Highways and Byways in Cambridge and Ely Part 22

Ely, _Sept. 11th, 1686._

GOOD BROTHER,

The good character I have received concerning you ... has given me a particular confidence in yr. care to putt the directions of my printed letter in practice. Yr. parish, if it be not so numerous as I suppos'd, yet lyes on the Great Northern Roade; it would be for our Churches Honor and for the consolation of well dispos'd travellers to find Daily Prayers in yr. Church. I press them all over the Diocese where it is practicable, but at Caxton I wd. have them by all means, tho' you begin with a congregation of but a widdow or two. Have them if you please at 6 or 7 in the morning if that will be best for pa.s.sengers. My good friend you have been bredd in a camp to toyle and hardship. I know the putting my orders in execution, that is the making of so many careless people Christian indeed, will cost you a great deale of labour. But do not grudge it; you are sure of as great a Reward in Heaven; and in good time you may find your account by it here.... In the mean time do your Business with all your might, and sett into it presently, before the Visitation. By which you will more than a little oblige, Sir,

Yr. affect. friend and Brother, FRAN. ELY.

MR. SAY OF CAXTON.

P.S.--If you have no little Schoole in your town I shall wonder, and you ought to procure one. If there bee one, then you need not want a congregation for both morning and evening prayers.

After crossing the Ermine Street we come to Eltisley, where there is a pretty Village Green and a good village inn; and the church, though small, has some fine Early English work. It is dedicated to St. John the Baptist and St. Pandiana (or Pandionia), an obscure personage, said by Leland to have been a Scottish[186] princess, who found in this remote spot a refuge from the importunities of her suitors, and was here buried by the side of a spring still known as St. Pandiana's Well. Her nunnery perished after the Conquest, and in the fourteenth century her body was translated into the church, along with that of the yet more obscure St. Wendreda,[187] a purely Cambridgeshire saint, whose name is also connected with the church of March, and with a "well" near Newmarket.

[Footnote 186: _I.e._ Irish. The name of the Scots lingered on in their original home for many centuries after it became more famous in North Britain, whither they began to migrate in the fifth century.]

[Footnote 187: See Miss Arnold Forster's Studies in Church Dedications, chap. x.x.xi.]

The village is the scene of a dramatic tale found in Roger of Wendover, under the date 1234. A famine was raging, and the hungry poor invaded the ripening harvest-fields and devoured the crops, "for which they may scarce be blamed. Of the farmers, however, (who ever from their avarice, look upon the poor with an evil eye,) many were highly wroth at this pious theft. And they of Alboldesley hied them all on the next Sunday (July 16th) to the church, and with tumult required the priest to excommunicate upon the spot all who had thus plucked their wheat-ears. But one pious man alone adjured him in G.o.d's name to p.r.o.nounce no such sentence for _his_ crops; adding that he was right well content that the poor should take from him in their need, and that he commended to the Lord's care whatsoever was left.

"Now scarcely had the priest perforce begun the curse, than there suddenly arose such a storm of thunder, lightning, whirlwind, rain and hail, that the corn in the fields was torn from the ground as by a blast from h.e.l.l; and all that grew therein, and the cattle, and the very birds, were destroyed, as though trodden down by carts and horses. But that just man found his land without trace of harm. And thus it is clear that as the angels sing Glory to G.o.d in the Highest, so on earth is there Peace toward men of Good-will.

"This storm began on the borders of Bedfordshire (at Eltisley), and pa.s.sed eastwards through the Isle of Ely. And here is a wondrous thing. Such crops as still stood when it was over were found so rotted that neither horse nor a.s.s, steer nor pig, goose nor hen, would eat thereof." A cyclone of precisely the same character devastated Ess.e.x on June 24, 1897, and was as capricious in its visitations.

At Eltisley we reach the termination of the long ridge which has kept us at an upland level all the way from Madingley, and our road now runs rapidly down into the valley of the Ouse. We reach that n.o.ble stream at the old-world, but thriving, town of St. Neots, where there is a fine old bridge and a magnificent church. The name of this place is locally p.r.o.nounced not _Neats_, but _Notes_. This last is the correct form, for the name is derived from Neotus, the eldest brother and friend of King Alfred, whom that greatest of our monarchs recognised as the good genius of his life.

The original name of this notable personality was Athelstane. He was the eldest grandson of Egbert, the first "King of the English," and held, accordingly, the under-kingship of Kent, at that time the usual appanage of the heir-apparent. This dignity he resigned to enter Religion, at the Abbey of Glas...o...b..ry, under the name of Neotus. A special bond of affection united him with his youngest brother, Alfred, who, as an enthusiastic boy of seventeen, took this dearest of brothers as his spiritual guide and counsellor. When, five years later, the successive deaths of the intervening brethren brought him to the throne, we read that the inconsiderate zeal with which he suppressed abuses drew anxious warnings from St. Neot, who foresaw that this overweening course would surely bring disastrous consequences.

"But Alfred heeded not the reproof of the man of G.o.d, nor listed what he foretold. Wherefore (seeing that a man's sins must needs be some way punished, either in this world or in that which is to come), the Righteous Judge and True willed that he should not be unpunished here, that so he might be spared hereafter."[188]

[Footnote 188: The Chronicle of St. Neots.]

The punishment was that sudden and disastrous Danish inroad which overwhelmed the whole of the kingdom, and drove Alfred himself into hiding at Athelney. While he was there St. Neot died at the neighbouring Glas...o...b..ry. We read there, ere his departure, the saint had promised that as he had been Alfred's spiritual guide in life, so should that spiritual guidance and wardship still abide with him.

"Thy guide have I been ever; thee and thine will I lead on." "I will be thy captain, I will be thy champion; thou shalt be glad and rejoice in me." "Lo, I will go before thy banner; thine enemies shall perish at my presence." And when, a few weeks later, the King led on his forces to the crowning victory over the Danes at Ethandune, he was persuaded that this promise was being fulfilled. With the eye of ardent faith he beheld the blessed spirit of his brother leading on the Christian banners to the onset. "See ye not?" he exclaimed to his men, "See ye not? That is indeed Neotus, Christ's glorious servant, Christ's unconquered soldier; and through him is the victory even now given to our hands."

Thus it came about that St. Neot remained the object of unforgotten reverence, not only to Alfred himself, but to his heroic son and daughter. The former christened after this sainted uncle his own eldest son Athelstane, afterwards "Athelstane the Magnificent," the mighty King of the English and Emperor of Britain; and when the latter delivered Mercia from the yoke of the Danes, she called by his name one of the fortress towns, which she founded on the Ouse to keep them in check, St. Neots.

It is appropriate that one of the earliest and most spirited of the Chronicles that record the great deeds of Alfred should have been preserved for five centuries in the Church of St. Neots, and should still be known as the "Chronicle of St. Neots."[189] The north aisle of this church is known as the "Jesus Chapel," having been built by a local mediaeval fraternity called "The Guild of Jesus." The sacred monogram IHC, is to be seen on the beams of the roof inside and on the b.u.t.tresses outside.

[Footnote 189: To this Chronicle we owe some of the best known legends in English History, the story of Alfred and the cakes, for instance.

It was probably written in the tenth century. (See my "Alfred in the Chroniclers.")]

One of the most delightful routes of the district is that by which we make our way along the Ouse from St. Neots to Ely, by way of G.o.dmanchester, Huntingdon, and St. Ives. On leaving St. Neots the road climbs Paxton Hill, where its shady course overhangs a beautiful sweep of the broad stream 120 feet below. Thence it drops to the river at Paxton itself, where the church has some good Saxon features, and thence continues along the water to the twin villages of Offord Darcy and Offord Cluny, close together on the right bank, and so over another little eminence to strike the river again at G.o.dmanchester.

The etymology of this name shows it to have been a Roman station, and Roman remains have been found here. It is commonly identified with the _Durolipons_ of the Antonine Itinerary. Here the Via Devana, running straight from Cambridge, strikes the Ermine Street, and the final syllable of the Latin name suggests that the united roads crossed the river by a bridge before separating on their respective lines towards Chester and York. If so the bridge must have stood somewhere near the present one, which, however, was not built till the thirteenth century. G.o.dmanchester is now a reposeful little town, with a uniquely picturesque view across the verdant expanse of Port Holme, the largest meadow, as it boasts itself, in the world, a wide, wide flat of breezy gra.s.s, across which, more than a mile away, rise the buildings of Huntingdon. In flood time, when this flat becomes a shining lake, the scene is striking indeed.

From the northern end of the town a long causeway, pierced with many arches to carry off these floods, leads across the fields to the bridge, with its high pitch, its recessed and pointed b.u.t.tresses, and its old bridge-chapel (now used for secular purposes) on the central span. Immediately behind lies the town of Huntingdon, larger and more stirring than its elder sister G.o.dmanchester. It owes its existence to the same cause as St. Neots, being one of the fortresses erected by the "Children of Alfred," Edward the Elder and his sister Ethelfleda, "the lady of the Mercians," to ensure their pacification of these parts when reconquered from the Danes. It is famous as the birthplace of Oliver Cromwell, the entry of whose baptism, in 1599, is still to be seen in the register of All Saints' Church. The same book contains a record of his having been put to public penance, at the age of twenty, for scandalous living. The register of St. John's (now united to All Saints') tells us that the body of the unhappy Mary Stuart rested in that church during its removal by her son, James the First, from Peterborough Cathedral to Westminster Abbey.

From Huntingdon our road, keeping close in touch with the river, takes us through the pretty villages of Hartford, Wyton, and Houghton, to St. Ives. A yet prettier way is to recross the stream at Houghton Lock and take a field-road across the meadows to the two Hemingfords, Hemingford Abbots and Hemingford Grey. The latter is famous as the birthplace of the Misses Gunning, who were the leading beauties of the Court in the early days of the reign of George the Third, and married into the highest families of the Peerage. Both churches stand on the very brink of the Ouse, about a mile apart, their graceful steeples, with that of Houghton to the north-east and that of St. Ives to the north-west, watching as guardian sentinels over the rich Ouse meadows between. All have spires, but that of Hemingford Grey lost its upper part by an equinoctial gale in the middle of the eighteenth century, and only the base now remains.

St. Ives is yet another of Edward the Elder's fortresses, and is probably named from the Cornish town similarly designated. It is possible that it may be even a colony from that far-off strand, which had never swerved in its allegiance, planted here to leaven the turbulent Danish elements around. Certain it is that here Ednoth, Abbot of Ely, erected a church dedicated to St. Ivo. Who this saint may have been originally is not known; probably he (or she) was one of the many obscure Celtic saints whose names dot the map of Cornwall.

But there grew up in the eleventh century a wild legend that Ivo, a Persian (!) bishop, had settled down in the neighbourhood. In the fifteenth century a stone sarcophagus, found by a peasant when ploughing, was declared to contain the body of this holy Oriental, and was translated with due pomp to the neighbouring Abbey of Ramsey. St.

Ives was specially connected with this House, and it was an Abbot of Ramsey who built the beautiful bridge, the ditto of that at Huntingdon, by which we here recross to the left bank of the Ouse.

Our next point, on leaving St. Ives, is the tiny village of Holywell, which we may reach either by road, through the hamlet of Needingworth, or (preferably) by a field-path running westwards from near the railway station. The little church here stands on a slope above the river, and in the churchyard the holy well is still to be seen. But the delight of the place is its strand along the Ouse, a rarely picturesque medley of old houses on one side of the road and on the other the broad clear stream, here crossed by a ferry. This road continues (as a mere field-path) to another delicious ferry a mile lower, with a charming little inn beside it, in a grove of lofty trees. This lovely spot is named Overcote. Here travellers may cross into Cambridgeshire and make their way along the "Hundred Foot"

embankment (so called because it is thirty yards in width) along the river to Earith. For motors the way lies through Needingworth, and past the pretty little Church of Bluntisham, with its three-sided apse and its churchyard yews.

Earith is a hamlet of Bluntisham, but a much larger place, owing its importance to its situation on the point where the great works connected with the drainage of the fens have their beginning by the diversion of the Ouse waters from their ancient bed into the two "Bedford Rivers," the Old and the New, which from this point run straight as a die (like the supposed "ca.n.a.ls" in Mars) across the fen to Denvers Sluice, twenty-two miles away. The former was made in 1630, the latter in 1650, at the expense of what we should now call a company, promoted by the Earl of Bedford. No such cuts exist elsewhere in the world. Along them a clear horizon is to be obtained, and here, accordingly, was conducted, some forty years ago, a decisive experiment for proving the sphericity of the earth.

At that time a deluded gentleman, who called himself "Parallax," was obsessed with the notion that the globe was a flat disc, and used to go lecturing with great vigour on the subject. After these lectures he invited questions, none of which were able to shake his belief. When asked, for example, "Why does the hull of a ship disappear below the horizon while the masts remain visible?" he would answer, "Because the lowest stratum of air is the densest, and, therefore, soonest conceals objects seen through it." In view of the present Polar exploration, it may interest our readers to know that one of his points was the absolute non-existence of the South Pole. "Explorers say they cannot get near it, because of an icy barrier. Of course. That barrier is the raised rim of our world plate, and they can but sail round and round inside it." Finally he showed his wholehearted belief in his absurd views by laying a heavy wager that no one would disprove them. The stakes were deposited in the hands of judges, and the trial, under agreed conditions, took place upon the New River. Three boats were moored three miles apart, each provided with a cross-tree of equal height. If the earth was spherical the central cross would appear above the other to an observer looking through a telescope levelled from the cross-tree of the boat at either end; if it was flat he would see both the other cross-trees as one. "Parallax" declared that he did so (!), but the judges decided against him, and the poor man lost his money.

CHAPTER XIII

Island of Ely.--Haddenham.--Aldreth, Conqueror's Causeway, Belsars Hill.--Wilburton.--Sutton.--Wentworth.--Via Devana.--Girton, College.--Oakington, Holdsworth.--Elsworth.--Conington, Ancient Bells.--Long Stanton, Queen Elizabeth.--Willingham, Stone Chamber.--Over, Gurgoyles.--Swavesey, Finials.--Ely Road.--Chesterton.--Fen Ditton.--Milton, Altar Rails.--Horningsea.--Bait's Bite, Start of Race.--Clayhithe.--Waterbeach.--Car d.y.k.e.--Denny.--Stretham.--Upware.--Wicken Fen.

From the bridge over the Ouse by the Earith sluice we see the sea-board (for that and nothing less is the word which its appearance irresistibly suggests) of the Island of Ely, rising before us, with a couple of miles of level fen between. We may reach it, if we will, by the main road, which leads eastward to Haddenham, the southernmost of the island villages. Haddenham stands on a projecting peninsula of high ground, the highest in the island, rising to nearly 150 feet, almost cut off from the rest by two inlets of fen (Grunty Fen on the north-east and North Fen on the north-west), and nearer than any other part to the mainland on the south. This quasi-insulation has left a curious mark on the Ecclesiastical map of Cambridgeshire. Throughout the whole Isle of Ely--the old Fenland Archipelago--the Bishop acts as his own Archdeacon. An Archdeacon of Ely there is; but his jurisdiction is confined to Cambridgeshire proper, Cambridgeshire south of the Isle. It extends, however, over Haddenham and the neighbouring village of Wilburton, the two parishes in this peninsula.

Haddenham has a fine Decorated church; the tower showing the first development of that style from Early English (1275), and the transepts its transition into Perpendicular (1375). The fifteenth century font is richly panelled, with roses and shields supported by lions and angels. This church was founded by Owen, the "Over-alderman" who governed the Island of Ely under St. Etheldreda, the Foundress of the Cathedral, and Queen of the Isle as the childless widow of its last native ruler, King Tonbert.[190] Owen's name is interesting as testifying to the Celtic survival in the fenland, already spoken of.[191] The broken cross bearing his name, now in the south aisle of Ely Cathedral, was originally set up at Haddenham; and, after being for ages an object of veneration, was, at the Reformation, mutilated and degraded into a horsing-block. At length the revived decency of the eighteenth century removed it to Ely.

[Footnote 190: See Chap. XIV.]

[Footnote 191: See Chap. VIII.]

The village of Haddenham lies chiefly along the road running southward to the hamlet of Aldreth, on the very verge of the Island. The nearest point of the low-lying mainland is only half a mile away; the "Old River" of the Ouse (now, since the construction of the Bedford Rivers, become quite a scanty watercourse) flowing between. This was the point selected by William the Conqueror for the famous Causeway, whereby, after being once and again baffled by the valour of Hereward, he ultimately succeeded in forcing his way into the Island.[192] For centuries afterwards this continued to be the chief entrance from the Cambridge district, till superseded by the present road via Stretham. A small barrow at the southern end of this causeway, which is now a mere field-track, still bears the name of Belsar's Hill, after the knight who, in this campaign, acted as the Conqueror's Commander-in-Chief.

[Footnote 192: See Chap. XIV.]

Wilburton, a mile to the east, was given to Ely by St. Ethelwold, Bishop of Winchester, the prelate who aided in King Edgar's restoration of the Monastery of Ely, after its destruction by the Danes, in 870, had laid it waste for upwards of a century. The church has some fine woodwork in stalls, screen, and roof, adorned on the spandrills and bosses with the three c.o.c.ks of Bishop Alc.o.c.k, the founder of Jesus College. While Archdeacon of Ely he here entertained Henry the Eighth, when, as Prince of Wales, he accompanied his father on the last Royal Pilgrimage ever made to the shrine of St. Etheldreda at Ely, which he himself was so soon to despoil and destroy. A good bra.s.s (now affixed to the wall) commemorates Alc.o.c.k's predecessor in the archidiaconate, Richard Bole (1477). And yet another Archdeacon, Wetheringset, is also here buried. Some curious metal-work hangs from the roof, and on the north wall of the nave are ancient frescoes, representing not only St. Christopher, the usual subject, but the much less known St. Blaise and St. Leodegar. The former was Bishop of Sebaste, and was martyred in 316 A.D. He became the patron saint of wool-combers, and was specially venerated in Leeds and Bradford. The latter was Bishop of Autun in Gaul, during the seventh century. There is here a fine old red-brick manor-house, called the Burgh-stead (or Bury-stead), built in 1600 by a London alderman to whom Queen Elizabeth sold the Manor,--after filching it from the Bishop of Ely, according to her usual practice.

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

The whole peninsula is specially rich in memorials of long past ages.

In the peat of the old Ouse channel by Wilburton was found a great h.o.a.rd of bronze weapons, lying in a promiscuous heap, "in such a manner as to suggest that a canoe with a cargo of bronze sc.r.a.p had been upset there," as Professor and Mrs. Hughes picturesquely put it, in their "Geography of Cambridgeshire." Grunty Fen has produced a bronze sickle, and two splendid ornaments of twisted gold; while, a mile east of Wilburton, a British urn was discovered, a.s.sociated with the bones of the urus, or gigantic wild ox of the Neolithic Age. And between Earith and Wilburton there has been dug out gold ring-money.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _The Burystead, Wilburton._]

But a yet more striking approach to the Island of Ely may be made by taking at Earith the road through the toll-gate which leads northward immediately alongside the great embankment of the New River, and lies some few feet below the level of its waters. For three miles this a.s.sociation continues; then road and river part company, and the former drives straight across the fen to climb the western sh.o.r.e of the island. The change of scenery when you reach that sh.o.r.e is striking in its suddenness. You have been travelling for miles through the bare, treeless, dead level of the fen, with its immense width of view; then, almost in a moment, you find yourself ascending a steepish hill through a tree-shaded hedge-bordered cutting which might be in Kent or even Devonshire.

At the top of this brow you look down on the fen behind you and on either hand, your southern horizon being bounded by the near uplands of Haddenham, with the flat bay of North Fen between. And very shortly you come to the undulating village street of Sutton, with its highest point crowned by the truly glorious church. This church is all in one style, Decorated, on the verge of developing into Perpendicular, having been built by Barnet, Bishop of Ely 1366 to 1373. The splendid tower is crowned by an octagonal steeple, and that again by a second, richly pinnacled, and is a landmark for many miles along the valleys of the Ouse and Cam.

From Sutton we reach Ely by way of Wentworth and Witchford. The former name is supposed to be a corruption of Owensworth, and to commemorate that the place was of old the property of St. Owen. The little church has a Saxon porch, with twisted pillars, and contains a remarkable carving of the same date, representing an ecclesiastic wearing the pall of a Primate. His left hand supports an open book, while in his right he holds, not a cross or pastoral staff, but something more suggestive of an aspersory for holy water. The corbel in Ely Cathedral depicting the burial of St. Etheldreda shows us a figure similarly equipped.