Number of members one | Created from Chesterton
Newmarket | |
Number of members 2 (1290 – 1832)
3 (1832 – 1885) Replaced by Chesterton, Newmarket, Wisbech, South East Cambridgeshire, South West Cambridgeshire | ||
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.
Contents
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.)
1654-1658 The historic county was divided for the First and the Second Protectorate Parliaments, between the two-member Isle of Ely area and the four-member constituency consisting of the rest of the county.
1918-1983: The administrative county of Cambridgeshire, excluding the Municipal Borough of Cambridge.