John William Edward Conybeare

“ Both are richly coloured, and have escaped, through being inaccessible, the injury done to the other images in the cathedral. For more than 600 years they have looked down on the tomb of Bishop Northwold, the builder of this noble Presbytery, erected, we must remember, to do honour to the shrine of the Foundress.
This Presbytery of wondrous beauty, enriched by the best that could be wrought by human hands, alike in the past and in our own days, may well recall to us Keble's lines:
"Love delights to bring her best,
And where Love is, that offering evermore is blest." ”

“ 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 class of such fixtures. And as a training ground for race-horses it stands second to none. ”

“ Passing beneath them we find ourselves again in that same ancient street of Cambridge, here again now a wholly Academic byway, by which we entered King's. But though we have left the College behind us we have not yet quite got clear of its associations. The fine modern Gothic pile to our right embeds, as we see, an ancient gateway. For more than three and a half centuries this was the entrance to the one small Court which alone represented the magnificent design of Henry the Sixth for his Royal Foundation. ”

“ Hence it is that these milestones bear the Crescent of the College shield. And for their inaugural milestone was chosen this grand monolith, which was itself an old Roman milestone.
North-east of Cambridge stretch the mesh of dingy streets which make up the great suburb of Barnwell. Hither and thither they run, in soul-crushing monotony; yet even here there are gems of interest to be found. The suburb came into existence, to begin with, through the proximity of a great Abbey, the Augustinian Priory of Barnwell. ”

“ Beyond Chesterford the Granta comes down in tiny streamlets from the Essex chalk near Saffron Walden, with its wide-naved church, which Cromwell's troops used for a drill-shed and council-chamber, and its historic mansion of Audley End, once Walden Abbey, and its memories of the days, scarcely a century by-gone, when great crops of saffron were grown in its fields, leaving their only existing trace in the name. And even that is dying out; few of the inhabitants call their home anything but Walden. ”

“ Looking back, as we leave the bridge behind us, we may admire the climbing agility which frequently enables undergraduates to descend to the projecting piers just above the water, and find their way back again, without a ducking.
We have here in front of us the New Court of St. John's College, seen across its lawn-tennis grounds; while to our left is the magnificent range of horse-chestnuts along the boundary of the two Colleges. Splendid at all times, these are seen at their very best when duly touched by frost. ”

“ But while admiring these choir stalls, we are almost inclined to grudge their presence, for they obstruct the view of the stone arches against which they stand. We are still beholding the work of the great Alan; after the tower fell he and his workmen built these three bays, with the triforium and clerestory arches above; and we feel how perfectly brain, heart, and hand must have worked together in harmony to produce so exquisite a result. It was Bishop Hotham who provided the funds for most of this work. ”

“ A like fate befell the wooden palings and gates of the College gardens across the road, now replaced by iron, and altogether the damage done ran into hundreds of pounds; while the town police and the University proctors waited for each other to act until too late. There are three of these College gardens on end—King's, Clare, and Trinity; and rarely lovely they are, with their wide "smooth-shaven" lawns, broken into glades by clumps of ornamental trees. ”

“ At the ends of the hood-mouldings of the diagonally placed arches of the Octagon are carved eight heads. Edward the Third in his crown gazes with kingly bearing across the archway at his Queen, Philippa, who wears an expression of cheering benignity, well becoming a queen; Bishop Hotham looks his part, and Prior Crauden has the countenance of a saint and an enthusiast. On the north-western archway Alan of Walsingham, clean shaven, and his master mason, with flowing locks, face each other carved in the stone that they knew so well how to manipulate. The seventh and eighth heads are grotesque. ”

“ We leave with a sigh the chapel, designed by Alan of Walsingham, and built by his faithful subsacrist John of Wisbech.
Those who desire it can, before they quit the Minster, climb to the top of the western tower, and if the day is clear they will be well rewarded by a superb view over the "boundless plain" below; towns and hamlets, steeples and spires, spread there beneath us, nor must we forget the railways, with their kindly evidence of modern life at its fullest. To the east the horizon is bounded by those East Anglian uplands which nurtured Etheldreda for her great work here. ”

“ And if the Highways are devoid of attraction during their course through the country districts, they make up for it by the supreme beauty and interest of their passage through the towns. Cambridge itself is, as all know, amongst the loveliest and most interesting places in existence, with its world-famed colleges and its epoch-making history. And Ely stands in the very first rank amongst the glorious cathedrals of England. ”

“ The nave in which we are standing is wholly Norman in its architecture; its pillars, alternately clustered and cylindrical, support round arches; these again support the round-headed double arches of the triforium, and these yet again the triple lights of the clerestory windows, three tiers in all. The arches are somewhat stilted, starting with a straight line, and are rather higher than semi-circular. All this severe architecture of Norman type leads on, as it were, to the more delicate tracery and moulding of the Early English lancet lights of the east window. ”

“ The piers of the tower arches, however, are unmistakably Norman, as is also the west doorway.
But what is the arcade? When we examine the massive circular pillars which support it, we see to our amazement that, instead of being built up in the usual manner, every one of them is a monolith! We are now obliged to confess ourselves in the presence not of Norman or Saxon but of Roman work, for no example of such monolithic construction is known in any later architecture, and was, indeed, sparingly employed even by the Romans. ”

“ Until the nineteenth century the place was so inaccessible by land that the Cambridgeshire annalist Carter (1752) tells us that "it is as rare to see a coach at Littleport as a ship at Newmarket."
From Littleport the road pursues its level way for seven miles across the fen, till, after crossing the small islet of Hilgay, it strikes the Norfolk uplands at their south-western corner, hard by Denver Sluice; the present boundary of the North Sea tide, which once ran up almost to Cambridge. This magnificent Sluice is the keystone of the whole drainage scheme of the fenland. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We owe to the creation of this Bishopric the very existence of Ely Minster as it now stands; had it remained merely an abbey, instead of being also a cathedral, it would have perished at the Reformation, along with the yet greater church at Bury St. Edmund's not far away, and with many another sister abbey throughout the land. At Ely, too, we should see before us ruined arches open to the sky, beautiful indeed and pathetic, but no longer a centre of worship. To this day the Bishop of Ely sits in his cathedral not as Bishop but as Abbot ”

“ The Fair is like a well-governed city; and less disorder and confusion to be seen there than in any other place where there is so great a concourse of people: here is a Court of Justice always open from morning till night, where the Mayor of Cambridge, or his Deputy, sits as Judge, determining all controversies in matters arising from the business of the Fair, and seeing the Peace thereof kept; for which purpose he hath eight servants, called Red-coats, attending him during the time of the Fair and other public occasions, one or other of which are constantly at hand in most parts of the Fair ”

“ These things of note are at Ely, the Lantern, and Chapel of Mary, A windmill too, and a vineyard that yieldeth wine in abundance. Know that the Choir before you exceedeth all others in beauty, Made by Alan our brother, Alan the wise Master Builder; He who of craftsmen the flower, was gifted with strength in his lifetime. Alan the Prior, forget not, here facing the Choir lieth buried. He, for that older Tower which fell one night in the darkness, Here erected, well-founded, the Tower ye now are beholding. Many the Houses of God that, as Prior and Sacrist, he builded. ”

“ Ethelred, surnamed the Unready, was on the throne—a King who for his lack of good judgment well deserved this contemptuous sobriquet—and his want of energy and capacity threw on to the shoulders of his subordinates the burden of the defence of his realm.
Brithnoth rose to the emergency, as a true Christian hero. At the head of his retainers he hurried to meet the foe, calling out the local levies to join his march. At Ely, as he hastened past, he, with his men, was royally entertained. ”

“ A sight of the kitchen, which adjoins the Buttery, can almost always be had, and is worth having; though the glory of the place has largely departed with the substitution of gas stoves for the old open ranges, six feet high and twelve feet long, before which scores of joints and fowls might be seen simultaneously twisting on huge spits. If less picturesque, the cooking is now more scientific, and the kitchen is a splendid chamber, the finest of all College kitchens, with an open pitched roof, and an oriel window, having been traditionally the ancient Hall of Michaelhouse. ”

“ On every beam stands a pail of water ready in case of fire.
Through a low doorway at the end we pass to the circle of the lantern. Here a shutter-like panel can be opened and we can look downwards if we will, but we shall probably elect rather to spend these rare minutes in gazing upwards, on the figure of Christ in the key boss of the vaulting, now that for once in our lives we find ourselves near enough to John of Burwell's carving to see how bold and yet how reverent it is. ”

“ To experts well acquainted with both places the minute shades of difference are of extreme interest; but to the average visitor the places are as like as twin sisters. The very names of the Colleges are the same in no less than a third of the cases. If there is a Trinity at Cambridge there is also a Trinity at Oxford, if there is a Magdalen at Oxford there is a Magdalene at Cambridge; while St. John's, Jesus, Corpus Christi, and Pembroke are all in like manner duplicated. And, both at Oxford and Cambridge, Colleges are named from Queens ”

“ Trinity Bridge.
Passing through the eastern doorway of the Screens we meet what is perhaps the most ideal academic view in the world. From our feet descends a semicircular stairway with steps of worn stone leading down to a vast enclosure of greensward, surrounded and traversed by broad walks of flags and pebbles, and enclosed on all sides by venerable Collegiate buildings with battlemented parapets. ”

“ Entering Silver Street, a mean thoroughfare, all too narrow for its volume of traffic, and demanding no small caution from all and sundry, we have on our left a building for all the world like a College—so frequently, indeed, mistaken for one by newcomers, as to have gained the nickname of "the Freshman's College." In reality this is the University Printing Press, or the Pitt Press, as it is commonly called; the existing frontage opposite Pembroke having been erected in 1831, in memory of that statesman, who was a member of Pembroke College. ”

“ The Abbot of Thorney was also "mitred," and the House ranked as second only to Ely in the county. William of Malmesbury (A.D. 1135) describes it as "a little paradise, delightsome as heaven itself may be deemed, fen-circled, yet rich in loftiest trees, where water-meadows delight the eye with rich green, where streamlets glide unchecked through each field. Scarce a spot of ground lies there waste; here are orchards, there vineyards. Nature vies with culture, and what is unknown to the one is produced by the other. ”

“ Thus Ely provides a key to the dating of all English Gothic architecture. As we travel through our own country, and on the Continent, we realise the marvellous solidarity that in those Middle Ages held Christendom together. Whenever a new architectural development calculated to promote beauty, strength, or light, came into being in one Catholic land, it spread without fail to the others, even to those furthest removed; what was the fashion in Italy, Spain, or France became the fashion in Scotland, and, so long as the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem endured, even in the Holy Land ”

“ 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. ”