St Mary, Eynesbury, St Neots, Cambridgeshire
And so to the very last parish church in Cambridgeshire. It could be said that it has taken me extended to finish this county than any other, simply because I was initially taken into a Cambridgeshire church to be baptised fifty-7 years in the past at the age of two months. Be that as it may perhaps, I started out traveling to the Cambridgeshire churches in earnest about 4 several years in the past, partly as a outcome of an enthusiasm for family members history. Far more than 30 Cambridgeshire parishes and their churches were being residences to my ancestors of the final four generations. Below, they ended up baptised, married and despatched on their closing journey to the grave.
Cambridgeshire is a curious county. A pleasing parallelogram in form, stretching some forty miles from corner to corner, it has only existed in its present kind because 1974, when it was established by the union of the two short-lived counties of Huntingdon & Peterborough and Cambridgeshire & the Isle of Ely. These had been produced in their change in 1965 out of 4 smaller counties, these being Huntingdonshire, the Soke of Peterborough, Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely. The Isle was returning to its position of prior to the 1890s, when it experienced been hived off from Cambridgeshire for administrative purposes. Prior to the 1890s, the Soke of Peterborough had been a component of Northamptonshire. However with me? Excellent. The 1974 iteration of the county took in a one parish every single from Bedfordshire and Essex, and then in the 1990s misplaced just one parish to Suffolk.
It all seems a bit of a hotchpotch, and nonetheless it looks to do the job. Of all the amalgamated counties created in 1974, Cambridgeshire is the only 1 which has survived by community will. Avon and Humberside have been consigned to record, Leicestershire damaged up once more into its constituent sections. But in Cambridgeshire, the previous county of Huntingdonshire has been allowed to survive as a nearby federal government district, as has the Soke of Peterborough which proceeds in expanded type as the Peterborough unitary authority.
The metropolitan areas of Cambridge and Peterborough have equally expanded spectacularly given that 1965, and the county is the only non-metropolitan region to have an elected mayor directing thousands and thousands of lbs to development assignments. The populace of about a million is break up additional or a lot less fifty percent-and-50 % amongst urban and rural settings. The west and south of the county are pretty affluent, but the Fenland district in the north-east has deep pockets of poverty, as do the towns of Cambridge and Peterborough.
I invested the first 20 a long time of my existence in Cambridgeshire, most of it in Cambridge, and it is nonetheless tough not to think of it as household. And so this has specified a exclusive resonance to my journeys around the county. Cambridgeshire’s church buildings are not stunning. Without a doubt, it is challenging to establish a particular Cambridgeshire design and style at all, other than a liking for octagonal tower tops, and they are not so pretty abundant. But Cambridgeshire shares borders with far more other counties than any other English county, and the churches in close proximity to individuals borders tend to take on the properties of the other county – big, marshland church buildings up in the vicinity of Norfolk and Lincolnshire, small, homely church buildings down to Hertfordshire and Essex, grand Perpendicular church buildings by the Suffolk border, even though west of Huntingdon the spired church buildings merge seamlessly into their Northamptonshire counterparts. Strikingly, Cambridgeshire’s pretty ideal churches are quite significantly all in the vicinity of a border with a further county.
Of study course, the county has two key medieval cathedrals at Peterborough and Ely, as very well as a collection of college chapels in Cambridge, some of which are medieval in origin, which include the breathtaking chapel of King’s University, as very good as a cathedral. I have provided these on my journey, so by the time John and I acquired to the St Neots suburb of Eynesbury at a quarter to 4 on a late autumn afternoon I experienced previously frequented 314 Cambridgeshire church buildings. St Mary at Eynesbury would be the remaining parish church.
We hadn’t meant to be so late. We’d arrived in St Neots at about two o’clock, ready to stop by the three town centre church buildings, all of which ahead of 1965 served separate cities. If Cambridgeshire is an odd amalgam, then St Neots is odder still. 5 cities and villages merge into every other in the south-west corner of the county to sort St Neots, which, with additional than 40,000 individuals, can declare to be ‘the largest town in Cambridgeshire’ (Cambridge and Peterborough both becoming cities of class). The parishes of St Neots town and Eynesbury sort the city centre, with the parish of Eaton Socon on the reverse lender of the Fantastic Ouse, and Eaton Ford, which types a portion of the parish, to the north of it. Very little Paxton, the poshest parish, keeps alone somewhat 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, until 1965 sections of the town ended up in Bedfordshire.
All three medieval churches in St Neots city centre are major, and all a few are dedicated to St Mary, which can be the result in of some confusion. St Mary at St Neots and St Mary at Eynesbury are just a pair of hundred yards apart, divided by a tiny bridge, though 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 church buildings are both in the Anglo-Catholic tradition, and I am tricky place to consider of two other this kind of Substantial churches so close together, particularly in a tiny town, and contemplating that they are in independent benefices.
We experienced located the Eaton Socon church locked. The indication appeared to advise that if you tipped up in the morning on a weekday you could possibly find the adjacent business office open, and presumably they just may well allow you into the church, though as impressive as the Perpendicular exterior is there would not be substantially to see, as the church was gutted by fire in 1930. The only old matter still left is the font. Continue to, this was our thirteenth church of the day, and the 1st a single we had found locked, so we weren’t far too unhappy.
We headed off and parked around the Eynesbury church. This was also locked, but there was a keyholder observe, so I rang him up. He appeared a tiny shocked, but told us he’d be coming down in about an hour’s time, would that do? I claimed it would. We walked the short length up to the St Neots city church, which was open of class, as it is every day. A different significant, amazing Perpendicular church, but not enough within of it to fill an hour, so we drove out to Great Paxton and its late Saxon church, which John experienced not visited prior to, and then again into city to preserve our appointment.
Eynesbury church is large, however compared with its two sisters it is mainly Early English in origin, with earlier arcades and afterwards aisles. The tower was substantially rebuilt in the 17th Century, and seems to be it. The tower is most uncommon in that it is established towards 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 aspect, and so this points out the tower’s posture. Of the a few churches, this is the most urban in physical appearance, and would not appear out of put in the centre of Cambridge.
The Early English interior is at initial relatively dim, for as at St Neots, this church was virtually entirely glazed in the 19th Century with coloured glass, much of it by Hardman & Co. But, though the nave is just about as extensive as at the other church, it does not feel like a barn. Instead, the reduced roof and the dusty furnishings give a sense of muddle, although not in a terrible way. This is a rough and all set church which has formed by itself to the wants and wishes of its parishioners above the generations. Arthur Blomfield led the 19th Century restoration, and his acquainted environment lies closely right here. The watch east is to the good rood, the 1933 do the job of Albert Richardson who experienced just concluded restoring Eaton Socon.
I was pleased to discover that what I experienced taken for reticence in our host turned out to be a cheerful dryness. He was really welcoming, answered our questions, but left us just to wander around as he pottered about. I asked him about the Anglo-catholic custom of the two churches. He did not feel to imagine it was unconventional to discover two city church buildings in the Anglo-Catholic custom so near with each other, which I found surprisingly reassuring. “We like to believe we are just that minor little bit bigger than that whole lot up the highway,” he noticed. I questioned him how to pronounce Eynesbury (I have often rhymed the very first syllable with strains). “Nicely, we call it Ains-bury,” he explained, “though I don’t know if that’s appropriate.”
Nevertheless we wandered. The 17th Century pulpit was declared unusually gorgeous by Pevsner’s revising editor, and he is right, the outcome partly the final result of its resetting on an sophisticated stem in the 1970s. Other woodwork consists of the ideal medieval bench finishes we experienced seen all working day, carved with animals which include pigs, bulls and a camel. Some of them appear to have been adapted and extra to instead crudely, most likely in the 17th Century. Could this have been an endeavor to mend the outcomes of iconoclasm? If so, it would be fascinating to know what was there prior to.
In the middle of the nave is a modern memorial slab to an Eynesbury parishioner who died two hundred decades ago. James Toller was just 20 one particular several years outdated. What can make him exceptional is that he was just one of the tallest individuals who have ever lived. Near this position lies all that is mortal of James Toller (The Eynesbury Large) who died 4th February 1818 aged 21 years, 8 feet 1½ inches in height. James Toller was born in the road 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 through Europe with a Dutchman referred to as Simon Paap who was only twenty 8 inches tall.
The superior individuals of Eynesbury feel to have treated James cheerfully as a single of their have, but his common fame ultimately designed it impossible for him to live a normal life, and, as his well being deteriorated, he spent his past many years at the rear of the superior partitions of the rectory backyard garden. He was buried inside the church for, it was claimed, a bounty of £20 had been issued for his corpse by dissectionists. In his life time a height of 8 foot 6 was claimed for James, but a measurement of his skeleton when it was reburied immediately after the 19th Century restoration of the inside gave a truer measurement, which was even now impressive.
And so, that was it, the very last parish church in Cambridgeshire, a suitably quirky position for a quirky county. There are continue to a great deal of non-conformist chapels to go to, as nicely as the chapels of cemeteries, colleges and other institutions of study course. But for now, the satisfaction of a work done accompanied me as we headed again to Ely station.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2018-11-11 08:36:43
Tagged: , Eynesbury , St Neots , Cambridgeshire , Cambs , Huntingdonshire , Hunts , church , East Anglia
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