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, mainly because I was to start with taken into a Cambridgeshire church to be baptised fifty-7 many years ago at the age of two months. Be that as it may well, I started out browsing the Cambridgeshire church buildings in earnest about four a long time ago, partly as a outcome of an enthusiasm for household heritage. Additional than thirty Cambridgeshire parishes and their church buildings have been homes to my ancestors of the final four generations. In this article, they ended up baptised, married and sent on their closing journey to the grave.
Cambridgeshire is a curious county. A pleasing parallelogram in condition, stretching some forty miles from corner to corner, it has only existed in its present type given that 1974, when it was made by the union of the two quick-lived counties of Huntingdon & Peterborough and Cambridgeshire & the Isle of Ely. These experienced been produced in their change in 1965 out of four scaled-down 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. Before the 1890s, the Soke of Peterborough had been a element of Northamptonshire. Still with me? Superior. The 1974 iteration of the county took in a single parish each individual from Bedfordshire and Essex, and then in the 1990s misplaced a person parish to Suffolk.
It all seems a little bit of a hotchpotch, and still it would seem to perform. Of all the amalgamated counties made in 1974, Cambridgeshire is the only 1 which has survived by general public will. Avon and Humberside have been consigned to heritage, Leicestershire damaged up again into its constituent areas. But in Cambridgeshire, the former county of Huntingdonshire has been allowed to survive as a community federal government district, as has the Soke of Peterborough which carries on in expanded sort as the Peterborough unitary authority.
The cities of Cambridge and Peterborough have the two expanded spectacularly since 1965, and the county is the only non-metropolitan area to have an elected mayor directing hundreds of thousands of lbs . to advancement assignments. The inhabitants of about a million is split extra or considerably less 50 %-and-half amongst city and rural settings. The west and south of the county are very prosperous, but the Fenland district in the north-east has deep pockets of poverty, as do the towns of Cambridge and Peterborough.
I expended the 1st 20 a long time of my daily life in Cambridgeshire, most of it in Cambridge, and it is still tricky not to believe of it as property. And so this has specified a exclusive resonance to my journeys all-around the county. Cambridgeshire’s church buildings are not stunning. Without a doubt, it is really hard to recognize a individual Cambridgeshire type at all, other than a liking for octagonal tower tops, and they are not so pretty plentiful. But Cambridgeshire shares borders with additional other counties than any other English county, and the church buildings around individuals borders tend to just take on the qualities of the other county – big, marshland churches up near Norfolk and Lincolnshire, compact, homely church buildings down toward Hertfordshire and Essex, grand Perpendicular church buildings by the Suffolk border, though west of Huntingdon the spired church buildings merge seamlessly into their Northamptonshire counterparts. Strikingly, Cambridgeshire’s quite finest churches are fairly a lot all near a border with yet another county.
Of program, the county has two significant medieval cathedrals at Peterborough and Ely, as well as a selection of faculty chapels in Cambridge, some of which are medieval in origin, including the spectacular chapel of King’s School, as fantastic as a cathedral. I have provided these on my journey, so by the time John and I obtained to the St Neots suburb of Eynesbury at a quarter to 4 on a late autumn afternoon I experienced by now visited 314 Cambridgeshire church buildings. St Mary at Eynesbury would be the last parish church.
We hadn’t meant to be so late. We’d arrived in St Neots at about two o’clock, prepared to take a look at the a few town centre church buildings, all of which in advance of 1965 served separate cities. If Cambridgeshire is an odd amalgam, then St Neots is odder however. 5 towns and villages merge into each individual other in the south-west corner of the county to variety St Neots, which, with far more than 40,000 people today, can claim to be ‘the most significant town in Cambridgeshire’ (Cambridge and Peterborough both equally becoming towns of class). The parishes of St Neots town and Eynesbury form the town centre, with the parish of Eaton Socon on the opposite lender of the Good Ouse, and Eaton Ford, which sorts a aspect of the parish, to the north of it. Small Paxton, the poshest parish, retains itself a little bit at arms length, but once more only by the width of a river. The Bedfordshire border operates together two sides of the city, and certainly, until eventually 1965 elements of the town were being in Bedfordshire.
All 3 medieval church buildings in St Neots town centre are significant, and all a few are dedicated to St Mary, which can be the cause of some confusion. St Mary at St Neots and St Mary at Eynesbury are just a pair of hundred yards aside, divided by a smaller 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 church buildings are both of those in the Anglo-Catholic custom, and I am difficult set to think of two other this kind of Significant churches so shut with each other, in particular in a tiny town, and looking at that they are in independent benefices.
We had observed the Eaton Socon church locked. The signal seemed to recommend that if you tipped up in the morning on a weekday you may well find the adjacent office open up, and presumably they just may let you into the church, though as breathtaking as the Perpendicular exterior is there would not be considerably to see, as the church was gutted by fireplace in 1930. The only old matter still left is the font. Nevertheless, this was our thirteenth church of the working day, and the 1st a single we had identified locked, so we weren’t too let down.
We headed off and parked near the Eynesbury church. This was also locked, but there was a keyholder discover, so I rang him up. He seemed a minor surprised, but explained to us he’d be coming down in about an hour’s time, would that do? I reported it would. We walked the quick distance up to the St Neots city church, which was open of study course, as it is every working day. An additional big, spectacular Perpendicular church, but not plenty of inside of of it to fill an hour, so we drove out to Wonderful Paxton and its late Saxon church, which John had not frequented ahead of, and then again into town to retain our appointment.
Eynesbury church is big, however in contrast to its two sisters it is largely Early English in origin, with previously arcades and later on aisles. The tower was significantly rebuilt in the 17th Century, and appears to be like 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 road line, which is also versus the north side, and so this clarifies the tower’s placement. Of the 3 churches, this is the most city in physical appearance, and would not glance out of location in the centre of Cambridge.
The Early English inside is at initially fairly dim, for as at St Neots, this church was pretty much totally glazed in the 19th Century with coloured glass, significantly of it by Hardman & Co. But, even though the nave is just about as broad as at the other church, it does not come to feel like a barn. Relatively, the decrease roof and the dusty furnishings give a sense of clutter, while not in a negative way. This is a rough and completely ready church which has formed itself to the needs and dreams of its parishioners above the generations. Arthur Blomfield led the 19th Century restoration, and his common environment lies seriously listed here. The check out east is to the great rood, the 1933 perform of Albert Richardson who experienced just finished restoring Eaton Socon.
I was delighted to discover that what I experienced taken for reticence in our host turned out to be a cheerful dryness. He was very welcoming, answered our inquiries, but still left us just to wander close to as he pottered about. I requested him about the Anglo-catholic custom of the two church buildings. He did not seem to consider it was uncommon to find two city church buildings in the Anglo-Catholic custom so near jointly, which I uncovered strangely reassuring. “We like to assume we are just that tiny little bit larger than that large amount up the road,” he noticed. I asked him how to pronounce Eynesbury (I have constantly rhymed the initially syllable with lines). “Effectively, we get in touch with it Ains-bury,” he reported, “even though I you should not know if which is proper.”
However we wandered. The 17th Century pulpit was declared unusually gorgeous by Pevsner’s revising editor, and he’s proper, the result partly the result of its resetting on an sophisticated stem in the 1970s. Other woodwork features the finest medieval bench finishes we experienced observed all working day, carved with animals which includes pigs, bulls and a camel. Some of them surface to have been adapted and added to alternatively crudely, possibly in the 17th Century. Could this have been an attempt to fix the final results of iconoclasm? If so, it would be intriguing 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 a long time ago. James Toller was just twenty one particular several years old. What makes him exceptional is that he was a person of the tallest individuals who have at any time lived. Close to this spot lies all that is mortal of James Toller (The Eynesbury Huge) who died 4th February 1818 aged 21 many years, 8 ft 1½ inches in height. 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 presented to the Russian Tsar. He was toured through Europe with a Dutchman named Simon Paap who was only 20 eight inches tall.
The excellent men and women of Eynesbury look to have treated James cheerfully as one particular of their very own, but his prevalent fame at some point created it difficult for him to reside a regular lifestyle, and, as his wellbeing deteriorated, he put in his very last decades powering the superior partitions of the rectory yard. 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 span a top of 8 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 even now exceptional.
And so, that was it, the very last parish church in Cambridgeshire, a suitably quirky place for a quirky county. There are however plenty of non-conformist chapels to stop by, as effectively as the chapels of cemeteries, colleges and other institutions of training course. But for now, the satisfaction of a occupation done accompanied me as we headed back again to Ely station.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2018-11-11 08:36:39
Tagged: , Eynesbury , St Neots , Cambridgeshire , Cambs , Huntingdonshire , Hunts , church , East Anglia
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