Huntingdon: from birthplace of Oliver Cromwell to this

‘Stabbing on train close to you?’

I don’t normally get messages like that on a Saturday night but, yes, last night’s incident was relatively close, not that we were in any personal danger because we were at home.

Huntingdon station, where the train made an unscheduled stop following multiple stabbings on board, is a ten-minute drive from where we live so I know it very well. The local Thameslink service, which runs from Peterborough to Horsham in Sussex via central London, is my normal method of transport into London, and I often drop off or pick up family members when they travel between Huntingdon and London.

For many years, when Forest still had an office in London, I was a daily commuter - up at 5:30 to catch the 6:30 train, which gave me time for a cup of tea and a slice of buttered toast in the tiny cafe on platform 2. (Sadly, the cafe, which also sold newspapers and magazines, closed several years ago.)

As I write the full facts behind last night’s incident have yet to be confirmed so I won’t speculate, but what we know is that it took place not on a Thameslink train but on an LNER train en route to London from Doncaster, I think. Peterborough, which is 20 miles north of Huntingdon, is usually the last stop on the inter-city east coast line before London, and the stabbings started shortly after that.

The irony is that, as a result of last night’s unscheduled stop, a rather sleepy town in Cambridgeshire - best known, until now, for being the birthplace of Oliver Cromwell - will forever be associated with a horrifying and seemingly random attack on passengers and staff that started, it appears, outside Peterborough.

Forever in the shadow of Cambridge, 20 miles to the east, Huntingdon may be a poor relation, desecrated by generations of town planners, but it doesn’t deserve that.

Below: Huntingdon Station