Keyston is situated within Huntingdonshire which is a non-metropolitan district of Cambridgeshire as well as being a historic county of England.

Known as Chetelestan in the Domesday Book, the name Keyston means "Boundary stone of a man called Ketil".

[4] In 1085 William the Conqueror ordered that a survey should be carried out across his kingdom to discover who owned which parts and what it was worth.

[7] The Domesday Book does not explicitly detail the population of a place but it records that there were 32 households at Keyston.

The Domesday Book uses a number of units of measure for areas of land that are now unfamiliar terms, such as hides and ploughlands.

In different parts of the country, these were terms for the area of land that a team of eight oxen could plough in a single season and are equivalent to 120 acres (49 hectares); this was the amount of land that was considered to be sufficient to support a single family.

[7] The tax assessment in the Domesday Book was known as geld or danegeld and was a type of land-tax based on the hide or ploughland.

A parish council is responsible for providing and maintaining a variety of local services including allotments and a cemetery; grass cutting and tree planting within public open spaces such as a village green or playing fields.

For Keyston the highest tier of local government is Cambridgeshire County Council which has administration buildings in Cambridge.

[16] Cambridgeshire County Council consists of 69 councillors representing 60 electoral divisions.

[17] Keyston is part of the electoral division of Sawtry and Ellington[15] and is represented on the county council by one councillor.

[18] The village church of St John the Baptist dates from the 13th century, with the present nave and aisles having been built in around 1250.

[20] The church is known for its oak cadaver, a memorial consisting of a wooden skeleton taken from a 15th-century tomb, and one of only two such carvings in the country.

The original bowl was found in the rectory garden in the 1890s, and now stands separately in the south aisle.

[23] Since 2008 the interior of the church has suffered from a severe infestation of Natterer's bats, a protected species and therefore requires thorough cleaning before services and ceremonies can take place.