Historic county of England
Cambridgeshire
Cambs
Cam and chalk south, Ely rising from the great fenland north.
Cambridgeshire is a county of two powerful landscapes. Around Cambridge, the River Cam crosses firmer chalk and clay country, with the Gog Magog Hills providing modest but noticeable relief. Northwards, the land falls into the immense fenland basin, where drained fields, straight waterways and wide skies lead towards Ely, March and Chatteris.
Cambridge gives the southern county an international identity through its university, but the fen country is equally fundamental. Ely rises conspicuously from the former fen islands, its elevated position made dramatic by the level country surrounding it. Cambridgeshire is best understood as the meeting of university city, river basin and fen: a county whose apparent flatness conceals a landscape profoundly organised by water.
- c.1010 = Grantabrycgscir
- 1086: 'Grentebrigescire'
- 'Bridging the River Cam'
- Area: 858 sq miles / 2,222 km²
- Population: 460,448
- County top: Castle Camps 420 ft / 128 m
County geography
Current Census
Contemporary Census profile
England and Wales Census 2021. Detailed contemporary statistics are available in the Geographic County Census Explorer.
- Population density
- 593.0 people per sq mi (229.0 people per km²)
- Population
- 508,682
From Cambridge into the Fens
The transition north of Cambridge is one of the county’s defining changes. Firmer ground gives way to increasingly level fenland, shaped over centuries by drainage and embankment. Former islands stand subtly above the surrounding fields, and settlements that once faced wetland now sit amid some of England’s richest arable country.
A county engineered around water
The Cam and Great Ouse systems bind southern and northern Cambridgeshire together, while the Old and New Bedford Rivers form striking artificial lines through the Fens. Drainage changed the appearance and use of the landscape without erasing its underlying logic: rivers, channels and former islands still organise settlement and movement.
Ely and the fen islands
Ely’s importance is inseparable from its setting. What was once an island in the surrounding fen remains perceptibly higher than the country around it, with the cathedral visible across great distances. The wider Isle of Ely is a distinctive historic district within Cambridgeshire rather than a separate geographic county.
County questions
Questions about Cambridgeshire
Is the Isle of Ely a separate county?
No. The Isle of Ely is a historic district within Cambridgeshire. It was later used as a separate area for local administration, but that did not make it a separate geographic county.
County record
Names and continuity
- Formal name
- County of Cambridge
- Alternative name
- Cambs
- Foundation
- c.1010
Cambridgeshire and County of Cambridge are forms of the same county name. The shire is recorded as Grantanbrycgscir in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in the early eleventh century.