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Dear Reader
Having worked in Huntingdon for almost ten years for Huntingdon
Town Council, it has been an enormous pleasure for me to become
acquainted with the place and its people.
In the light of the town’s Gold Awards in the Anglia in Bloom
competition in 2010, where Huntingdon was Overall Winner and Winner
of the Large Town and Environmental Quality categories, there’s
no doubt that it’s a beautiful place, with strong commitment
from the  community
to keep it that way. Just visit our lovely Town Park, Hinchingbrooke
Country Park or the Riverside Park, as well as a number of small
green oases such as the St John’s Closed Churchyard, Victoria
Square Gardens or the Hartford Garden of Rest to see for yourself.
The town has a rich historic heritage, featuring renowned characters
such as Oliver Cromwell and Samuel Pepys. And as a rapidly developing
market town in one of the areas of greatest economic growth in England,
the face of Huntingdon has and continues to enjoy much renewal and
modernisation. The result is a pleasing diversity of sensitively
contrasting characters in a town where you can picnic at Castle
Hills, where the remains of the motte and bailey castle allow you
to imagine life around 1068; be reminded of the Crimean War in the
1850’s by a replica of the gun presented to Ely by Queen Victoria,
on Brampton Road; research Huntingdon’s past by reference
to original documents, preserved in our state of the art archive
facilities, completed in 2009 at Huntingdon’s new Library
in Princes Street; or enjoy the modern day shopping and leisure
experience at any one of over one hundred cafés and shops
in our lively High Street, to suggest just a few ways to spend your
time here.
Big Society might be the buzz word of the moment, but its principles
of partnership working between statutory and voluntary sectors have
been alive, well and developing in Huntingdon for a very long time.
An active Town Centre Partnership, promoting the town’s economy
and encouraging the active participation of local businesses in
local decision making and a Twinning Association, maintaining and
developing links with towns in Germany, France & Hungary are
good examples of this, as are Neighbourhood Management and Participatory
Budgeting initiatives in the Oxmoor area of the town, once an area
of high deprivation and now much improved thanks to financial investment
and social change.
Finally, boasting a range of sports facilities locally providing
opportunities for tennis, football, archery, indoor and outdoor
bowling, cricket and gymnastics, we’re particularly proud
to be the host training town for some of England’s top Olympic
gymnasts, focussed on next year’s Games in London, where we
wish them the very best of luck.
I commend Huntingdon’s Town Guide to you with great pride
and I hope it encourages you to get to know and enjoy our town a
little better.
Karen Cameron, Town Clerk
March 2011
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