Highways and Byways in Cambridge and Ely Part 14

Roads from Cambridge.--Cambs and Isle of Ely, Girvii, East Angles, Mercians, Formation of County.--Newmarket Road.--Quy.--Fleam d.y.k.e.--Devil's d.y.k.e.--Icknield Way.--Iceni, Ostorius, Boadicea.--Newmarket Heath, First Racing.--Exning, Anna.--Snailwell.--Fordham.--Soham, St.

Felix.--Stuntney.--Wicken.--Chippenham.--Isleham, Lectern.--Eastern Heights.--Chevely, Cambridge Corporation.--Kirtling.--Wood Ditton.--Stetchworth.--Borough Green.--Bottisham.--Swaffham Bulbeck.--The Lodes.--Swaffham Prior.--Reach, Peat, Submerged Forest.--Burwell, Church, Clunch, Bra.s.s, Castle, Geoffry de Magnaville.

At the Lepers' Chapel we are clear of Cambridge and well on the road to Newmarket, probably the most trafficked of all the great roads which radiate from Cambridge. Of these there are seven; this Newmarket Road going to the north-east, the Hills road to the south-east, the Trumpington Road to the south, the Barton Road to the south-west, the Madingley Road to the west, the Huntingdon Road to the north-west, and, finally, the Ely Road to the north. This last takes us into the Isle of Ely; the other six serve the county of Cambridge, more strictly so-called, _i.e._, the southern half of the Cambridgeshire of our maps, not so long ago quite separate, politically, from the northern half, and even now not wholly united for administrative purposes.

The Isle, which contains the whole of the fenland forming this northern half of Cambridgeshire, is far older as a political ent.i.ty than the southern part of the county. Its existence dates back to the far-off days of the Anglo-Saxon conquest, in the fifth and sixth centuries, when the poor remnants of the British population in East Anglia, once the proud tribe of "the great Iceni," fled for refuge into the "dismal swamp" of the Fens. Here they held out for centuries, and formed themselves into a new tribe, the Girvii (as our earliest Latin chronicler transliterates the Welsh name Gyrwy, signifying "brave men," by which they called themselves). This Girvian princ.i.p.ality has ever since held together. It pa.s.sed as a whole into the hands of St. Etheldreda, by her marriage (in 652 A.D.) with the last Girvian Prince, Tonbert, and from her to her successors the Abbots and Bishops of Ely, whose jurisdiction survived until the nineteenth century.

Meanwhile the old southland homes of the unhappy Britons were being shared up by their English exterminators. The East Anglians swarmed over the uplands to the east, and joined hands (not in friendship) with the more powerful Mercians swarming in from the west. Roughly speaking the Cam divided these jarring tribes, which lived in undying hostility till the various English Kingdoms were united into one (in A.D. 827) by the genius and valour of Egbert, the first "King of the English." But the boundaries were not effaced till the desolating flood of the Danish invasions poured over all.

When that flood was stayed by Egbert's glorious grandson, Alfred the Great, and the district once more made English and Christian by his only less glorious son, Edward "the Elder," it was formed by him into a County called, from its chief town, Cambridgeshire (or, as it was then, "Granta-bryg-shire"). This was in the year 921. But for the first idea of any union between this new County and the old Isle of Ely we must wait another two centuries, when, in 1107, the Abbot of Ely became a Bishop, with the Isle and the County together for his See. The ecclesiastical tie thus formed has gradually developed into a civil tie also; just as the first union of the English race under a common Primate, the Archbishop of Canterbury, paved the way for its union under a common King.

To many charming byways amid the streamlets and the meadows and the gentle slopes of this southern Cambridgeshire the seven highways out of Cambridge will successively conduct us. The highways themselves are, as has been said, seldom inspiring thoroughfares, save for their far-flung horizons; and the Newmarket Road least of all, for it is, as might be looked for, motor-swept beyond all the rest. The one near-hand object alone worth mention is the little Church of Quy, whose far-seen tower dominates some miles of the road. But this has little interest except its curious name, which is matter of dispute amongst etymologists. "Cow-ey" is the most commonly accepted derivation, meaning the Island of Cows. But Quy can never have been an island. More probably it is "Cow-way," like the "Cowey Stakes" on the Thames, signifying that here was a pa.s.sage for cattle across the marshy ground which bordered the little stream crossed by the road before reaching the church. This stream flows out of Fulbourn Fen, an isolated patch of fen-land a mile square, even yet only half reclaimed, and of old so impa.s.sable that it determined the line of the great Fleam d.y.k.e, which runs up to it on either side but does not need to cross it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Quy Church._]

The Fleam d.y.k.e is one of the great prehistoric lines of defence which were run from the Fens of the Cam to the summit of the East Anglian heights. Those heights were in ancient times clothed with dense forest, and formed an impenetrable barrier against enemies from the west seeking to invade the East Anglian districts. So too did the mora.s.ses of the fenland. But between fen and forest stretched a strip of open gra.s.sland furnishing easy access. To defend this, the only gate into their territory, was the great object of the inhabitants of those districts; and they ran across it two stupendous earthworks, the Fleam d.y.k.e as their outer bulwark and the Devil's d.y.k.e, which we meet at Newmarket, as the inner.[124] The former stretches for a length of some ten miles from the banks of the Cam at Fen Ditton to the uplands by Balsham (its course broken by Fulbourn Fen); the latter ranges in a long unbroken rampart from the Fen at Reach to Wood Ditton (_i.e._ "the ditch-end in the forest").

[Footnote 124: There were other minor d.y.k.es (such as the Warstead Street, from Cherry Hinton to Horseheath), but these play no part in history.]

When these were constructed we do not know. They first appear in history as the scene of desperate fighting between Britons and Romans in the first century of our era. But they may very probably have existed before even the Britons came into the land. Magnificent earthworks they are, some 10 feet high on the inner side, and on the outer at least 30, from the bottom of the great ditch which flanks them to the crown of the parapet. When that parapet was topped by a palisade of timber, they must have presented formidable obstacles indeed. The Fleam d.y.k.e we do not see from this road. But as we approach Newmarket, and enter upon its famous Heath, we cross the Devil's d.y.k.e; and, as we look at its mighty dimensions, we cease to wonder that our simple-minded ancestors should have ascribed its formation to superhuman agency.

The gap by which we pa.s.s through the Devil's d.y.k.e deserves notice. It is the one gap in the whole line of the work, and was left to admit, not our road, but that which we now join, the London Road of Newmarket. For this is one of the most venerable tracks in the land, being the "Icknield Way," made how long ago Heaven only knows. From the very first settlement of the country there must always have existed some route along this open strip between fen and forest which formed the only line of communication from the eastern to the midland regions of our island. In British days the former were occupied by the great clan of the Iceni, whose name survives in the English appellation of the road, and can be traced in many place-names along it, such as Ickleton in Cambridgeshire, and Ickleford in Hertfordshire.[125] The road followed the western slope of the chalk hills to the Thames and beyond, till it tapped the line of the great Tin-road, by which that then precious metal was brought from Cornwall to Thanet.[126]

[Footnote 125: These forms show that the C was sounded hard. On the coins of the clan the name is written ECEN. These coins are of gold and bear the figure of a horse, being rude copies of the Macedonian staters which the tin trade brought to Britain. The earliest known are of the third century B.C., the latest (those inscribed with the name) of the first half century A.D.]

[Footnote 126: Tin was precious as a component of bronze, which, till iron came in, was the material for weapons and tools. See my _Roman Britain (S.P.C.K.)_, p. 33.]

At the Roman conquest of Britain in 55 A.D. the Iceni were friendly to the invaders, whom indeed they had invited into the land, to free them from their subjection to the House of Cymbeline, King of Britain. But when, a few years later, during the settlement of the country, the Roman general Ostorius ordered them to give up their arms, they regarded the demand as an intolerable insult, and bade him defiance, manning the Fleam d.y.k.e against him. But such was his energy that, though he had no regular troops with him, his light-armed auxiliaries stormed the whole length of the line at a single rush. The routed Icenians fled in panic homewards, only to find their way hopelessly barred by their own fortifications along the Devil's d.y.k.e, and all but the few who could force their way through the mad crush at this one narrow gap, were, in spite of a desperate resistance, slaughtered wholesale. The tribe were then disarmed, and endured unresistingly the licence and greed of Roman officials and Roman moneylenders, till goaded into madness, twelve years later, by the wrongs of their "warrior-queen," Boadicea. Then followed that convulsive explosion of popular rage and despair, in which every Roman within reach was ma.s.sacred with every circ.u.mstance of horror, and to which the Romans, after their victory, replied by such a policy of extermination as to blot the Icenian name from the page of history. Never again do we meet with it.

Between the d.y.k.e and Newmarket lies the Heath, renowned as the earliest English race-course. This form of amus.e.m.e.nt seems to have come in with the Stuart Dynasty. James the First is said to have inaugurated the sport. But the well-known tale of how Edward the First escaped from his captivity at Hereford, by inducing his guards to ride matches till their horses were exhausted and then galloping off on his own fresh mount, shows that the idea was afloat long before. And at Newmarket in particular such matches must often have been ridden in connection with the great horse mart which has given the town its name.

This New Market is, like the New Forest, now far from new. It dates from the year 1227, when a frightful outbreak of sickness frightened away buyers and sellers from their older market-place two miles off at Exning (a pretty natural amphitheatre of turf bright with many springs), and sent them to meet for the future in the freer air of the Heath. This word, by the way, does not, in Cambridgeshire, imply the existence of heather, merely meaning an open s.p.a.ce.

Thus Newmarket came into being. The sport we first hear of in connection with it is not racing but hunting. For the boundless range of the moorlands to the east of the town (which even now astonish all who first see them) were then haunted by innumerable herds of wild deer, and afforded ideal ground for the chase. James the First, accordingly, had here a hunting-box,[127] in which his unhappy son was afterwards imprisoned for a while by the victorious army of the Commonwealth. And thus the Heath became known to his "merry" grandson, Charles the Second, who speedily saw how specially adapted its expanse was for horse-racing, and established a regular annual race-meeting, the first to be introduced into England.

[Footnote 127: In the Register of Fordham Church (a few miles north of Newmarket) is an entry to the effect that, on 27 February 1624, "The Most High and Mighty Prince, King James the First of England and Sixth of Scotland condescended to hunt six hares in Fordham Field!"]

The Royal sport spread like wildfire, and the bare Heath became year by year crowded by the gayest throng in England, thus vividly described by Macaulay:

"It was not uncommon for the whole Court and Cabinet to go down there," Charles himself, to the admiration of his subjects, posting down from London in a single day, with only two relays of fresh horses. "Jewellers and milliners, players and fiddlers, venal wits and venal beauties, followed in crowds. The streets were made impa.s.sable by coaches and six. In the places of public resort peers flirted with maids of honour, and officers of the Life Guards, all plumes and gold lace, jostled professors in trencher caps and black gowns. For on such occasions the neighbouring University of Cambridge always sent her highest functionaries with loyal addresses, and selected her ablest theologians to preach before the Sovereign and his splendid retinue. In the wild days before the Revolution, indeed, the most learned and eloquent divine might fail to draw a fashionable audience, particularly if Buckingham announced his intention of holding forth; for sometimes his Grace would enliven the dulness of a Sunday morning by addressing to the bevy of fine gentlemen and fine ladies a ribald exhortation which he called a sermon.

With lords and ladies from St. James's and Soho, and with doctors from Trinity College and King's College, were mingled the provincial aristocracy, fox-hunting squires and their rosy-cheeked daughters, who had come in queer-looking family coaches, drawn by cart-horses, from the remotest parishes of three or four counties to see their Sovereign.... Racing was only one of the many amus.e.m.e.nts of that festive season. On fine mornings there was hunting. For those who preferred hawking, choice falcons were brought from Holland. On rainy days the c.o.c.k-pit was encircled by stars and blue ribbons.... The Heath was fringed by a wild, gipsy-like camp of vast extent. For the hope of being able to feed on the leavings of many sumptuous tables, and to pick up some of the guineas and crowns which the spendthrifts of London were throwing about, attracted thousands of peasants from a circle of many miles."

Nor were these beggars the only ones to profit by the festive occasion. The townsfolk of Newmarket reaped a golden harvest; lodgings for the press of visitors were at fancy prices, and many were glad to pay a guinea a night for even the third of a bed; and "at Cambridge,"

we read, "a hackney-horse is not to be got for money."

When Newmarket became only one of many racing centres throughout the land, this height of glory naturally departed. But to this day its meetings rank in the very first cla.s.s of such fixtures. And as a training ground for race-horses it stands second to none. Training stables rise all round it, and strings of young thorough-breds are constantly to be met along the road, and are treated with reverence, even by the drivers of motor-cars, who, for some distance on either side of the town are not allowed to travel at any speed over ten miles an hour. There are now seven princ.i.p.al annual racing fixtures here, the chief being the "Craven," in the spring, and the "Two Thousand" in the autumn.

The town of Newmarket is now wholly in Suffolk, although till a few years ago it lay partly in Cambridgeshire, for it is built on either side of the Icknield Street, which here formed the county boundary.

But the Old Market at Exning was always in Suffolk; a little island of which may be seen on the map, surrounded by Cambridgeshire territory.

Here we have an interesting historical survival. Whence came about this curious delimitation? The answer is that when Cambridgeshire was first formed into a county by Edward the Elder it was not yet forgotten that Exning had long been a special residence of Suffolk royalty.

Suffolk, it must be remembered, is not, like Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, and other counties named after their chief town, an artificial division of the land, called into being by the Government merely as an administrative unit, but, like the Isle of Ely, one of the originally independent princ.i.p.alities the gradual accretion of which has formed England. Very early Suffolk and Norfolk joined together in one East Anglian Kingdom; but that Kingdom endured for centuries, and was not extinguished till its last monarch, St. Edmund, was murdered by the Danes in their great raid of 870 A.D. He was, indeed, but a tributary monarch, under the King of the English; but this was then only a quite recent arrangement, and his predecessors had been wholly independent sovereigns. For many years they were engaged in a heroic struggle to preserve their independence against Mercia, the great power which occupied all the Midlands, and therefore it was that they fixed their Royal abode at Exning, close to the great d.y.k.e which bulwarked the East Anglian realm, as, long before, it had bulwarked the Icenian.

Hence it came about that Exning was the birthplace of St. Etheldreda, the foundress of our great "sacred fane" at Ely, round which, almost more than Cambridge itself, the fortunes of Cambridgeshire have centred. Her father, King Anna, was called to the East Anglian throne in troublous times. Christianity and Paganism were at death-grips throughout the land. And the latter cause was championed by the monarch who was, for the moment, far the most powerful of the English sovereigns, Penda, King of Mercia. From his central position he struck out north, south, and east, at his Christian neighbours. His first blows were against Northumbria, where he successively shattered the Roman Mission of Paulinus and the Celtic Mission of Aidan. Next he drove into exile Kenwalk, the first Christian King of Wess.e.x, and finally, in 654, burst over the East Anglian frontier "like a wolf, so that Anna and his folk were devoured as in a moment."

But this breaking up of the Exning family did but scatter its members to spread far and wide the cause of the Gospel. And a splendid band they were. Not for nothing is Anna described by Bede as "a good man, and the father of an excellent family." His eldest son followed him on the throne (for Penda was slain shortly after his last victory, and the Mercian dominion fell with him), and helped St. Etheldreda in her great work at Ely; another son, St. Erconwald, became one of the most famous of all the Bishops of London; while, of the daughters, one was Abbess of Barking, another of Dereham, another of Brie, in France.[128] Yet another, s.e.xburga, after being Queen of Kent, succeeded Etheldreda as Abbess of Ely, and was herself succeeded by her daughter Ermenilda, who, as Queen of Penda's son Wulfhere, had taken part in St. Chad's great work of converting Mercia. Seldom has any place bred such a household of Saints as this quiet little village of Exning. A pretty village it still is; but is now fast becoming a suburb of Newmarket. The bright little stream running through it is derived partly from springs in the old market meadow already spoken of (known as "the Seven Springs"), and partly from sources in a copse some half-mile to the south, known as St. Wendred's Well. All we know of this obscure Saint is that she had a local fame in the tenth century, when her body, in a golden coffin, was brought from Ely to the great battle between Edmund Ironside and Canute at a.s.sandun, and became the spoil of the victor. The church at March is dedicated to her.

[Footnote 128: Her abbey was for generations the favourite boarding-school in France for young ladies from England.]

The road from Newmarket to Ely (twelve miles) pa.s.ses several places worth notice. First comes Snailwell, with the flint-built round tower of its little church rising so picturesquely above the "well," now a broad, clear pond, from which the little river Snail crawls away into the adjacent fen. At the adjoining hamlet of Landwade there was lately unearthed a Roman villa, the fine tesselated pavement of which is now in the Sedgwick Museum of Cambridge.

Fordham, which we next reach, is a larger village, with a church of most unusual architectural interest. The north porch has a stone roof of no fewer than six vaulted bays, running east and west, and supporting a parvis chamber, with late Decorated windows, approached by a stone staircase from without, and, seemingly, designed for a chapel with a separate dedication to St. Mary Magdalene, the Church being St. Peter's. This development is unique.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Fordham Church._]

Three miles on, we come to the furthest outpost of the East Anglian uplands, the little market town of Soham, situated on an almost isolated peninsula of the chalk, which here runs out into the fen, and upon the very borders[129] of the Isle of Ely. The Cathedral is here a conspicuous object, rising high upon its hill over the intervening fen, and only five miles away. But Soham is a.s.sociated with a yet earlier development of local Christianity than Ely itself. Forty years before St. Etheldreda founded her Abbey, one was here established by St. Felix, "the Apostle of East Anglia." That t.i.tle does not mean that he was absolutely the first to preach the Gospel to the East English, but the first whose work was permanent. For the introduction of the Faith into these parts met with more than one set-back before it was fairly established.

[Footnote 129: These borders are now marked only in the Ordnance maps.

The line runs right across the county from west to east, following the West River (the ancient course of the Ouse), to its junction with the Cam, and then almost straight eastward to the boundary of Suffolk, along a water-course known as the "Bishop's Delph" (_i.e._, ditch, from the verb _delve_).]

Within two years of the first coming of St. Augustine in 597 A.D., Redwald King of East Anglia, who had succeeded the earliest Christian monarch, Ethelbert of Kent, in the dignity of Bretwalda,[130] followed him also in seeking baptism. His Christianity, however, was of too unconventional a type to be acceptable. Bede tells us how "in the same temple he had an altar for the sacrifice of Christ, and a small one to offer sacrifices unto devils." This attempt (made under the influence of his heathen wife) was foredoomed to failure, and was followed by a period of religious confusion, till Sigebert, his son, succeeded to the throne. He had been an exile in France, where he had become "a most Christian and learned man," under the influence of St. Felix, a holy man of Burgundy, whose help he asked, on becoming King, "to cause all his province to partake" of his religion.

[Footnote 130: This t.i.tle implied a vague Primacy amongst the various Anglo-Saxon monarchs, conferred, by as vague a recognition on their part, upon him who was for the time the most powerful amongst them.

But though vague it was far from unreal. We find Ethelbert's protection enabling St. Augustine to preach all over England. Indeed the name (which etymologically signifies merely Broad Wielder) very early got to be regarded as meaning Wielder of Britain.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Fordham._]

The landing-place of the Saint is still commemorated in the name Felixstowe near Harwich, and thence he proceeded to preach with entire success throughout all Sigebert's realm. Soham was his furthest point, for the fenland beyond was already Christian (the population being British, and provided for by Augustine's church at Cratendune).[131] And at Soham he set up an Abbey, where he himself was buried in 634, three years only after his landing. St. Etheldreda (who was probably Sigebert's niece) was at this time a young girl.

Some imagine Soham to have been the site of a famous school set up by Felix, "after the model of those in France, with masters and teachers." But this is more likely to have been in his Cathedral city of Dunwich, once the leading town in East Anglia, now wholly submerged by the encroachments of the German Ocean. The See was transferred to Thetford and then to Norwich. Soham Abbey flourished on side by side with Ely, till both were destroyed in the great Danish raid of 870 A.D. Why, when Ely was rebuilt, a century later, Soham was not, is unknown.

[Footnote 131: Augustine, true to his mission from St. Gregory, strove to rekindle all over the land such embers of the Faith as still smouldered on amongst the British refugees. For those in the fenland, the Girvii, he had set up a small religious house at Cratendune near Ely, which was afterwards absorbed by Etheldreda's larger Abbey.]

The present parish church has a lofty Perpendicular nave, with fine flowing Decorated windows in the chancel and transept, and a really splendid tower, one hundred feet in height, crowned with a pinnacled parapet of flint-work. Shortly after the Norman Conquest, Soham became the objective of the first causeway to be made for civil purposes between the island of Ely and the mainland.[132] This was due to Bishop Hervey (the first to be Bishop of Ely as well as Abbot), and was felt to be so epoch-making a work that it was ascribed to supernatural influence. St. Edmund, the high-souled King of East Anglia (who, after his martyrdom by the Danes in 870, became the Patron Saint of the Eastern Counties), was said to have appeared in a dream to a man of Exning, bidding him suggest the design to the Bishop. The little island of Stuntney[133] formed a stepping-stone for this causeway, so that only three miles out of the six between Ely and Soham needed an actual embankment.

[Footnote 132: William the Conqueror had already run a military causeway across Willingham Fen to the south-west side of the island at Aldreth.]

[Footnote 133: The word "stunt" in the dialect of Cambridgeshire signifies _steep_. The sh.o.r.es of Stuntney rise from the fen with most unusual abruptness.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Soham._]

Soham, as has been said, was on all sides surrounded by fen, except on the narrow ridge of firm ground between it and Fordham. So water-logged, indeed, was the country round that sea-going vessels made a port here. This fen is now all drained and become most prosaic cornland. But a few miles east and west of Soham two little patches, each about a mile square, remain in their original state. These are Chippenham Fen to the east, and Wicken Fen to the west. Both are fairly inaccessible spots, but when we get to them they enable us to form a vivid idea of what the state of things must have been when the whole fenland was such as this. Both give the impression of a mora.s.s hopelessly impenetrable, covered with a dense growth of tall reeds rising high above your head, through which you push your way blindly, to be constantly checked by some sluggish watercourse, too wide to jump, too shallow to swim, and impossible to wade, for the bottom is a fathomless stratum of soft turf and ooze giving no foothold. To stumble into one of these watercourses is, indeed, no small peril. If you are alone the case is well-nigh hopeless, and even a friend on the bank would find it hard to pull you out. His best course is to cut a fairly large bundle of reeds, by trampling which under your feet you may for a moment be able to stand while he rescues you.

One can well understand how it came about that such a country was an almost inviolable sanctuary for those whom despair drove to seek refuge in its recesses. These small fragments of it still form a sanctuary; for many rare plants and insects, exterminated elsewhere by the march of progress, here still nourish. Conspicuous amongst these is the lovely swallow-tail b.u.t.terfly; which flits about, dashing with bright touches of colour the weird and sombre beauty of the silent scene. Very silent it is now. But it was not so of old, when the whole fen was crowded with the swarming bird-life, so vividly described by Kingsley in "Hereward the Wake": "where the coot clanked, and the bittern boomed, and the sedge-bird, not content with its own sweet song, mocked the notes of all the birds around, ... where hung motionless, high over head, hawk beyond hawk, buzzard beyond buzzard, kite beyond kite, as far as eye could see. Into the air whirred up great skeins of wildfowl innumerable, with a cry as of all the bells of Crowland; while clear above all their noise sounded the wild whistle of the curlews, and the trumpet note of the great white swan."

Such was the fenland of old; but all this wealth of commotion is long since gone, and scarcely do we see a bird now at Wicken or Chippenham, except here and there a waterhen, and (at Chippenham) the pheasants which are reared in coops on its margin.

These birds belong to Chippenham Hall, a mansion built by Admiral Russell, the hero of La Hogue in 1692, our first great naval victory since the rout of the Armada, "and the first great victory that the English had gained over the French since the day of Agincourt."[134]

It stands on the site of an earlier house, which, in its day, served as a place of confinement for Charles the First in 1647, after the raid by Cornet Joyce on Holmby House had transferred his custody from the hands of the Parliament to those of the Army. Here he remained for some weeks, while the somewhat sordid game of political intrigue (out of which he still hoped to make his own) was being played around him, "very pleasant and cheerful, taking his recreation daily at tennis, and delighting much in the company of Cornet Joyce," but refusing to listen to the famous Puritan stalwart, Hugh Peters, who was accustomed to hold forth "with the Bible in the one hand and a great pistol in the other," and who here "moved His Majesty to hear him preach. Which His Majesty did the rather decline."

[Footnote 134: Macaulay.]