Highways and Byways in Cambridge and Ely Part 16

[Footnote 145: Reach is commonly spoken of as a "hamlet," but there is still enough historical pride amongst the inhabitants to make them resent this phrase.]

Reach was of importance even in Roman days. The d.y.k.e, of course, was already ancient when they ruled Britain, and the lode, too, may very probably have been already cut. The remains of one of their villas have been unearthed here, near the point where the Cambridge and Mildenhall railway now cuts through the d.y.k.e. It has a well-preserved hypocaust, or apparatus for warming the house by hot air. The Roman "villa," we must remember, was the country mansion of the period, and equipped with every known luxury. In the Middle Ages the annual Fair at Reach (on the Monday before Ascension Day) was big enough to bring over the Mayor of Cambridge to open it. And the custom survives even today, when the occasion has dwindled to a very petty little gathering.

Reach, however, has still a local industry; the cutting of the peat, or "turf" as it is here called, in the neighbouring fen, for use as fuel. This peat forms a layer often many feet in thickness, and is formed for the most part of moss, mingled with the vegetable mould made by the decay of the dense forests with which the district was covered for uncounted ages; before its final submergence, early in the Christian era, destroyed the last of them. A like subsidence had more than once produced the same results earlier; for the remains of four or five forest beds at different levels have been found in the peat.

The trunks of these prehistoric trees are often of enormous size, especially the oaks.[146] One no fewer than 130 feet in length was unearthed in 1909. The wood, after its ages of immersion, has become black, hard, and heavy, like the Irish bog oak. a.s.sociated with such debris, the peat often furnishes remains of the dwellers in these archaic woodlands; whence we know that bears, wolves, wild boars, and gigantic wild bulls roamed their shades. In the skull of one of these last, now in the Sedgwick Geological Museum at Cambridge, is imbedded a flint axe-head. The arm of the primeval savage who wielded that weapon must have been strong beyond the arms of common men.

[Footnote 146: The oaks are always found lying prostrate, but the fir stems are frequently still upright for several feet of their length.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Burwell Church, West End._]

The peat is cut with a spade of peculiar construction, being flat, and both longer and narrower than ordinary spades. It is shaped somewhat like a fire shovel with a f.l.a.n.g.e on either side, the object being that each "turf" extracted should be of uniform size, like a brick. A thousand of these should go to the ton; but though uniform in size they are not of uniform weight, for the peat, as might be expected, is more dense at its lower levels than near the surface. There is a good market for this turf, which makes a hot and lasting fire with a minimum of smoke, and that pleasant smoke. It is mostly sent off by water to Cambridge, Ely, Wisbech, etc.

This turf-cutting is not, of course, confined to Reach, but it has its greatest development here, and at the neighbouring village of Burwell, a mile or so to the eastward (to which, as we have seen, part of Reach belongs). Burwell is an important village of considerable extent, with a population of 2000, and a magnificent church, capable of seating them all. It is of the finest fifteenth century workmanship, with a few remains of Norman in the tower. The exterior is mostly flint; the interior, like that of so many churches in Cambridgeshire, is of "clunch," a hardened form of chalk, well adapted for building, and easily worked for carving. The beautiful sculptures of the Lady Chapel at Ely are of this material, drawn from the large quarries between Burwell and Reach. Clunch is found in many places throughout the county and has been worked (as existing remains show) ever since Roman days.

Burwell Church is specially connected with the University of Cambridge, in whose gift is the preferment, burdened with the condition that on Mid-Lent Sunday a sermon shall be preached there by the Vice-Chancellor or his deputy. Till the nineteenth century this condition was no light one; for the roads were in such a state that half a dozen men on each side could hardly keep the preacher's carriage from overturning, and, whenever possible, the cortege took to the newly-ploughed fields in preference. The route was not round by Reach but direct from Swaffham Prior.

Here is a remarkable bra.s.s of John Lawrence de Wardeboys, the last Abbot of Ramsey in Huntingdonshire. For his readiness in abetting the designs of Henry the Eighth, not only by eagerly surrendering his own abbey, "which was not his to give," but by persuading others to do like violence to their conscience, he was rewarded with a pension equivalent to between two and three thousand pounds a year. His bra.s.s records this venality of his principles. It was originally made during his abbacy, and showed him in full abbatical vestments, mitre and all (for Ramsey was a mitred abbey). After the surrender he had it turned over, and on the reverse side, now uppermost, we see him in a simple clerical gown and cap. He only lived a few years to enjoy his ill-gotten gains, dying in 1542.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Burwell Church, N.E. View._]

South-west of the church are some scanty remains of Burwell Castle, which was built by King Stephen during the miserable "nineteen winters" of his war with Queen Matilda, so forcibly described in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, when the country was laid desolate by the outrages of the robber barons. The particular brigand who afflicted Cambridgeshire was one Geoffry de Magnaville, an outrageously wicked plunderer, who "did not spare even the churches," regarded as inviolable by ordinary malefactors. Both Cambridge and Ely were looted by him, and he terrorised the whole district, till at length he was slain, by an arrow through the throat, in attacking Burwell Castle.

"Nor was the earth permitted to give a grave to the sacrilegious offender."

CHAPTER IX

Hills Road.--Gog-Magogs.--Vandlebury.--Babraham, Peter Pence.--Old Railway.--Hildersham, Bra.s.ses, Clapper Stile.--Linton.--Horseheath.--Bartlow, St. Christopher, Battle of a.s.sandun.--Cherry Hinton, War Ditches, Saffron.--Teversham.--Fulbourn, Bra.s.ses.--Wilbraham.--Fleam d.y.k.e, Wild Flowers, b.u.t.terflies, Ostorius, Last Cambs Battle.--Balsham, Battle of Ringmere, Ma.s.sacre, Church Bra.s.ses, Grooved Stones.

At Burwell we are within touch of Exning, Fordham, and Soham, so that we have now exhausted the interest of the Cambridge-Newmarket Road.

Next in order comes the Via Devana, which when it leaves Cambridge for the south-east is denominated the "Hills Road." The reason for this is that it shortly brings us to the most ambitious elevation neighbouring the town, no less than 220 feet in height, and bearing the high-sounding name of the Gog-Magog Hills.

The origin of this curious appellation is still to seek. According to some archaeologists it is derived from the prehistoric figure of a giant which was formerly to be seen on the slope, traced there by cutting away the turf along the outline of the shape, such as that still extant near Cerne Abbas in Dorsetshire. This, if it ever existed, has long since disappeared. Others consider the name to be a seventeenth century skit on the gigantic height of the hills. Others again see in it a dim traditional recollection of the days when a set of gigantic barbarians really were, for a time, quartered here. This was in the reign of the Roman Emperor Probus (277 A.D.), who leavened his mutinous British forces with prisoners from the Vandal horde lately defeated by the Romans on the Danube. From one such detachment, placed here in garrison, the name of Vandlebury is supposed to have clung ever since to the great earthwork on the summit of the Gog-Magogs.

That earthwork, however, is of far older date, being of British, or even earlier, inception. It is a triple ring of gigantic ramparts, like those of Maiden Castle near Dorchester, and nearly a mile in circ.u.mference. All is now buried in the shrubberies of Gog-Magog House, the seat successively of Lord G.o.dolphin and of the Dukes of Leeds.[147] But before being thus planted out it must have been one of the most striking examples in the kingdom of such fortifications. Till the eighteenth century it was a favourite scene of bull-baiting and other illegal sports amongst undergraduates, because the bare open country all round made it impossible for the authorities to surprise the offenders. Vandlebury was the original home of the legend, used by Sir Walter Scott in _Marmion_, which told how in the ancient camp, by moonlight, an elfin warrior would answer the challenge of any adventurous knight bold enough to encounter him in single combat.

[Footnote 147: It is now the residence of H. Gray Esq. In the stable yard a monument records the celebrated "G.o.dolphin," one of the first Arabs (or, more probably Barbs) to be imported, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, for the improvement of our thoroughbred stock.]

In the early decades of the nineteenth century the then d.u.c.h.ess of Leeds here set up for her tenantry one of the earliest rural elementary schools. Children of both s.e.xes were taught in this inst.i.tution to read and to sew, the boys making their own smock frocks. The boys might, if they would, also learn, as an extra, to write; but not the girls, for Her Grace considered that it would deleteriously affect their prospects in domestic service if they were possessed of the dangerous power of deciphering their employers'

correspondence.

Our road climbs the hill to the gate of Gog-Magog House, and plunges down into woodlands on the other side, in a fashion very unlike the usual Cambridgeshire highway, to meet the infant stream of the Granta[148] on its meandering way to Cambridge. Our further course is amongst the pretty villages along its valley, the best-wooded vale in all the county. First of these comes Babraham (anciently Bradburgham), with a pretty little Saxon-towered church snuggling in the park beside the Hall. Babraham is noted for the epitaph of an old-time swindler, who was enabled to pocket the Peter Pence[149] which he collected under Queen Mary by sharing his spoil with Queen Elizabeth. It runs thus:

"Here lies Horatio Palavazene, Who robbed the Pope to lend the Queen."

"He was a thiefe." "A thiefe? Thou liest; For why? he robbed but Antichrist.

Him Death with besome swept from Babram Into the bosome of old Abram.

But then came Hercules with his club, And struck him down to Beelzebub."

[Footnote 148: This branch of the Granta is more properly called the Bourne.]

[Footnote 149: From the ninth century onwards the Pope could claim, by Royal grant, a penny a year from every house in England. This tribute was known as "Peter Pence." The phrase is now used amongst Roman Catholics for voluntary contributions to the Papal Exchequer.]

A curious fresco on the north wall of the church is thought to represent King Edward the Second.

A little beyond Babraham we cross the Icknield Street, on its way from Newmarket to Chesterford. Beside it runs, what is almost unknown in England, a deserted railroad, built by the Eastern Counties Railway Company (now the Great Eastern) in 1848, to afford direct communication between Newmarket and London, and abandoned, as a financial failure, in 1852, since which date the trains have gone round by Cambridge. Where this long disused line runs on the level it has melted back again into the adjoining fields, but the old cuttings and embankments and bridges still exist, and a weird sight they are.

At the adjoining villages of Great and Little Abington the road makes a picturesque zig-zag through the village street, and pa.s.ses on, beneath a fine beech avenue, to Hildersham, where a pretty byway leads across the stream to the fourteenth century church. Here there are four good bra.s.ses (to members of the Parys[150] family), one of them showing the unique feature of a lance-rest fastened to the cuira.s.s, and another (of 1530) being simply a skeleton. There are also two very striking rec.u.mbent effigies representing a crusader and his wife, each carved out of a single block of wood, now black with age. The churchyard here is effectively planted with junipers and fir trees, and the east end of the church is embowered in shrubs of rosemary, said to be the finest in Cambridgeshire.

[Footnote 150: The fourteenth century historian, Matthew Paris, is said to have belonged to this family.]

From Hildersham the road goes on to Linton, a mile or so further; while the two places are also connected by a specially pleasant footpath, starting from a fine old smithy, and so through the meadows by the clear trout-stream, and past the yews and thorn-trees of the moated grange of "Little Linton," while above rises (to nearly four hundred feet, a proud height in Cambridgeshire) the appropriately named Furze Hill, with some real gorse patches (also a proud distinction in Cambridgeshire) upon its ridge.

Before we reach Linton we cross the famous "Clapper" stile, which can best be described as formed by three huge sledge-hammers (of wood) with exceptionally long shanks, hinged near the head to an upright post, each about a foot above the next. Normally the three hammer-heads rest upon one another and look like a single post (about a foot from the first); but, on attempting to cross, the shanks (the ends of which are _not_ fastened but slide in a grooved post at their side of the stile) yield to our weight, the heads fly apart, and, when we are over, come together again with the "claps" whence the name of the stile is derived. How old this curious device is does not appear, but it is here immemorial. An effective sketch of this stile is given by Dr. Wherry, in his "Notes from a Knapsack."

Linton is a tiny town, smaller than sundry villages, but obviously not a village, with a long street of undetached houses (duly lighted) swinging down the slopes on either side the little river. There is a fine Perpendicular church, with some Norman work remaining in it, and a good tower, on the top of which an Ascension Day service is annually held. Against a wall are suspended two fire-hooks (much lighter than the one at St. Benet's, Cambridge) for the destruction of burning houses. (See note on page 38).

The main road here goes on, to pa.s.s out of Cambridgeshire into Suffolk, a few miles further, at the upland village of Horseheath, with its picturesque old-world village green on the hillside. The church here has a fine fourteenth century bra.s.s to Sir John de Argentine (a name familiar to readers of Sir Walter Scott, in the "Lord of the Isles")[151] and some notable monuments, somewhat knocked about, presumably by Dowsing, who records how he here "brake down four pictures of the prophets Ezekiel, Daniel, Zephaniah, and Malachi," besides other damage.

[Footnote 151: Local antiquarian research, however, considers that the name is more probably Audley. One of the Audleys of Horseheath (who were in no way connected with the Reformation Audleys, of Audley End and Magdalene College), distinguished himself at the battle of Poictiers.]

But a more interesting road from Linton is that which continues along the Bourne Valley, and leads, not into Suffolk, but into Ess.e.x, which is here bounded by that stream. A mile beyond the town we pa.s.s Barham Hall, now a farm-house, but of old a Priory of the same Order that we found at Isleham,[152] a Cell (or Colony) of the Abbey of St. Jacutus de Insula in Brittany. Another mile brings us to Bartlow, where, hard by the church, stand the three huge tumuli from which the name of the village is said to be derived. How they came to exist is an unsolved problem. Remains found in them, when excavated in 1835, were reported to be Roman, but the science of archaeology was then in its infancy, and this report can hardly outweigh the wholly un-Roman appearance of the "Hills," as they are locally called. They look far more like British or Scandinavian work; but, indeed, three such mounds so close together are not found elsewhere, of any age.

[Footnote 152: See p. 183.]

The little church has an ancient fresco of St. Christopher, placed, as usual, opposite the entrance. For this Saint, by virtue of the legend which tells how he carried Christ over a river,[153] was in mediaeval times regarded as a special example for Christians in their going out and their coming in; to whom, therefore, was due their first and last thought in pa.s.sing the doorway. More noteworthy is the Saxon tower, with its walls no less than six feet in thickness. For in this it is quite possible that we may have a part of the very "minster of stone and lime" raised by Canute in memory of his crowning victory over Edmund Ironside at a.s.sandun.

[Footnote 153: The legend ran that St. Christopher was a giant heathen who heard of Christ and desired to serve Him. Enquiring how he could do this, he was told to devote himself to deeds of charity, which he did by carrying pilgrims over a dangerous ford. Finally, a child whom he thus transported proved to be Christ Himself, whence he gained the name of Christopher (the Christ-bearer).]

The location of that most dramatic of English battles, fought in the year 1016, is hotly disputed amongst historians; but there is much to be said for the early view which identifies a.s.sandun with Ashdon in Ess.e.x, hard by Bartlow. For ten miserable years, under Ethelred the Unready, England had been ground in the dust, deeper and ever deeper, beneath the heel of the invading Dane. Year by year the degrading tribute wherewith she strove to buy off the foe had gone up by leaps and bounds. All hope seemed dead, when the accession of a hero to the throne roused the harried and exhausted nation into one last convulsive effort for freedom. Six times in as many months did Edmund of England and Canute of Denmark clash in battle. Five of these fields were indecisive, and then, on St. Luke's Day, 1016, the champions met once more at a.s.sandun, perhaps on the slope still known as Bartlow End.

Treason decided the day against England. The fight began with a brilliant charge by Edmund at the head of his bodyguard, which crashed through the Danish phalanx "like a thunderbolt." But his absence from the English line enabled a traitorous n.o.ble, one Edric (who was always playing into Canute's hands, in hope of thereby making his own advantage), to raise a cry that the King was slain. A panic set in at once; and before Edmund could cut his way back, the whole army had broken, and was being fearfully cut up in its flight by the pursuing Danes. "And there the whole n.o.bility of England was utterly destroyed." Edmund died of his exertions the same year; and Canute became King of England, the first monarch so to call himself. The native t.i.tle had always been "King of the English." In thanksgiving he built a minster on the scene of his victory; and, as he had promised, he lifted up the head of Edric "above all the n.o.bility of England"--upon the highest turret of the Tower of London. The "Roman"

theory notwithstanding, the three Bartlow barrows may well be a memorial of this great fight, and so may the names of Castle Camps and Shudy Camps which attach to the furthest villages in this far-away corner of Cambridgeshire. The "Castle," however, of which only the moat now remains, was built later by De Vere, the first Earl of Oxford. Shudy Camps has a far-seen church on its lofty brow, visible even from Barrington Hill, on the other side of the Cam basin, fifteen miles away as the crow flies.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Cherry Hinton Church._]

From the Via Devana, where it leaves Cambridge (just after the bridge over the Great Eastern Railway), there branches off to the left another road, which leads us to the scenes of earlier battles between Dane and Englishman. This is the Cherry Hinton Road, named after the first village along its course, some three miles on. Its long straight vista suggests at first sight the idea that it too may be a Roman road. In fact, however, it dates only from the enclosure of the land (about the beginning of last century), when the best ploughman in the village was employed, so the story goes, to drive his straightest furrow across the whole breadth of the Common Field as a guide for the road-makers. The older track between Cherry Hinton and Cambridge was by what used to be, till within the last fifty years, a pretty footpath across the fenny ground to the north of the field. It is fenny no longer, and the path has become for three-fourths of its length a somewhat dreary street through the dingy suburb of "Romsey Town."

Cherry Hinton itself is not yet absorbed by Cambridge, and remains a bright s.p.a.cious village, with a rarely beautiful church. The exquisite Early English chancel is lighted on either side by four couplets of lancet windows, in ideal proportion, while five equally ideal lancets serve for an East window. Both walls have an arcading of cinque-foil pattern; and the double piscina and the graduated sedilia are of no less merit. All this loveliness is within a fine oaken screen of the fifteenth century, and the rest of the church is not unworthy of it.

The great quarry, whence the "clunch" of which the church is mainly built was drawn, is a conspicuous object on the hill-side above the village; and above that again, equally conspicuous, is the reservoir of the Cambridge Water-works, looking like a redoubt, on the summit of the slope. At the foot clear springs break out from the chalk, which are also utilised to supply the town.

Close to the reservoir there is an actual fortification, an ancient earthwork, known as the War Ditches, which the researches of Professor Hughes have shown to be of British date.[154] At the bottom of the fosse he discovered rough British pottery along with the bones of domestic animals, and above these a layer of disjointed human skeletons of both s.e.xes and all ages, apparently due to a general ma.s.sacre, in some prehistoric struggle, of men, women, and children, whose corpses were hurled over the parapet. Above these again came Romano-British remains. From this earthwork the line of an ancient d.y.k.e, now called Warstead Street, may be traced to the East Anglian heights near Horseheath.

[Footnote 154: Hughes' _Geography of Cambs_, p. 139.]

Till the nineteenth century the fields between Cherry Hinton and Cambridge were bright with the purple flowers of the saffron crocus, which was grown, as it was by the ancient Greeks and Romans, for medical use and for dyeing purposes. Its cultivation may very probably have been introduced into Britain by the Romans. The saffron here grown was considered the best in Europe, and fetched no less than thirty shillings a pound. But its use, after so many centuries, suddenly went out of fashion, and the plant is now wholly extinct in Cambridgeshire.[155]