St Mary, Eynesbury, St Neots, Cambridgeshire
And so to the final parish church in Cambridgeshire. It could be explained that it has taken me for a longer period to full this county than any other, for the reason that I was 1st taken into a Cambridgeshire church to be baptised fifty-7 many years ago at the age of two months. Be that as it may possibly, I started visiting the Cambridgeshire church buildings in earnest about four a long time ago, partly as a end result of an enthusiasm for relatives record. Far more than thirty Cambridgeshire parishes and their churches ended up properties to my ancestors of the very last four generations. Here, they ended up baptised, married and despatched on their ultimate 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 form considering the fact that 1974, when it was established by the union of the two limited-lived counties of Huntingdon & Peterborough and Cambridgeshire & the Isle of Ely. These experienced been produced in their transform in 1965 out of 4 more compact counties, these currently 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 had been hived off from Cambridgeshire for administrative uses. Prior to the 1890s, the Soke of Peterborough experienced been a part of Northamptonshire. Continue to with me? Good. The 1974 iteration of the county took in a solitary parish just about every from Bedfordshire and Essex, and then in the 1990s misplaced a single parish to Suffolk.
It all sounds a little bit of a hotchpotch, and nonetheless it looks to get the job done. Of all the amalgamated counties developed in 1974, Cambridgeshire is the only 1 which has survived by public will. Avon and Humberside have been consigned to history, Leicestershire damaged up once more into its constituent elements. But in Cambridgeshire, the former county of Huntingdonshire has been authorized to endure as a neighborhood government district, as has the Soke of Peterborough which continues in expanded form as the Peterborough unitary authority.
The cities of Cambridge and Peterborough have both of those expanded spectacularly given that 1965, and the county is the only non-metropolitan place to have an elected mayor directing tens of millions of kilos to development projects. The population of about a million is break up much more or much less 50 percent-and-fifty percent 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 cities of Cambridge and Peterborough.
I used the to start with twenty yrs of my life in Cambridgeshire, most of it in Cambridge, and it is nonetheless hard not to think of it as dwelling. And so this has offered a special resonance to my journeys close to the county. Cambridgeshire’s churches are not magnificent. Indeed, it is hard to identify a particular Cambridgeshire type at all, other than a liking for octagonal tower tops, and they are not so pretty abundant. But Cambridgeshire shares borders with a lot more other counties than any other English county, and the church buildings in the vicinity of all those borders have a tendency to acquire on the traits of the other county – major, marshland church buildings up near Norfolk and Lincolnshire, compact, homely churches down in the direction of Hertfordshire and Essex, grand Perpendicular church buildings by the Suffolk border, although west of Huntingdon the spired church buildings merge seamlessly into their Northamptonshire counterparts. Strikingly, Cambridgeshire’s pretty very best churches are fairly considerably all in the vicinity of a border with a different county.
Of program, the county has two major medieval cathedrals at Peterborough and Ely, as nicely as a selection of college chapels in Cambridge, some of which are medieval in origin, which includes the spectacular chapel of King’s College, as very good as a cathedral. I have included 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 had now visited 314 Cambridgeshire churches. St Mary at Eynesbury would be the ultimate parish church.
We hadn’t meant to be so late. We would arrived in St Neots at about two o’clock, all set to check out the a few town centre church buildings, all of which prior to 1965 served separate cities. If Cambridgeshire is an odd amalgam, then St Neots is odder however. 5 cities and villages merge into just about every other in the south-west corner of the county to sort St Neots, which, with more than 40,000 people today, can claim to be ‘the premier city in Cambridgeshire’ (Cambridge and Peterborough the two currently being metropolitan areas of study course). The parishes of St Neots city and Eynesbury type the town centre, with the parish of Eaton Socon on the opposite financial institution of the Excellent Ouse, and Eaton Ford, which forms a portion of the parish, to the north of it. Tiny Paxton, the poshest parish, retains alone slightly at arms size, but yet again only by the width of a river. The Bedfordshire border runs together two sides of the town, and in fact, right until 1965 areas of the city have been in Bedfordshire.
All a few medieval church buildings in St Neots town centre are huge, and all a few 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, divided by a small bridge, even 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 the two in the Anglo-Catholic tradition, and I am challenging put to think of two other these kinds of Significant churches so close collectively, specially in a modest city, and looking at that they are in different benefices.
We had observed the Eaton Socon church locked. The sign seemed to advise that if you tipped up in the morning on a weekday you might obtain the adjacent place of work open, and presumably they just may possibly enable you into the church, while as stunning 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 remaining is the font. However, this was our thirteenth church of the working day, and the to start with one we experienced observed locked, so we weren’t far too let down.
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 seemed a tiny shocked, but told us he’d be coming down in about an hour’s time, would that do? I explained it would. We walked the quick length up to the St Neots town church, which was open up of training course, as it is each individual working day. Another significant, spectacular Perpendicular church, but not adequate within of it to fill an hour, so we drove out to Great Paxton and its late Saxon church, which John had not visited before, and then back again into city to retain our appointment.
Eynesbury church is big, nevertheless in contrast to its two sisters it is mainly Early English in origin, with before arcades and later on aisles. The tower was significantly rebuilt in the 17th Century, and appears it. The tower is most unconventional in that it is established versus the most easterly bay of the south aisle of the nave. The nave extends westwards to the avenue line, which is also in opposition to the north facet, and so this clarifies the tower’s position. Of the a few churches, this is the most urban in physical appearance, and would not glimpse out of put in the centre of Cambridge.
The Early English interior is at initial rather dim, for as at St Neots, this church was just about solely glazed in the 19th Century with coloured glass, considerably of it by Hardman & Co. But, although the nave is pretty much as extensive as at the other church, it does not truly feel like a barn. Rather, the reduce roof and the dusty furnishings give a sense of litter, even though not in a undesirable way. This is a rough and prepared church which has formed by itself to the desires and dreams of its parishioners above the generations. Arthur Blomfield led the 19th Century restoration, and his acquainted atmosphere lies heavily right here. The see east is to the excellent rood, the 1933 do the job of Albert Richardson who experienced just concluded restoring Eaton Socon.
I was delighted to explore 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 remaining us just to wander about as he pottered about. I requested him about the Anglo-catholic custom of the two church buildings. He did not feel to feel it was uncommon to locate two urban churches in the Anglo-Catholic tradition so shut jointly, which I discovered strangely reassuring. “We like to believe we are just that little little bit greater than that good deal up the road,” he observed. I questioned him how to pronounce Eynesbury (I have always rhymed the initially syllable with traces). “Perfectly, we get in touch with it Ains-bury,” he reported, “though I do not know if that’s proper.”
Nevertheless we wandered. The 17th Century pulpit was declared unusually lovely by Pevsner’s revising editor, and he’s right, the impact partly the end result of its resetting on an tasteful stem in the 1970s. Other woodwork incorporates the ideal medieval bench ends we experienced observed all day, carved with animals together with pigs, bulls and a camel. Some of them seem to have been adapted and included to relatively crudely, most likely in the 17th Century. Could this have been an endeavor to fix the effects of iconoclasm? If so, it would be fascinating to know what was there ahead of.
In the middle of the nave is a modern-day memorial slab to an Eynesbury parishioner who died two hundred a long time back. James Toller was just 20 one particular many years old. What tends to make him amazing is that he was one particular of the tallest people today who have ever lived. In the vicinity of this area lies all that is mortal of James Toller (The Eynesbury Huge) who died 4th February 1818 aged 21 decades, 8 ft 1½ inches in peak. 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 all over Europe with a Dutchman termed Simon Paap who was only twenty 8 inches tall.
The good folks of Eynesbury seem to have dealt with James cheerfully as a person of their very own, but his widespread fame finally made it not possible for him to live a usual existence, and, as his health deteriorated, he used his last years behind the high walls of the rectory backyard. 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 life time a top of eight foot six was claimed for James, but a measurement of his skeleton when it was reburied immediately after the 19th Century restoration of the interior gave a truer measurement, which was nevertheless remarkable.
And so, that was it, the last parish church in Cambridgeshire, a suitably quirky area for a quirky county. There are even now plenty of non-conformist chapels to take a look at, as effectively as the chapels of cemeteries, faculties and other establishments of study course. But for now, the fulfillment of a occupation completed accompanied me as we headed back to Ely station.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2018-11-11 08:36:48
Tagged: , Eynesbury , St Neots , Cambridgeshire , Cambs , Huntingdonshire , Hunts , church , East Anglia
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