Highways and Byways in Cambridge and Ely Part 17

[Footnote 155: _Ibid._ p. 96.]

From Cherry Hinton Church a green lane leads to Teversham, a short mile distant, but, except for pedestrians, more easily approached from the Newmarket Road. The church here is a pretty little structure, mainly Early English, with curious oval clerestory windows, and a nice Perpendicular screen. The octagonal pillars have floreated capitals.

Dowsing's record of his destructions here is of special interest, inasmuch as the objects of his Protestant zeal were not, as usual, relics of pre-Reformation Popery, but the newly painted devices of the Laudian vicar, Dr. Wren (the Bishop of Ely and builder of Peterhouse Chapel). They consisted of the name JESUS, "in big letters" no fewer than eighteen times repeated, of those of the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity, and of texts from Scripture: "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus," and "O come let us worship and fall down and kneel before the Lord our Maker." All these were "done out"

as "idolatries"!

From the springs at Cherry Hinton the furrow-drawn road (pa.s.sing on its way the County Lunatic Asylum) makes another bee-line of three miles to Fulbourn. Here the church is of special interest. There are no fewer than five mediaeval bra.s.ses, including one, almost life-size, of Canon William de Fulburne, 1380, which is notable as being, probably, the earliest known example of a priest vested in a cope.

This ecclesiastic was one of Edward the Third's chaplains. In a wooden shrine on the north side of the chancel is a moribund effigy of John Careway, vicar here in 1433. This is beneath a sept-foiled arch, beside which is another strangely irregular arch over a sedile. There is also the very unusual feature of a fourteenth century pulpit of richly-carved oak.

The dedication of this church is as unusual. It is to St. Vigor, an obscure sixth century bishop of Bayeux, who has only one other church in England, at Stratton-on-the-Fosse in Somerset. Till late in the eighteenth century there was a second church here in the same churchyard, as at Swaffham Prior. This was All Saints', and was ruined by the fall of its tower in 1766. The ruins were gradually stolen, the wood going first, but it took ten years for the last of the bells to disappear.

At the church the road divides. The northern branch meanders through the village past an ancient row of old-time almshouses to the station, beyond which it becomes a pretty lane leading to the adjoining villages of Great and Little Wilbraham. The church at the former has a tower arch of strikingly peculiar development, a tall lancet, flanked by segments of arches of much larger radius, inserted in the wall on either side, which support the central member somewhat in the fashion of flying b.u.t.tresses. The parson here, "a widower with three small children" (as the Puritan report gloatingly points out), was ejected in 1644 by the Puritans, because "he said it was treason for any man to give any money against the King, and in his sermons discouraged his parish from doing anything for the Parliament, and that he never read any book coming from the Parliament." Caution should be observed in pa.s.sing through these villages, as sundry well-seeming roads simply lead down to Fulbourn Fen[156] and end there. Springs feeding the fen are plentiful, and the ground is still very much of a swamp.

[Footnote 156: See p. 170.]

But the road to take from Fulbourn Church is that which winds away south-eastwards, for in less than three miles it will bring us to the Icknield Street,[157] close to the point where that famous war-path cuts through the no less famous Fleam d.y.k.e. This is the best place for viewing and ascending that splendid prehistoric earthwork, the sister and rival of the Devil's d.y.k.e. It makes a most fascinating byway to walk along, though it leads nowhither, ending abruptly where it dips down into Fulbourn Fen.[158] The dry chalk is clothed with flowers all the summer through. At Easter time we may here find the glorious purple Pasch-flower, that queen of all the anemone clan; later on "the turf is sweet with thyme and gay with yellow rock-rose, blue flax, milkwort, pink-budded dropwort, sainfoin, kidney vetch, and viper's bugloss, and here and there a bee orchis; with a dancing accompaniment of b.u.t.terflies overhead, graylings, skippers, chalk hill and Bedford blues, and a host beside."[159]

[Footnote 157: See p. 171.]

[Footnote 158: Footpaths, however, lead across the fen from its termination to Fulbourn and to Wilbraham.]

[Footnote 159: Hughes' _Geography of Cambs_, p. 77.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Great Wilbraham Church._]

The air is inspiring and so also is the view, with Ely on the far horizon to the north; and the historical a.s.sociations are not less so.

We can imagine the oaken palisade which topped the d.y.k.e lined with the Icenian clansmen in their tartan plaids shouting defiance to the presumptuous Roman who dared to demand their arms; then the incredibly audacious onslaught which, along the whole length of the d.y.k.e at once, carried Ostorius and his light-armed troops at one rush clear across the mighty ditch, and up the forty feet of precipitous slope beyond, to crown the parapet and whirl away the patriot levies in headlong flight; then the merciless pursuit which forbade any chance to rally, till the fugitives were stopped by their own second line of defence at the Devil's d.y.k.e, and slaughtered like rats beneath its rampart.[160]

[Footnote 160: See p. 172.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Great Wilbraham._]

Or our thoughts may turn to the later day when here was beheld the last fight worthy to be called a battle ever fought in Cambridgeshire.

It is the year 905 A.D.; the great Alfred has been dead four years, and his son Edward the Elder has been chosen King in his stead. For the English monarchy is still elective, though already with a strong tendency to become hereditary. And this tendency now gives trouble.

When Alfred himself was made King his nephew Ethelwald c.l.i.to, son of his elder brother Ethelred, the late King, was pa.s.sed over in his favour. At that fearful crisis, when it was doubtful whether even an Alfred could stem the Danish inrush, there could be no thought of choosing a child as King.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Little Wilbraham._]

But the Danes are now quietly settled in the Eastern Counties, and Ethelwald has grown up to manhood, and is bitterly angry at being again pa.s.sed over, this time for his cousin Edward. If the English will not choose him, he will try the Danes. So to the Danes he goes, with promises of unlimited loot if they will support him, and, in the words of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, "entices them to break the peace,"

so that they cross the Watling Street, and make a ferocious raid into Mercia. "They took all they might lay hands on, and so turned homeward again. Then after them came King Edward, as fast as he might gather his force, and overran all their land between the d.y.k.es and the Ouse, as far North as the Fens."

The Devil's d.y.k.e and the Fleam d.y.k.e are by this time known as "the two d.y.k.es of St. Edmund," and now play their latest part in history as defences. Edward is no Ostorius, being a valiant warrior of the cautious rather than the daring type, and the Fleam d.y.k.e brings his avenging host to a standstill. Finally he resolves that to storm it would cost too much, and retires his command. But his levies from Kent are of another temper, and positively refuse to obey what they look upon as an ignominious order. One after another, seven royal messengers repeat it in vain; and finally the main body of the English army marches off under the Royal banner, leaving the mutineers still before the d.y.k.e--probably at the very point where the Icknield Way cuts it.

This is the Danes' opportunity. They have now safely deposited their plunder, and are ready for another outbreak. With their whole force they sally forth, and fall upon these stubborn Kentish men, and the fighting becomes desperate. The Kentish Alderman (who combined the offices of High Sheriff and Lord Lieutenant) is slain, so is the Danish King Eric, so is Ethelwald "the Atheling" himself, "and very many with them. And great was the slaughter there made on either hand; and of the Danish folk were there the more slain, yet won they the field."[161] And thus, after so many ages of warfare, does the Fleam d.y.k.e, or Balsham Ditch, as it is also called, enter on its millennium of peace.

[Footnote 161: _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Balsham Tower._]

For it played no part in the tragedy which, a hundred years after this last fight, is a.s.sociated with its alternative name. Once more Danes and Englishmen are at hand-grips; but now it is no mere loose aggregate of private hordes pressing, each on its own, into the land, but Swend Forkbeard, the monarch of a great Scandinavian Empire purposing to add England also to his dominions. And under the weak sceptre of Ethelred the Unready, nothing beyond local resistance has been offered him; and here alone is the local resistance serious. East Anglia is under the governorship of the hero Ulfcytel, who has already given the Danes an unforgotten taste of his "hand-play," and he gathers her whole force to meet them at Ringmere. But the appalling tidings of what Swend has done elsewhere, "lighting his war-beacons as he went" throughout the length and breadth of the land, "with his three wonted comrades, fire, famine, and slaughter," have taken all the heart out of the English levies. For "all England did quake before him like a reed-bed rustling in the wind." The battle is speedily over. "Soon fled the East Angles; there stood Grantabryg-shire fast only."

Upon Cambridgeshire accordingly this vainly gallant stand brought down the special vengeance of the conquerors. To and fro went Danish punitive columns, and visited the district with a harrying even beyond their wont. "What they could lift, that took they; what they might not carry, that burned they; and so marched they up and down the land."

And at Balsham, perhaps because of some local resistance, they are said to have killed out the entire population, man, woman, and child; save one single individual only, who successfully defended against them the narrow entrance to the Church steeple.

It is quite possible that this doorway is the very one which we see when we reach Balsham, where the d.y.k.e ends, high on the East Anglian heights: for, though the church was rebuilt in the fourteenth century, the bas.e.m.e.nt of the tower seems to be far older. Here we are four hundred feet up, and the air has quite an Alpine freshness, after the damp, sluggish atmosphere of the sea level at Cambridge. We feel well why the old Chronicler, Henry of Huntingdon, speaks of "Balsham's pleasant hills."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Cottage at Balsham._]

There are in this church two most noteworthy bra.s.ses, one a magnificent memorial, no less than nine feet in length, to John de Sleford, rector here, the rebuilder of the church. He was a distinguished personage, being Chaplain to Queen Philippa, Master of the Wardrobe to her husband King Edward the Third, and Canon both of Ripon and of Wells. The orphreys of his cope are embroidered with the figures of Saints, five on either side,[162] and in the canopy over his head his soul is being borne by angels to the Blessed Trinity with the prayer PERSONIS TRINE POSCO ME: SVSCIPE FINE. The other bra.s.s is no less magnificent in size and decoration, and commemorates a yet more magnificent pluralist, John Blodwell, who was Rector here in 1439, besides being Dean of St. Asaph, Canon of St. David's, Prebendary of Hereford, and Prebendary of Lichfield. He, too, has eight Saints on his cope, and eight more in his canopy.[163] Twelve Latin verses give a dialogue between himself and Death, whose words are incised, while his are in relief. The chancel has twelve fine stalls on either side, and a grand rood screen, all from the generosity of Rector Sleford. Yet another, and earlier, worthy connected with this place, is Hugh de Balsham, Bishop of Ely and Founder of the earliest Cambridge College, Peterhouse.

[Footnote 162: SS. Mary, John, Katharine, Paul, Magdalene, John Baptist, Etheldreda, Peter, Margaret, Wilfrid.]

[Footnote 163: These are SS. Michael, James, Katharine, Gabriel, Margaret, ? ? John Baptist, Peter, Asaph, Bridgett, John, Andrew, Nicolas, Winifred.]

CHAPTER X

London Road.--Trumpington, Church, Bra.s.s, Chaucer's Mill, Byron's Pool, Upper River.--Grantchester, Church.--Cam and Granta.--The Shelfords.--Sawston, Old-world Industries, Hall, Hiding-Hole, "Little John."--Whittlesford, Old Hospital.--Duxford.--Triplow Heath, Civil War.--Fowlmere, Hinxton, Sacring Bell.--Ickleton, Monolith Pillars.--Chesterford.--Icknield Way.--Saffron Walden.

Due south from Cambridge goes the great London Road, a name now practically supplanted by the local designation of Trumpington Road.

Trumpington, two miles out, is already joined to Cambridge by a string of suburban villas; but these are only on one side of the road, while the other is a continuous line of nightingale-haunted elms, not even the stench and dust of the motorist having availed to drive away those fearless songsters. In leaving the Town the road starts along Hobson's Conduit, pa.s.sing the Botanic Gardens, and crosses Vicar's Brook at the historic milestone already described on page 160, the first to be set up in England since the days of the Romans.

Trumpington Church shares with Salisbury Cathedral the distinction of being built wholly in the Early English style at its best; and it has what is, perhaps, the best-known bra.s.s in England, that of Sir Roger de Trumpington, one of the crusading comrades of Edward the First. The knight is in full panoply of chain-armour, with steel epaulettes (or ailettes as they were then called) protecting his shoulders. His helmet is secured by a chain to his girdle, an unusual precaution, and his large concave shield is charged with his punning arms, two golden trumpets.

From the Church an alluring hollow lane winds down to a flat green island meadow (once a swamp, and still often flooded) between two branches of the Cam, dividing Trumpington from the sister village of Grantchester. On the Grantchester side of this island we come to a mill, with a specially delicious mill-pool below it, overhung by a wreath of foliage, chiefly chestnut. This is the representative of the mill immortalised by Chaucer, in the Canterbury Tale which describes so picturesquely the somewhat unsavoury adventures of the Cambridge "clerks":

At Trompyngtoun, nat far fro Cantebrigge, There goth a brook, and over that a brigge, Upon the whiche brook ther stant a melle, And this is verray sothe that I you telle.

The present mill, however, is not on the actual site of Chaucer's, which stood some quarter of a mile higher up the stream. Its mill-pool still exists, and is famed as "Byron's Pool." Hither the poet used constantly to make his way when an undergraduate, as a retired spot where he might enjoy his favourite delight of bathing, which even in his day was a practice somewhat frowned upon by the academic authorities. A century or so earlier, as has been already said, any student found guilty of it was publicly flogged in the Hall of his College.[164] It is a fascinating place, overhung by fine trees, and remained in favour as a bathing-place even to the middle of the nineteenth century. Now it has become so silted up as to be practically useless. But on the river above it there is still a good swimming reach, little used, however, as most students are content with the University bathing sheds between Grantchester and Cambridge.

[Footnote 164: See p. 153. After this preliminary domestic castigation he was again flogged on the morrow in the University Schools by the Proctors. A second offence meant expulsion from the University!]

The footpath past these sheds is a pleasant byway between the two places, through the green meadows along the riverbank, and so also is the river itself, hereabouts no more than the "brook" which Chaucer calls it. It is, however, by no means a water to be played with rashly, having a tortuous course full of deep holes, in which many lives have been lost. Indeed, no student is now allowed on this "Upper River," unless a certified swimmer. A third alternative route is afforded by the lane between Grantchester and Newnham. Though the southern half of this suburb is actually in Grantchester parish, the lane still runs through open fields, and Grantchester itself is in no sense suburban.

A strangely zig-zag road (with no fewer than four right-angle bends to left and right alternately in as many hundred yards), climbs from the mill to the church, which stands, like Trumpington, on the gravel terrace above the river. These river gravels are amongst the most interesting of Cambridgeshire geological formations. Not only does their height above the present stream level (sometimes as much as thirty feet) point to an age when the rivers must have been much larger than now, but they are prolific in organic remains, indicating, sometimes a warmer, sometimes a colder climate than ours. Here, at Grantchester, bones of the mammoth and of the woolly rhinoceros connote subarctic conditions; but a few miles further up the Cam, at Barrington, the terrace is full of hippopotamus, along with elephant and rhinoceros of African type, postulating a sub-tropical temperature.

Grantchester Church is chiefly noteworthy for its singularly beautiful chancel, an almost ideal example of fourteenth century work, perched most effectively above one of the bends in the road. The name, with its "chester" has led many antiquarians to hold that here was a Roman station.[165] But the application of the name to the village is only some three centuries old. In earlier days it is always "Grantset." We do find "Grantchester" in Bede (as mentioned in our account of Ely); but the spot indicated is almost certainly Cambridge, then still in ruins after its destruction during the English conquest of Britain.

[Footnote 165: "Chester," "Caster," "Cester," are various Anglicised forms of the Latin "castra" (= camp), which our conquering forefathers applied to the Romano-British cities which they so ruthlessly destroyed in the first sweep of their invasion.]

On the top of the church-tower here we may notice a weird-looking piece of iron work. This was put up in 1823 to facilitate the astronomical work in the University Observatory, as it is exactly south of the telescope dome there, two miles and a half away. With the acquisition of collimating telescopes, in 1869, this relationship ceased to be of value, and now the growth of trees has rendered the tower wholly invisible from the Observatory.

Not far from Byron's Pool we find the watersmeet of the two main streams which make our Cambridge river; each so equal in size to its sister that neither can be called the tributary of the other. The name Granta is usually appropriated to the eastern stream, that of Cam to the western. On some maps the latter is called the "Rhee," but this (like the Isis at Oxford), is merely a map-maker's name.[166]

[Footnote 166: On the western bank, hard by, is a large meadow known as Lingay Fen, which is always (artificially) flooded during the winter, in hopes of a frost. It forms an excellent skating ground, on which even National Championships have been decided.]