Nowadays, when I think of home I think of 2 places: Orange County, California, and Huntingdon, UK. While I miss Orange County a lot, it's a wonderful thing, getting to know my new home. It's much smaller than any of the cities I've ever known, there's lot's of open space, it's really green, very cold, and there's over a thousand years of history. You guys know all about Orange County, so I wanted to tell you a little bit about my new home and what makes it special.
Map of Cambridgeshire showing the 6 districts.
Huntingdonshire is the middle-left district.
The other districts are (top-bottom) Peterborough, Fenland,
East Cambridgeshire, South Cambridgeshire and Cambridge
If you look at at map of England you would see that Huntingdon lies to the South East in a county called Cambridgeshire. Just as Orange County is called such because of the City of Orange, Cambridgeshire is named so because of Cambridge. Huntingdon is the primary town in Huntingdonshire, one of the six districts in Cambridgeshire. If you think adding -shire on the end of a word is funny, just remember Tolkien probably got the name for "The Shire" from this suffix, when he wrote his books The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. That might give you an idea of the sort of people who inhabited this region of England for hundreds of years; hearty, simple people who lived off the land and kept well enough to themselves. While the times have changed, I can still see remnants of that centuries old culture everywhere I go.
Huntingdon Castle was a motte-and-bailey castle
and in medieval times was the heart of the town.
You can see on this map that the castle is very close to where I live,
at the end of the High Street, near The Bridge House Hotel.
For instance, from the window of The Penthouse I can see a hilly little field called Castle Mound. In the year 1068 A.D. a castle was built there for William the Conqueror (the first king of England). It stood intact for over 100 years until after being besieged by waring factions (something that happens a lot in these parts) it was dismantles. Though a lot of it survived dismantling, there is nothing left there now except a pleasant green space to play in when the sun comes out. The only monument is a beacon (a giant torch) that was erected to commemorate the 400th anniversary the defeat of the Spanish Armada.
On the beacon a plaque reads: The "Fire over England"
beacon was lit... on the 19th day of July, 1988 to mark
the 400th anniversary of victory over the Spanish Armada.
While Huntingdon was settled in the year 917 A.D. as a outpost, it was chartered as a town in 1205 A.D. by King John (which basically means the government, in this case the King, decided to legally make it a town). To put things in perspective, Huntingdon was officially made a town shortly after the Third Crusade and ten years before King John signed the Magna Carta. To put things more in perspective for a modern age, King John is the same John from the play The Lion in Winter and is also the evil king from Robin Hood lore.
Well that concludes the exploration of Medieval Huntingdon. I hope you enjoyed this first post! I enjoyed writing it. I hope you learned something interesting, because I think all this stuff is really cool. If I just look outside my window I can see a medieval world, and that's pretty amazing.
Until next time...
Love Auntie
