Old Hurst
Human settlement in England / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Old Hurst is a village and civil parish in Cambridgeshire, England,[1] approximately 5 miles (8 km) north-east of Huntingdon. It is situated within Huntingdonshire which is a non-metropolitan district of Cambridgeshire as well as being a historic county of England.The small Parish Church of St Peter's dates from the 13th century and is a Grade II* listed building.[2]
Old Hurst | |
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St Peter's Parish Church | |
Location within Cambridgeshire | |
Population | 256 (2011) |
OS grid reference | TL3077 |
Shire county | |
Region | |
Country | England |
Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
Post town | Huntingdon |
Postcode district | PE28 |
Police | Cambridgeshire |
Fire | Cambridgeshire |
Ambulance | East of England |
UK Parliament | |
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At one time, at the most prominent point along the road between Old Hurst and St Ives, there could be found a low chair-shaped hunk of stone called the Hursting Stone, or the Abbot's Chair. This glacial relic served many functions throughout the centuries, having been sculpted into a curious chair-shaped mass: folklore has it that it in the Middle Ages it formed the base of a plinth that held an almighty stone cross upright. Here, sentences were passed in open-air trials. Later it earned the name 'Abbot's Chair' from the belief that monks would sit in it and rest while travelling. This antiquity now rests against a wall just outside the Norris Museum in St Ives and, according to the writer Daniel Codd, there is a belief that it is haunted. There is also a belief that if the stone should ever sink beneath the earth then the streets of Bluntisham would run red with blood.[3]