St Mary, Eynesbury, St Neots, Cambridgeshire
And so to the previous parish church in Cambridgeshire. It could be reported that it has taken me for a longer time to comprehensive this county than any other, simply because I was very first taken into a Cambridgeshire church to be baptised fifty-seven a long time in the past at the age of two months. Be that as it could, I begun browsing the Cambridgeshire churches in earnest about 4 years ago, partly as a outcome of an enthusiasm for household record. Far more than 30 Cambridgeshire parishes and their church buildings were being households to my ancestors of the previous four generations. Below, they ended up baptised, married and sent on their ultimate journey to the grave.
Cambridgeshire is a curious county. A satisfying parallelogram in form, stretching some forty miles from corner to corner, it has only existed in its present variety since 1974, when it was created by the union of the two brief-lived counties of Huntingdon & Peterborough and Cambridgeshire & the Isle of Ely. These had been made in their turn in 1965 out of four scaled-down counties, these currently 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 reasons. Right before the 1890s, the Soke of Peterborough experienced been a portion of Northamptonshire. Continue to with me? Very good. The 1974 iteration of the county took in a single parish every single from Bedfordshire and Essex, and then in the 1990s dropped a person parish to Suffolk.
It all appears a bit of a hotchpotch, and nonetheless it appears to be to operate. Of all the amalgamated counties created in 1974, Cambridgeshire is the only one particular which has survived by public will. Avon and Humberside have been consigned to heritage, Leicestershire broken up once more into its constituent components. But in Cambridgeshire, the previous county of Huntingdonshire has been allowed to endure as a regional government district, as has the Soke of Peterborough which continues in expanded type as the Peterborough unitary authority.
The cities of Cambridge and Peterborough have each expanded spectacularly since 1965, and the county is the only non-metropolitan area to have an elected mayor directing millions of lbs . to improvement jobs. The population of about a million is split far more or much less fifty percent-and-fifty percent 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 spent the initially twenty yrs of my existence in Cambridgeshire, most of it in Cambridge, and it is even now tough not to imagine of it as home. And so this has given a unique resonance to my journeys all-around the county. Cambridgeshire’s church buildings are not amazing. Certainly, it is really hard to establish a unique Cambridgeshire design and style at all, other than a liking for octagonal tower tops, and they are not so incredibly abundant. But Cambridgeshire shares borders with additional other counties than any other English county, and the church buildings close to people borders tend to choose on the properties of the other county – massive, marshland churches up in the vicinity of Norfolk and Lincolnshire, tiny, homely churches down in the direction of Hertfordshire and Essex, grand Perpendicular churches by the Suffolk border, when west of Huntingdon the spired churches merge seamlessly into their Northamptonshire counterparts. Strikingly, Cambridgeshire’s really best churches are very considerably all around a border with a different county.
Of program, the county has two main medieval cathedrals at Peterborough and Ely, as perfectly as a selection of college chapels in Cambridge, some of which are medieval in origin, including the stunning chapel of King’s Faculty, as fantastic as a cathedral. I have incorporated these on my journey, so by the time John and I got to the St Neots suburb of Eynesbury at a quarter to four on a late autumn afternoon I experienced currently frequented 314 Cambridgeshire churches. St Mary at Eynesbury would be the ultimate parish church.
We hadn’t meant to be so late. We’d arrived in St Neots at about two o’clock, prepared to check out the three town centre churches, all of which right before 1965 served separate towns. If Cambridgeshire is an odd amalgam, then St Neots is odder however. Five cities and villages merge into just about every other in the south-west corner of the county to type St Neots, which, with a lot more than 40,000 individuals, can claim to be ‘the greatest city in Cambridgeshire’ (Cambridge and Peterborough both equally currently being metropolitan areas of study course). The parishes of St Neots town and Eynesbury sort the town centre, with the parish of Eaton Socon on the reverse bank of the Wonderful Ouse, and Eaton Ford, which kinds a part of the parish, to the north of it. Small Paxton, the poshest parish, keeps itself a bit at arms duration, but again only by the width of a river. The Bedfordshire border operates along two sides of the city, and in truth, right until 1965 sections of the town had been in Bedfordshire.
All 3 medieval church buildings in St Neots town centre are massive, and all 3 are dedicated to St Mary, which can be the bring about of some confusion. St Mary at St Neots and St Mary at Eynesbury are just a few of hundred yards aside, divided by a modest bridge, even though St Mary at Eaton Socon sits half 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 town church buildings are both in the Anglo-Catholic tradition, and I am really hard place to imagine of two other these types of Large church buildings so close with each other, in particular in a little city, and thinking of that they are in individual benefices.
We had located the Eaton Socon church locked. The signal appeared to counsel that if you tipped up in the early morning on a weekday you may discover the adjacent place of work open up, and presumably they just could let you into the church, while as stunning as the Perpendicular exterior is there would not be a great deal to see, as the church was gutted by fireplace in 1930. The only aged factor left is the font. Continue to, this was our thirteenth church of the working day, and the first 1 we experienced located locked, so we weren’t as well unhappy.
We headed off and parked near the Eynesbury church. This was also locked, but there was a keyholder see, so I rang him up. He appeared a minor stunned, but explained to us he’d be coming down in about an hour’s time, would that do? I said it would. We walked the small distance up to the St Neots town church, which was open up of class, as it is each and every day. Another massive, impressive Perpendicular church, but not enough inside of it to fill an hour, so we drove out to Terrific Paxton and its late Saxon church, which John experienced not visited before, and then back again into city to maintain our appointment.
Eynesbury church is major, though compared with its two sisters it is largely Early English in origin, with before arcades and afterwards aisles. The tower was significantly rebuilt in the 17th Century, and appears to be it. The tower is most uncommon in that it is set from the most easterly bay of the south aisle of the nave. The nave extends westwards to the street line, which is also towards the north side, and so this clarifies the tower’s situation. Of the a few churches, this is the most city in overall look, and would not look out of position in the centre of Cambridge.
The Early English inside is at first alternatively dim, for as at St Neots, this church was almost totally glazed in the 19th Century with colored glass, much of it by Hardman & Co. But, though the nave is virtually as extensive as at the other church, it does not sense like a barn. Rather, the decrease roof and the dusty furnishings give a perception of muddle, nevertheless not in a undesirable way. This is a rough and completely ready church which has formed by itself to the desires and dreams of its parishioners around the generations. Arthur Blomfield led the 19th Century restoration, and his familiar ambiance lies heavily here. The look at east is to the good rood, the 1933 work of Albert Richardson who had just completed restoring Eaton Socon.
I was happy to uncover that what I experienced taken for reticence in our host turned out to be a cheerful dryness. He was quite welcoming, answered our questions, but left us just to wander all around as he pottered about. I asked him about the Anglo-catholic tradition of the two church buildings. He failed to appear to be to imagine it was strange to locate two urban churches in the Anglo-Catholic tradition so near with each other, which I discovered strangely reassuring. “We like to assume we are just that tiny bit higher than that great deal up the road,” he noticed. I requested him how to pronounce Eynesbury (I have usually rhymed the first syllable with traces). “Very well, we phone it Ains-bury,” he explained, “although I will not know if that’s right.”
Nonetheless we wandered. The 17th Century pulpit was declared unusually stunning by Pevsner’s revising editor, and he is right, the outcome partly the end result of its resetting on an tasteful stem in the 1970s. Other woodwork includes the finest medieval bench ends we had found all working day, carved with animals which includes pigs, bulls and a camel. Some of them show up to have been tailored and extra to instead crudely, most likely in the 17th Century. Could this have been an endeavor to fix the results of iconoclasm? If so, it would be exciting to know what was there in advance of.
In the center of the nave is a modern memorial slab to an Eynesbury parishioner who died two hundred yrs ago. James Toller was just twenty one decades previous. What tends to make him exceptional is that he was one particular of the tallest men and women who have ever lived. In the vicinity of this put lies all that is mortal of James Toller (The Eynesbury Large) who died 4th February 1818 aged 21 decades, 8 toes 1½ inches in height. James Toller was born in the street 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 all over Europe with a Dutchman named Simon Paap who was only 20 eight inches tall.
The fantastic individuals of Eynesbury appear to have taken care of James cheerfully as one of their possess, but his popular fame eventually produced it extremely hard for him to dwell a typical lifetime, and, as his health deteriorated, he expended his final several years behind the large partitions of the rectory yard. He was buried within the church for, it was claimed, a bounty of £20 had been issued for his corpse by dissectionists. In his life time a peak of 8 foot 6 was claimed for James, but a measurement of his skeleton when it was reburied just after the 19th Century restoration of the inside gave a truer measurement, which was nonetheless extraordinary.
And so, that was it, the final parish church in Cambridgeshire, a suitably quirky area for a quirky county. There are however loads of non-conformist chapels to pay a visit to, as nicely as the chapels of cemeteries, colleges and other establishments of training course. But for now, the pleasure of a task completed accompanied me as we headed back to Ely station.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2018-11-11 08:36:38
Tagged: , Eynesbury , St Neots , Cambridgeshire , Cambs , Huntingdonshire , Hunts , church , East Anglia
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