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Published: January 19th 2015
Ely Cathedral
a close up of the lantern tower Today is Hereward the Wake Day. Today a visit to Ely and the Fens. Another bus trip and yet another cathedral built on the proceeds of wool.
The night was cold in Suzy despite having the heating turned up. Still better in the cold in Suzy than at home I say. Any trip away is a bonus even in the bitterly cold of a January day. A little snow fell on the roof but not enough to stick . It was too cold for that. Kathrein has been acting up. She goes up but fails to respond to the command to come on down. Eventually after much trying she does give up, we win and she comes down. For those not familiar with our friend Kathrein she is an all singing, all dancing German satelitte dish which whizzes around like Billy Whizz finding our television for us. However , she had not been a good girl and been back to the dealers at least three times since we purchased her and still she goes wrong. We dread those words "The turntable has a malfunction". It looks like she has a problem again.
Giving up on her; there is not
Ely Cathedral
one of the stunning stained glass windows much you can do when you are away but put up with it so we set off on our 10 minute walk to the bus stop which this time was easy to find. The bus arrived, we climbed aboard, placed our bus passes on the reader and they worked again. This is fantastic one of the advantages of being of pensionable age. That has saved us enough money for dinner today.
Our destination firstly the 25 minute trip into Cambridge. Then the walk to the bus station to pick up the Ely bus. The bus station was a dismal affair but then when are they anything different. Functional, clean, they serve a purpose. The highlight of the wait seeing the first daffodils of Spring flowering defiantly in the park. Their heads nodding in the wind . Clearly they don't realise that Spring has not arrived yet.
The bus turned up on time, we climbed aboard, placed our cards on the reader again and hey presto on came the green light we were good to go. The journey took almost an hour as the bus weaved its way through the heavy city traffic and then out into the open
fenlands. Mile after mile of nothingness, a few villages along the way, a lot of water, an odd windmill or two and a few science parks in the middle of nowhere. And leeks - fields of them.
We were dropped off at the bus station. It wasn't quite a bus station just Market Street where the bus stops lined the street. Easy Peasy we though to get the bus back. They only ran hourly which meant managing our time very carefully. First stop a warm to get out of the biting wind which was rapidly finding its way through hats, scarves, coats and gloves. That could only mean lunch. We called in to the Lamb Hotel which was very handy and welcoming. Lunch was a special £9.95 for two main meals . See I knew that saving on the bus fare would come in handy. Glenn ate ham, eggs and spicy chips which he informed me were delicious and why couldn't I cook chips like that? I went a bit more continental choosing linguine with cherry tomatoes and a salad. And very tasty that was too. All washed down with two excellent and warming cups of tea. It didn't
feel like wine weather very much.
Our first stop was Oliver Cromwells house. Villain or hero - the last time I saw Oliver was when I was in London and saw his statue outside the Houses of Parliament . He was Lord Protector of England and lived in Ely for 10 years. Today the House, the only surviving former Cromwell residence other than Hampton Court. It has been recreated to show how his family would have lived in the mid 17th Century. He was king all but in name, he banned Christmas and depending on your viewpoint you either love him or loath him. We were going to go inside the timber framed house as we thought it was English Heritage and would have been free however we were running short of time before our bus home and decided that it was not worth paying to see it. Why did we need to see it - well it was not English Heritage but the council had an offer of buy one get one free if you were a member of English Heritage. We are not so there was some debate if being a member of Cadw the welsh version
would give us the same deal.
Instead we decided to head off across the park to the cathedral which stood proudly proclaiming its Medieval origins. We are always intrigued when we see an English Gothic building wondering if it has been Baroqued inside and how much of the old building survives . We were about to see as we entered the porchway with its Norman rounded archways. Sadly all the niches that once houses statues were empty and bit of the masonry hacked and damaged during the Reformation and from Puritan and Protestant zeal. Imagination is needed to see the colour that once must have existed and to try to think what the niches would have looked like full of the saints that once filled them. Entrance fee £6 each . It is more expensive if you want to go up the West Tower which sadly was closed today to us. And extra again to go up the Lantern. We were too early for the guided tour but then we don't do them so we didn't feel too upset . We were able to wander about at our own speed taking in the beauty of the building.
It
was another wow , wow , wow . They knew how to build and decorate them. Nothing had been spared in the service of worshipping God. The full title of the cathedral is the Cathedral Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Ely and it is the home of the Bishop of Ely . Known locally as the ship of the Fens a rather pretty title for an impressive building that must have been seen from miles away. The landscape around it is flat so it is a noticeable landmark . It seemed a pretty cathedral not overpowering in any way. The lantern in the middle broke up the area of its roof and made an interesting skyline. It stand somewhere near the position of the original monastery of St Etheldreda. There are going to be a lot of Ethels in this blog and a great number of kings whose name starting with A or Ae. We are in that part of the country. The first church was built in the 10th century and this church appears to have been built on the footprint of this building. Work commenced and in 1106 it became necessary to remove St Etheldreda’s
remains from the old church to the new.
The stone used for the cathedral was quarried from Barnack in nearby Northamptonshire and decorative work was carved in to the harder Purbeck marble . The total length of the cathedral is 537 feet and it felt long as we walked from one end to the other admiring the thick romanesque columns and intricate carving along the way. The cathedral is as always cross shaped and the nave is over 250 feet long. It is one of the longest in Britain and it certainly felt as if it went on and on. The tower which we were not able to climb is 215 feet high and I guess from the top there would be fantastic views but sadly we were denied the opportunity today. The octagon Lantern Tower intrigued me .I had never seen anything like it in any church or cathedral . It is 74 feet wide and 170 foot high and has the most beautiful glass in it through which the sun shone.
The design is apparently like Winchester. It is too many years ago that I went to Winchester so sadly I cannot remember what it looked
Ely Cathedral
Some of the stunning stone workmanship like. By 1140 the nave had been completed . It is truly amazing the speed at which the builders built such an enormous building. We wondered just how many craftsmen there must have been all over the country producing stone work or wood work for all of the cathedrals and parish churches being built at the same time. The world must have felt transformed as these edifices were raised stone by stone ever closer to God.
It was lovely to wander up and down on our own. We were the only visitors and had the place to ourselves. Time to stop and stare for a change without the hustle and bustle of tourists. Time to stop at each decorated stone and admire the workmanship. Time to imagine what it must once have looked like. Sadly following the Dissolution nearly all the stained glass and much of the sculpture in the Cathedral were destroyed; in the Lady Chapel the free-standing statues were removed and the other carved figures were decapitated. This was almost certainly at the instigation of reformist Bishop Thomas Goodrich (1534–54) who is on record as ordering churchwardens in the diocese to suppress images.. What a shame that
Ely
Gateway to the Cathedral close the glass was not taken out and hidden until such time as it could have been returned to its rightful place. This seems like desecration on a grand scale . What beauty we have lost and cannot ever replace.
It was said that Cromwell had a part to play in the destruction of the idolatory within but it seems that sadly there was little left for him to remove such was the enthusiasm of Biship Goodrich. There was a little Baroque in the building but it did not spoil what was for us a fascinating space in a style we have come to love . It is so easy to fall in love with this style of architecture and we have so much of this in Britain.
Sadly it was time to leave and walk out amongst the old buildings that surround the cathedral. They all tell a story of monastic life and are now used as school premises. The cathedral looked even more impressive from this back view in the pale sunlight of this January day.
And so to home . On the bus again , green light clicked on again and we pondered Hereward the
Ely
Oliver Cromwells home Wake. Had we had time there was a museum dedicated to Hereward but we decided to give it a miss . So what about Hereward ? What would we have learned at the museum? Well first of all the dark ages were anything but dark. There was a rich history which just seems so far back it is hard to imagine. A time when we imagine heathens and outlaws, naked men covered in blue paint lying around in the wet murky waters of the Fens. And then there is Hereward the Wake a man who led his people against the Normans. He lived on the Isle of Ely a place easy to imagine full of bullrushes, streams, boggy marshy ground and willow trees. A place of mists and fogs where it was easy to lose your way. He roamed those Fens and must have known the lie of the land like the back of his hand. He may have been the son of Leofric of Mercia and Lady Godiva. Bare back horse rider mother then if you believe the stories. Like many of the time who really knows who he was or from whom he was descended. Lost in the mists of time his story can be embellished as you go along. He may have been Anglo Danish - will we ever know? He didnt always live in the Fens but spent time in Flanders where he was exiled. To cut a long story short he returned to England in late 1069 or 1070. As always his family's lands had been taken over by the Normans and his brother killed with his head then placed on a spike at the gate to his house. What is a man to do ? Hereward took revenge on the Normans who killed his brother while they were ridiculing the English at a drunken feast. He allegedly killed fifteen of them with the assistance of one helper. He then gathered followers and went to Peterborough Abbey where we are going tomorrow and was knighted by his uncle Abbot Brand. He returned briefly to Flanders to allow the situation to cool down before returning to England. Guess he was too hot to handle in the Fens at that time and had a price on his head. In 1070 Hereward certainly participated in the anti-Norman insurrection centred on the Isle of Ely. In 1069 or 1070 the Danish king Sweyn Estithson OK he is not a king with the name starting with A or Ae sent a small army to try to establish a camp on the Isle of Ely. Hereward appears to have joined them. Hereward stormed and sacked Peterborough Abbey Seems like he enjoyed storming., sacking , pillaging and just stopped short of raping. He sounded an interesting man and I guess we should have stopped at the museum but at least if we ever find our way back to Ely we have two more places to visit. Cromwells house and the museum . You always need to keep something back just in case you ever return .
Was Ely interesting ? Yes it was and it was certainly worth the visit. So now it was back to Suzy and an errant Kathrein and a silly sat nav that is switching itself off . But that's another story.
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Sameul david
non-member comment
Very Nice
A goodly amount of history. Liked it a lot.