Bored of Ely?

You will be!

Hereward the Wake. Stood up to the Normans after the conquest. Around 1070 (?) he made his last stand either at Ely or on one of the nearby Isles. Yes, Ely was an island above the marshes and flooded Fens. When Meres really meant something.   All of the following can be found on any encyclopaedia - but it can still be of interest.

Herward the Wake was a Saxon Thegn. A thegn was a Saxon nobleman. In service to the King they were indispensable to law and order. Until the Norman conquest of 1066, of course. Hereward came back from exile in around 1070 to stand up to William. For nearly a year he held the isles. To the victor comes the writing of history. Little is known of this man, Hereward. Centuries before 'Robin Hood' he stood up to oppression.

The Wake 1070-71 Anglo-Saxon rebel against William the Conqueror and the hero of many Norman and English legends. He is associated with a region in present-day Huntingdonshire and Northamptonshire.

In 1070, expecting a conquest of England by King Sweyn II of Denmark, Hereward and some followers joined a force of Danish sailors who had come to Ely. Together they sacked Peterborough Abbey, perhaps to prevent its treasures from falling into the hands of the new Norman abbot, Turold. Soon after, Sweyn made peace with William the Conqueror, and so the Danes returned home. Hereward, however, established himself on the Isle of Ely, which in 1071 became a refuge for Anglo-Saxon fugitives, notably Morcar, earl of Northumbria. William's forces eventually captured the isle after a methodical assault, but Hereward managed to escape. He is the hero of Charles Kingsley's last novel, Hereward the Wake (1866).  Copyright © 1994-2000 Encyclopędia Britannica, Inc.

 

The Fens...

 

The Fens also called FENLAND, natural region of about 15,500 sq mi (40,100 sq km) of reclaimed marshland in eastern England, extending north to south between Lincoln and Cambridge. Across its surface the Rivers Witham, Welland, Nen, and Ouse flow into the North Sea indentation between Lincolnshire and Norfolk known as The Wash, but the natural drainage has largely been replaced by artificial channels. The area is essentially a flooded clay plain with slight "island" eminences, notably Ely. The basin gradually became infilled by sediment, leaving The Wash as the remnant of a more extensive indentation. Around The Wash is a belt of marine silts and clays, south of which an expanse of black peat covers the area. The peat, much thicker before drainage was undertaken, now varies in depth from a few inches to more than 10 ft (3 m).

The Romans cultivated both islands and silt lands, but in subsequent Anglo-Saxon times the Fens were a thinly settled waste. Throughout the Middle Ages piecemeal encroachment took place, but the peatlands remained untouched until the mid-17th century, when the 4th earl of Bedford engaged a Dutch engineer, Cornelius Vermuyden, to drain the southern peat area, later known as the Bedford Level. Most notable among the drains then constructed was the Old Bedford River; running from Earith to Salter's Lode, it was 70 ft wide and 21 mi (34 km) long. The New Bedford River, 100 ft wide, ran parallel to it about ¹/₂ mi to the east. The immediate prosperity that these drains helped create proved short-lived, because they had the effect of lowering by perhaps 10 to 12 ft the level of the peat surface.

The introduction of windmills, substituting pumped for gravity drainage, saved most of the drained Fens from being reinundated, but the peat continued to sink as the drainage became more effective, so that by about 1800 some areas once inhabited had become watery wastes. There were still tracts that had never been reclaimed, particularly the large reed-bordered lakes of Whittlesey Mere and Ramsey Mere. Fishing and fowling remained characteristic occupations, and ague, or fen fever, was prevalent. From 1810 windmills began to be replaced by steam-pumping stations, though a few windmills survived even into the 20th century to form familiar landmarks. Pumping is now done by diesel engines, but the perennial problem of protecting the low drained lands from the high-riding river remains and was dramatically illustrated in the severe floods of March 1947, when several riverbanks were breached.

The Fens are now one of the richest arable areas of England, supporting not only traditional crops such as wheat but also potatoes, flowers, fruit, and vegetables. A few stretches of peat survive, two of them nature reserves, valuable for the study of rare plants and insects. Wicken Fen, on the eastern edge, with its waterlogged surface rising several feet above the adjoining peatlands, gives some indication of what the whole fen region was like before Vermuyden's day. Copyright © 1994-2000 Encyclopędia Britannica, Inc.

Can we understand mediaeval man? They certainly were not stupid. Can you imagine trying to build a Cathedral without power tools, excavators, bulldozers and hydraulic cranes?  Fancy shipping the stone from Normandy along the coast and up a malarial swamp? What kind of people did those things? The best attempt at getting into the head of these people, our ancestors, was made by William Golding in 'The Spire' ISBN 0571064922, Faber & Faber, 1964. Jocelin had the mentality to build a Cathedral in swampland.

Do we dismiss our ancestors as superstitious? What power superstition must have had to achieve so much!

Lately the wrestling with 'mind-sets' so totally alien from our own has been taken up by Michael Crichton in 'Timeline' , ISBN 0099244721, www.randomhouse.co.uk.

Cambridge would not be the place it is without Ely....

John Alcock was the Bishop of Ely when he founded Jesus College in Cambridge. Educated at Cambridge, Alcock was made dean of Westminster (1461), and thereafter his promotion was rapid in religious and secular posts. In 1470 he was sent as ambassador to the court of Castile. He became successively bishop of Rochester (1472), Worcester (1476), and Ely (1486). He also held the office of chancellor and conducted negotiations with King James III of Scotland, besides filling other posts under Edward IV and Henry VII.

In addition to founding a charity at Beverley, Yorkshire, a grammar school at Kingston-upon-Hull, Yorkshire, and Jesus College, he worked to restore churches and colleges. His surviving published works include Mons perfectionis (1497;"The Hill of Perfection") and Gallicantus Johannis Alcock episcopi Eliensis ad fratres suos curatos in sinodo apud Barnwell (1498;"Gallicantus [Song of the Cock] of John Alcock Bishop of Ely to His Brother Clergy in the Synod at Barnwell"). The last is a little treatise written in allusion to his name and decorated with figures of the rooster; it is also a good specimen of early English printing and illustration. Copyright © 1994-2000 Encyclopędia Britannica, Inc

Cromwell's land...

Cannot go through the history of Ely without mentioning Oliver Cormwell. 

Cromwell also had financial worries until, at the age of 39, he inherited property at Ely from his mother's brother. Like other lesser gentry, he contended with bad harvests and a variety of taxes and impositions, such as ship money, exacted by the monarchy not only to pay for the upkeep of the navy but to sustain the lavish tastes of the court. Though in 1628 he had been elected a member of Parliament for the borough of Huntingdon, King Charles I dissolved this Parliament in 1629 and did not call another for 11 years.

During the interval, country gentlemen like Cromwell accumulated grievances. The Cromwell family was but one of a network of dissatisfied gentry who belonged to what one might call the political nation: for example, John Hampden, the wealthy Buckinghamshire squire who brought a test case against the crown over the levying of ship money, was Cromwell's first cousin. Thus, when in the spring of 1640 Cromwell was elected member of Parliament for the borough of Cambridge, partly because of the important social position he held in Ely and partly because of his fame as "Lord of the Fens," he found himself among a host of friends at Westminster who, led by John Pym, a veteran politician from Somerset, were highly critical of the monarchy. Little was achieved by the Short Parliament (dissolved after three weeks), but, when in November 1640 Cromwell was again returned by Cambridge to what was to be known as the Long Parliament, which sat until 1653, his public career began. Copyright © 1994-2000 Encyclopędia Britannica, Inc

Architecture...

Alec Clifton-Taylor (1907-85) was an eminent architect and architectural historian, with a destinctive presentation style. His BBC TV's 'English Towns' of the early '80's' is still a classic. His last work 'Buildings of Delight', Gollancz,1986, ISBN 0575043393, does not mention the obvious architectural edifices of the Cathedral, nor Oliver Cromwell's house, nor Great St Mary's church, but Prior Crauden's Chapel.  Crauden was Prior in 1322, at the time the Octagon had to be rebuilt. The Chapel is made of Barnack rag - a limestone from the Soke of Peterborough. It has a mosaic pavement. Go see.