Cambridgeshire

Cambridgeshire (/ˈkeɪmbrɪdʒʃər/ or /ˈkeɪmbrɪdʒʃɪər/; abbreviated Cambs.) is an East Anglian county in England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the north-east, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire to the west. The city of Cambridge is the county town. Modern Cambridgeshire was formed in 1974 as an amalgamation of the counties of Cambridgeshire and Isle of Ely and Huntingdon and Peterborough, which had been created in 1965 from the historic counties of Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, the Isle of Ely and the Soke of Peterborough. It contains most of the region known as Silicon Fen.

History

Cambridgeshire is noted as the site of Flag Fen in Fengate, one of the earliest-known Neolithic permanent settlements in the United Kingdom, compared in importance to Balbridie in Aberdeen, Scotland. A great quantity of archaeological finds from the Stone Age, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age were made in East Cambridgeshire. Most items were found in Isleham.

Cambridgeshire (disambiguation)

Cambridgeshire is a county in England.

Cambridgeshire may also refer to:

See also

Cambridgeshire (UK Parliament constituency)

Cambridgeshire is a former Parliamentary constituency in the United Kingdom. It was a constituency of the House of Commons of the Parliament of England then of the Parliament of Great Britain from 1707 to 1800 and of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1801 to 1885. It was represented by two Knights of the Shire until 1832, when the number of members was increased to three. It was divided between the constituencies of Chesterton, Newmarket and Wisbech in 1885.

The parliamentary county was again reconstituted in 1918 and continued until 1983, when, in the redistribution of seats of the expanded post-1974 Cambridgeshire, the constituency was divided between the new constituencies of North East Cambridgeshire (including a small part of Peterborough), South East Cambridgeshire and South West Cambridgeshire (including a minority of territory from the former Huntingdonshire).

Boundaries

1290-1653, 1658-1885: The historic county of Cambridgeshire. (Although Cambridgeshire contained the borough of Cambridge, which elected two MPs in its own right, this was not excluded from the county constituency, and owning property within the borough could confer a vote at the county election. In the elections of 1830 and 1831, about an eighth of the votes cast for the county came from within Cambridge itself. The city of Ely also elected its own MPs in 1295.)