The Archdeaconry was founded by Bishop Remigius of Lincoln (1067-1092) and originally comprised the counties of Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire and part of Hertfordshire (Hitchin). Cambridgeshire left in 1109 and Hitchin Division left in 1609.

In 1837 the entire Archdeaconry was transferred from the Diocese of Lincoln to the Diocese of Ely. The old ecclesiastical peculiars of Brampton, Buckden, Leighton Bromswold and Stow Longa were abolished in 1852 and made subject to the Archdeacon. 

Huntingdonshire Archives has a substantial collection of Archdeaconry records. Most Huntingdon Archdeaconry records do not survive from before 1663, although some occasional items (mainly bishops transcripts and registers of wills) are older.
 
The records include bishops' mandates for induction of priests 1663-1915 (a list is available of these), acts of the archdeaconry court, records of visitation processes, meeting house petitions (a list is available of these), archdeacons' notebooks and (more recently) archdeacons' photographs.
 
The older records were summarily described while still held at the Archdeaconry Library by Rev. W M Noble and S Inskip Ladds in The Records of the Archdeaconry of Huntingdon, in Transactions of the Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire Archaeological Society volume 4 pages 165-208; a reprint is available on the searchroom shelves. 

Huntingdonshire Archives also has a copy of Patronage, Priest and Parish in the Archdeaconry of Huntingdon 1109-1547, an unpublished PhD thesis kindly donated to the Office by C A Weale; it is available in the searchroom.

The Archdeaconry catalogue is now available online as part of our CALM database. Please follow the link in the righthand column.