St Mary, Eynesbury, St Neots, Cambridgeshire
And so to the last parish church in Cambridgeshire. It could be reported that it has taken me for a longer time to finish this county than any other, since I was 1st taken into a Cambridgeshire church to be baptised fifty-seven many years back at the age of two months. Be that as it may well, I begun visiting the Cambridgeshire churches in earnest about 4 many years in the past, partly as a result of an enthusiasm for family historical past. Extra than 30 Cambridgeshire parishes and their church buildings ended up homes to my ancestors of the very last four generations. Below, they were being baptised, married and despatched on their ultimate journey to the grave.
Cambridgeshire is a curious county. A satisfying parallelogram in shape, stretching some forty miles from corner to corner, it has only existed in its current kind considering the fact that 1974, when it was developed by the union of the two brief-lived counties of Huntingdon & Peterborough and Cambridgeshire & the Isle of Ely. These experienced been developed in their switch in 1965 out of four smaller counties, these being Huntingdonshire, the Soke of Peterborough, Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely. The Isle was returning to its position of just before the 1890s, when it experienced been hived off from Cambridgeshire for administrative purposes. Ahead of the 1890s, the Soke of Peterborough had been a section of Northamptonshire. However with me? Very good. The 1974 iteration of the county took in a single parish just about every from Bedfordshire and Essex, and then in the 1990s misplaced one particular parish to Suffolk.
It all sounds a bit of a hotchpotch, and nonetheless it appears to operate. Of all the amalgamated counties established in 1974, Cambridgeshire is the only one which has survived by general public will. Avon and Humberside have been consigned to history, Leicestershire broken up again into its constituent parts. But in Cambridgeshire, the previous county of Huntingdonshire has been authorized to endure as a neighborhood government district, as has the Soke of Peterborough which carries on in expanded form as the Peterborough unitary authority.
The metropolitan areas of Cambridge and Peterborough have the two expanded spectacularly considering the fact that 1965, and the county is the only non-metropolitan place to have an elected mayor directing millions of pounds to progress tasks. The inhabitants of about a million is split more or a lot less fifty percent-and-50 % in between city and rural settings. The west and south of the county are quite affluent, but the Fenland district in the north-east has deep pockets of poverty, as do the cities of Cambridge and Peterborough.
I expended the first 20 a long time of my lifestyle in Cambridgeshire, most of it in Cambridge, and it is still hard not to feel of it as residence. And so this has offered a specific resonance to my journeys around the county. Cambridgeshire’s church buildings are not breathtaking. In truth, it is challenging to identify a specific Cambridgeshire design and style at all, other than a liking for octagonal tower tops, and they are not so very plentiful. But Cambridgeshire shares borders with additional other counties than any other English county, and the church buildings near these borders tend to choose on the attributes of the other county – significant, marshland churches up close to Norfolk and Lincolnshire, smaller, homely churches down in the direction of Hertfordshire and Essex, grand Perpendicular church buildings by the Suffolk border, although west of Huntingdon the spired churches merge seamlessly into their Northamptonshire counterparts. Strikingly, Cambridgeshire’s very finest church buildings are very a lot all in the vicinity of a border with a further county.
Of system, the county has two significant medieval cathedrals at Peterborough and Ely, as effectively as a assortment of higher education chapels in Cambridge, some of which are medieval in origin, together with the amazing chapel of King’s Higher education, as excellent as a cathedral. I have involved these on my journey, so by the time John and I got to the St Neots suburb of Eynesbury at a quarter to 4 on a late autumn afternoon I experienced currently visited 314 Cambridgeshire churches. St Mary at Eynesbury would be the final parish church.
We hadn’t intended to be so late. We would arrived in St Neots at about two o’clock, prepared to go to the a few city centre churches, all of which before 1965 served different towns. If Cambridgeshire is an odd amalgam, then St Neots is odder nevertheless. 5 cities and villages merge into just about every other in the south-west corner of the county to type St Neots, which, with far more than 40,000 people, can claim to be ‘the largest city in Cambridgeshire’ (Cambridge and Peterborough each becoming metropolitan areas of class). The parishes of St Neots city and Eynesbury sort the city centre, with the parish of Eaton Socon on the opposite bank of the Terrific Ouse, and Eaton Ford, which varieties a component of the parish, to the north of it. Small Paxton, the poshest parish, retains alone a little bit at arms size, but again only by the width of a river. The Bedfordshire border operates alongside two sides of the town, and in truth, till 1965 areas of the city had been in Bedfordshire.
All a few medieval churches in St Neots city centre are big, and all 3 are dedicated to St Mary, which can be the trigger of some confusion. St Mary at St Neots and St Mary at Eynesbury are just a couple of hundred yards apart, separated by a tiny bridge, although St Mary at Eaton Socon sits fifty percent a mile or so to the south-west of them. The Eaton Socon church is heartily Evangelical in character, but the Eynesbury and St Neots city churches are each in the Anglo-Catholic custom, and I am tricky put to feel of two other this kind of Substantial church buildings so near together, in particular in a compact town, and thinking of that they are in separate benefices.
We experienced located the Eaton Socon church locked. The signal appeared to recommend that if you tipped up in the early morning on a weekday you may obtain the adjacent office open, and presumably they just could possibly let you into the church, although as magnificent as the Perpendicular exterior is there would not be substantially to see, as the church was gutted by hearth in 1930. The only old issue left is the font. Continue to, this was our thirteenth church of the day, and the very first one particular we had observed locked, so we were not also disappointed.
We headed off and parked in the vicinity of the Eynesbury church. This was also locked, but there was a keyholder detect, so I rang him up. He appeared a little stunned, but advised us he’d be coming down in about an hour’s time, would that do? I explained it would. We walked the small distance up to the St Neots city church, which was open up of training course, as it is each individual day. Another huge, spectacular Perpendicular church, but not sufficient inside of it to fill an hour, so we drove out to Excellent Paxton and its late Saxon church, which John had not visited just before, and then back into town to hold our appointment.
Eynesbury church is big, though in contrast to its two sisters it is largely Early English in origin, with before arcades and later aisles. The tower was significantly rebuilt in the 17th Century, and looks it. The tower is most unusual in that it is set in opposition to the most easterly bay of the south aisle of the nave. The nave extends westwards to the avenue line, which is also versus the north facet, and so this describes the tower’s situation. Of the three church buildings, this is the most city in overall look, and would not appear out of put in the centre of Cambridge.
The Early English inside is at initial instead dim, for as at St Neots, this church was practically entirely glazed in the 19th Century with colored glass, much of it by Hardman & Co. But, despite the fact that the nave is virtually as wide as at the other church, it does not sense like a barn. Somewhat, the lower roof and the dusty furnishings give a feeling of clutter, however not in a terrible way. This is a rough and prepared church which has shaped by itself to the desires and dreams of its parishioners in excess of the generations. Arthur Blomfield led the 19th Century restoration, and his common atmosphere lies seriously here. The see east is to the wonderful rood, the 1933 get the job done of Albert Richardson who experienced just finished restoring Eaton Socon.
I was pleased to learn that what I had taken for reticence in our host turned out to be a cheerful dryness. He was really welcoming, answered our issues, but still left us just to wander close to as he pottered about. I asked him about the Anglo-catholic custom of the two church buildings. He didn’t appear to be to believe it was unusual to come across two urban church buildings in the Anglo-Catholic tradition so shut together, which I discovered surprisingly reassuring. “We like to consider we’re just that minor bit increased than that lot up the street,” he noticed. I requested him how to pronounce Eynesbury (I have normally rhymed the initially syllable with lines). “Perfectly, we get in touch with it Ains-bury,” he stated, “while I will not know if that is proper.”
Nonetheless we wandered. The 17th Century pulpit was declared unusually gorgeous by Pevsner’s revising editor, and he’s ideal, the result partly the outcome of its resetting on an sophisticated stem in the 1970s. Other woodwork consists of the very best medieval bench finishes we had noticed all day, carved with animals such as pigs, bulls and a camel. Some of them surface to have been tailored and added to rather crudely, potentially in the 17th Century. Could this have been an try to mend the success of iconoclasm? If so, it would be appealing to know what was there in advance of.
In the center of the nave is a present day memorial slab to an Eynesbury parishioner who died two hundred many years back. James Toller was just twenty 1 yrs previous. What helps make him remarkable is that he was one of the tallest folks who have at any time lived. In close proximity to this put lies all that is mortal of James Toller (The Eynesbury Huge) who died 4th February 1818 aged 21 years, 8 feet 1½ inches in peak. James Toller was born in the highway beside the church in 1797. Tall from an early age, in his teenagers he was exhibited in London and offered to the Russian Tsar. He was toured throughout Europe with a Dutchman referred to as Simon Paap who was only 20 8 inches tall.
The fantastic men and women of Eynesbury feel to have dealt with James cheerfully as just one of their possess, but his prevalent fame inevitably made it extremely hard for him to live a typical existence, and, as his wellbeing deteriorated, he used his past decades at the rear of the large partitions of the rectory backyard. He was buried inside of the church for, it was claimed, a bounty of £20 experienced been issued for his corpse by dissectionists. In his lifetime a top of eight foot six was claimed for James, but a measurement of his skeleton when it was reburied after the 19th Century restoration of the interior gave a truer measurement, which was however exceptional.
And so, that was it, the final parish church in Cambridgeshire, a suitably quirky location for a quirky county. There are however a great deal of non-conformist chapels to check out, as effectively as the chapels of cemeteries, colleges and other institutions of course. But for now, the fulfillment of a job concluded accompanied me as we headed again to Ely station.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2018-11-11 08:36:34
Tagged: , Eynesbury , St Neots , Cambridgeshire , Cambs , Huntingdonshire , Hunts , church , East Anglia
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