St Mary, Eynesbury, St Neots, Cambridgeshire
And so to the last parish church in Cambridgeshire. It could be claimed that it has taken me lengthier to total this county than any other, simply because I was very first taken into a Cambridgeshire church to be baptised fifty-seven many years ago at the age of two months. Be that as it may well, I commenced checking out the Cambridgeshire churches in earnest about 4 decades back, partly as a result of an enthusiasm for spouse and children record. Far more than thirty Cambridgeshire parishes and their churches ended up households to my ancestors of the last 4 generations. Listed here, they had been baptised, married and sent on their last 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 current sort because 1974, when it was made by the union of the two quick-lived counties of Huntingdon & Peterborough and Cambridgeshire & the Isle of Ely. These had been designed in their transform in 1965 out of 4 more compact counties, these staying Huntingdonshire, the Soke of Peterborough, Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely. The Isle was returning to its standing of just before the 1890s, when it had been hived off from Cambridgeshire for administrative uses. Ahead of the 1890s, the Soke of Peterborough had been a component of Northamptonshire. Still with me? Superior. The 1974 iteration of the county took in a solitary parish every single from Bedfordshire and Essex, and then in the 1990s misplaced just one parish to Suffolk.
It all sounds a bit of a hotchpotch, and however it looks to do the job. Of all the amalgamated counties made in 1974, Cambridgeshire is the only just one which has survived by community will. Avon and Humberside have been consigned to historical past, Leicestershire damaged up yet again into its constituent parts. But in Cambridgeshire, the former county of Huntingdonshire has been permitted to survive as a area federal government district, as has the Soke of Peterborough which carries on in expanded variety as the Peterborough unitary authority.
The metropolitan areas of Cambridge and Peterborough have both expanded spectacularly due to the fact 1965, and the county is the only non-metropolitan area to have an elected mayor directing millions of pounds to progress tasks. The inhabitants of about a million is break up extra or less half-and-fifty percent involving urban and rural configurations. 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 metropolitan areas of Cambridge and Peterborough.
I put in the initially 20 years of my life in Cambridgeshire, most of it in Cambridge, and it is however challenging not to assume of it as property. And so this has presented a distinctive resonance to my journeys close to the county. Cambridgeshire’s churches are not stunning. In fact, it is tricky to determine a certain Cambridgeshire fashion at all, other than a liking for octagonal tower tops, and they are not so incredibly plentiful. But Cambridgeshire shares borders with additional other counties than any other English county, and the churches close to those people borders are likely to consider on the characteristics of the other county – big, marshland churches up around Norfolk and Lincolnshire, tiny, homely churches down in direction of Hertfordshire and Essex, grand Perpendicular churches by the Suffolk border, while west of Huntingdon the spired churches merge seamlessly into their Northamptonshire counterparts. Strikingly, Cambridgeshire’s really best church buildings are really substantially all in the vicinity of a border with one more county.
Of program, the county has two significant medieval cathedrals at Peterborough and Ely, as properly as a selection of school chapels in Cambridge, some of which are medieval in origin, like the stunning chapel of King’s Higher education, as superior as a cathedral. I have bundled these on my journey, so by the time John and I bought to the St Neots suburb of Eynesbury at a quarter to four on a late autumn afternoon I had 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, completely ready to pay a visit to the three town centre church buildings, all of which right before 1965 served individual cities. If Cambridgeshire is an odd amalgam, then St Neots is odder nonetheless. 5 cities and villages merge into each individual other in the south-west corner of the county to kind St Neots, which, with extra than 40,000 persons, can declare to be ‘the greatest town in Cambridgeshire’ (Cambridge and Peterborough both equally staying cities of class). The parishes of St Neots town and Eynesbury kind the town centre, with the parish of Eaton Socon on the opposite bank of the Fantastic Ouse, and Eaton Ford, which varieties a portion of the parish, to the north of it. Minimal Paxton, the poshest parish, keeps alone slightly at arms length, but yet again only by the width of a river. The Bedfordshire border runs together two sides of the city, and in truth, until 1965 elements of the town were in Bedfordshire.
All 3 medieval churches in St Neots town centre are major, and all three are dedicated to St Mary, which can be the induce of some confusion. St Mary at St Neots and St Mary at Eynesbury are just a pair of hundred yards apart, separated by a compact bridge, whilst St Mary at Eaton Socon sits 50 % 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 really hard set to believe of two other this kind of Significant church buildings so near together, in particular in a smaller city, and thinking about that they are in different benefices.
We experienced identified the Eaton Socon church locked. The sign seemed to suggest that if you tipped up in the morning on a weekday you could possibly find the adjacent office environment open, and presumably they just may well enable you into the church, even though as impressive as the Perpendicular exterior is there would not be significantly to see, as the church was gutted by fireplace in 1930. The only old matter still left is the font. However, this was our thirteenth church of the working day, and the 1st a person we experienced discovered locked, so we weren’t much too let down.
We headed off and parked in close proximity to the Eynesbury church. This was also locked, but there was a keyholder recognize, so I rang him up. He appeared a tiny astonished, but instructed us he’d be coming down in about an hour’s time, would that do? I explained it would. We walked the brief distance up to the St Neots city church, which was open of class, as it is each individual day. A different massive, spectacular Perpendicular church, but not adequate inside of it to fill an hour, so we drove out to Wonderful Paxton and its late Saxon church, which John had not frequented right before, and then again into town to continue to keep our appointment.
Eynesbury church is massive, while unlike its two sisters it is largely Early English in origin, with earlier arcades and later aisles. The tower was considerably rebuilt in the 17th Century, and appears to be it. The tower is most abnormal in that it is set towards the most easterly bay of the south aisle of the nave. The nave extends westwards to the avenue line, which is also from the north side, and so this clarifies the tower’s posture. Of the 3 church buildings, this is the most urban in look, and would not look out of put in the centre of Cambridge.
The Early English inside is at initially rather dim, for as at St Neots, this church was nearly completely glazed in the 19th Century with colored glass, a lot of it by Hardman & Co. But, although the nave is virtually as broad as at the other church, it does not feel like a barn. Instead, the decreased roof and the dusty furnishings give a sense of muddle, even though not in a lousy way. This is a rough and prepared church which has formed itself to the demands and wants of its parishioners more than the generations. Arthur Blomfield led the 19th Century restoration, and his acquainted ambiance lies heavily below. The look at east is to the excellent rood, the 1933 function of Albert Richardson who had just concluded restoring Eaton Socon.
I was delighted to discover that what I had taken for reticence in our host turned out to be a cheerful dryness. He was extremely welcoming, answered our queries, but remaining us just to wander all around as he pottered about. I asked him about the Anglo-catholic custom of the two church buildings. He failed to seem to believe it was unusual to come across two urban church buildings in the Anglo-Catholic custom so shut jointly, which I observed surprisingly reassuring. “We like to feel we’re just that little little bit higher than that large amount up the highway,” he noticed. I asked him how to pronounce Eynesbury (I have always rhymed the very first syllable with lines). “Properly, we connect with it Ains-bury,” he stated, “however I never know if that’s proper.”
Continue to we wandered. The 17th Century pulpit was declared unusually attractive by Pevsner’s revising editor, and he is suitable, the result partly the final result of its resetting on an elegant stem in the 1970s. Other woodwork incorporates the greatest medieval bench ends we had noticed all day, carved with animals which includes pigs, bulls and a camel. Some of them appear to have been tailored and included to instead crudely, perhaps in the 17th Century. Could this have been an attempt to restore the effects of iconoclasm? If so, it would be interesting to know what was there right before.
In the middle of the nave is a present day memorial slab to an Eynesbury parishioner who died two hundred many years in the past. James Toller was just 20 a person decades outdated. What helps make him exceptional is that he was one particular of the tallest men and women who have ever lived. Around this place lies all that is mortal of James Toller (The Eynesbury Large) who died 4th February 1818 aged 21 many years, 8 feet 1½ inches in height. James Toller was born in the highway beside the church in 1797. Tall from an early age, in his teens he was exhibited in London and presented to the Russian Tsar. He was toured during Europe with a Dutchman known as Simon Paap who was only twenty 8 inches tall.
The fantastic folks of Eynesbury feel to have taken care of James cheerfully as just one of their possess, but his widespread fame ultimately designed it extremely hard for him to stay a usual life, and, as his wellbeing deteriorated, he expended his final decades at the rear of the high partitions of the rectory backyard garden. He was buried inside of the church for, it was claimed, a bounty of £20 had been issued for his corpse by dissectionists. In his lifetime 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 interior gave a more true measurement, which was continue to impressive.
And so, that was it, the previous parish church in Cambridgeshire, a suitably quirky position for a quirky county. There are even now a good deal 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 career completed accompanied me as we headed again to Ely station.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2018-11-11 08:36:40
Tagged: , Eynesbury , St Neots , Cambridgeshire , Cambs , Huntingdonshire , Hunts , church , East Anglia
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