford river in Cambridgeshire.
Geology.—The geological structure is very simple. All the stratified rocks are of Jurassic age, with the exception of a small area of Lower Greensand which extends for a short distance along the border, north of Potton. The Greensands form low, rounded hills. Phosphatic nodules are obtained from these beds. On the north-western border is a narrow strip of Inferior Oolite, reaching from Thrapston by Oundle to Wansford near Peterborough. It is represented about Wansford by the Northampton sands and by a feeble development of the Lincolnshire limestone. The Great Oolite Series has at the base the Upper Estuarine clays; in the middle, the Great Oolite limestone, which forms the escarpment of Alwalton Lynch; and at the top, the Great Oolite clay. The Cornbrash is exposed along part of the Billing brook, and in a small inlier near Yaxley. Over the remainder of the county the lower rocks are covered by the Oxford clay. It is about 600 ft. thick. This clay cannot be distinguished from the Kimmeridge clay except by the fossils; the two formations probably graduate into one another, but thin limestones are found in places, and at St Ives a patch of the intermediate Corallian rock is present. All the stratified rocks have a general dip towards the south-east.
Much glacial drift clay with stones covers the older rocks over a good deal of the county; it is a bluish clay, often containing masses of chalk, some of them being of considerable size, e.g. the one at Catworth. The Fens on the eastern side of the county are underlain by Oxford clay, which here and there projects through the prevailing newer deposit of silt and loam. There are usually two beds of peat or peaty soil observable in the numerous drains; they are separated by a bed of marine warp. Black loamy alluvium and valley gravels, the most recent deposits, occur in the valleys of the Ouse and Nene. Calcareous tufa is formed by the springs near Alwalton. Oxford clay is dug on a considerable scale for brick-making at Fletton, also at St Ives, Ramsey and St Neots.
