St Mary, Eynesbury, St Neots, Cambridgeshire
And so to the very last parish church in Cambridgeshire. It could be stated that it has taken me more time to total this county than any other, because I was initial taken into a Cambridgeshire church to be baptised fifty-seven decades ago at the age of two months. Be that as it might, I commenced going to the Cambridgeshire churches in earnest about four many years back, partly as a end result of an enthusiasm for relatives record. Extra than 30 Cambridgeshire parishes and their churches ended up houses to my ancestors of the final 4 generations. Below, they were baptised, married and sent on their final journey to the grave.
Cambridgeshire is a curious county. A satisfying parallelogram in condition, stretching some forty miles from corner to corner, it has only existed in its present variety due to the fact 1974, when it was produced by the union of the two quick-lived counties of Huntingdon & Peterborough and Cambridgeshire & the Isle of Ely. These experienced been designed in their turn in 1965 out of four scaled-down counties, these remaining Huntingdonshire, the Soke of Peterborough, Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely. The Isle was returning to its standing of before the 1890s, when it experienced been hived off from Cambridgeshire for administrative functions. In advance of the 1890s, the Soke of Peterborough had been a aspect of Northamptonshire. Nevertheless with me? Excellent. The 1974 iteration of the county took in a single parish each and every from Bedfordshire and Essex, and then in the 1990s shed a person parish to Suffolk.
It all sounds a bit of a hotchpotch, and but it looks to work. Of all the amalgamated counties created in 1974, Cambridgeshire is the only 1 which has survived by public will. Avon and Humberside have been consigned to history, Leicestershire damaged up again into its constituent areas. But in Cambridgeshire, the previous county of Huntingdonshire has been permitted to endure as a neighborhood govt district, as has the Soke of Peterborough which continues in expanded form as the Peterborough unitary authority.
The metropolitan areas of Cambridge and Peterborough have equally expanded spectacularly since 1965, and the county is the only non-metropolitan area to have an elected mayor directing thousands and thousands of lbs . to advancement tasks. The populace of about a million is split extra or less half-and-half among urban and rural options. The west and south of the county are very affluent, but the Fenland district in the north-east has deep pockets of poverty, as do the towns of Cambridge and Peterborough.
I used the 1st twenty years of my lifestyle in Cambridgeshire, most of it in Cambridge, and it is however hard not to feel of it as home. And so this has offered a special resonance to my journeys all over the county. Cambridgeshire’s churches are not spectacular. Indeed, it is hard to identify a unique Cambridgeshire style at all, other than a liking for octagonal tower tops, and they are not so extremely plentiful. But Cambridgeshire shares borders with much more other counties than any other English county, and the churches near those borders tend to get on the characteristics of the other county – huge, marshland churches up close to Norfolk and Lincolnshire, modest, homely churches down in direction of Hertfordshire and Essex, grand Perpendicular church buildings by the Suffolk border, whilst west of Huntingdon the spired churches merge seamlessly into their Northamptonshire counterparts. Strikingly, Cambridgeshire’s quite ideal churches are rather a lot all around a border with a different county.
Of class, the county has two key medieval cathedrals at Peterborough and Ely, as nicely as a selection of university chapels in Cambridge, some of which are medieval in origin, including the magnificent chapel of King’s University, as superior as a cathedral. I have included 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 visited 314 Cambridgeshire church buildings. St Mary at Eynesbury would be the last parish church.
We hadn’t intended to be so late. We would arrived in St Neots at about two o’clock, completely ready to pay a visit to the a few town centre churches, all of which right before 1965 served independent towns. If Cambridgeshire is an odd amalgam, then St Neots is odder nonetheless. 5 towns and villages merge into each individual other in the south-west corner of the county to type St Neots, which, with extra than 40,000 persons, can declare to be ‘the largest city in Cambridgeshire’ (Cambridge and Peterborough each currently being metropolitan areas of program). The parishes of St Neots town and Eynesbury sort the town centre, with the parish of Eaton Socon on the reverse financial institution of the Good Ouse, and Eaton Ford, which varieties a aspect of the parish, to the north of it. Minimal Paxton, the poshest parish, keeps by itself slightly at arms duration, but all over again only by the width of a river. The Bedfordshire border runs along two sides of the town, and in fact, till 1965 areas of the city have been in Bedfordshire.
All 3 medieval church buildings in St Neots city centre are massive, and all a few are focused to St Mary, which can be the trigger of some confusion. St Mary at St Neots and St Mary at Eynesbury are just a few of hundred yards aside, divided by a little 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 town churches are both in the Anglo-Catholic tradition, and I am difficult set to feel of two other this kind of High church buildings so shut with each other, specifically in a modest city, and thinking about that they are in individual benefices.
We had found the Eaton Socon church locked. The sign appeared to recommend that if you tipped up in the early morning on a weekday you may find the adjacent business office open up, and presumably they just may well enable you into the church, even though as amazing as the Perpendicular exterior is there would not be significantly to see, as the church was gutted by fireplace in 1930. The only outdated issue still left is the font. However, this was our thirteenth church of the working day, and the first a person we experienced located locked, so we weren’t as well dissatisfied.
We headed off and parked close to the Eynesbury church. This was also locked, but there was a keyholder notice, so I rang him up. He seemed a little stunned, but informed us he’d be coming down in about an hour’s time, would that do? I reported it would. We walked the brief length up to the St Neots town church, which was open of program, as it is just about every day. Yet another large, amazing Perpendicular church, but not enough inside of it to fill an hour, so we drove out to Great Paxton and its late Saxon church, which John had not frequented in advance of, and then again into city to preserve our appointment.
Eynesbury church is major, nevertheless contrary to its two sisters it is mostly Early English in origin, with before arcades and later on aisles. The tower was considerably rebuilt in the 17th Century, and appears it. The tower is most unusual in that it is established towards the most easterly bay of the south aisle of the nave. The nave extends westwards to the street line, which is also against the north aspect, and so this explains the tower’s posture. Of the a few churches, this is the most urban in visual appeal, 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 almost solely glazed in the 19th Century with coloured glass, substantially of it by Hardman & Co. But, while the nave is nearly as wide as at the other church, it does not feel like a barn. Alternatively, the lessen roof and the dusty furnishings give a perception of litter, although not in a undesirable way. This is a rough and all set church which has formed itself to the demands and dreams of its parishioners more than the generations. Arthur Blomfield led the 19th Century restoration, and his acquainted environment lies seriously listed here. The watch east is to the great rood, the 1933 perform 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 issues, but left us just to wander close to as he pottered about. I requested him about the Anglo-catholic custom of the two churches. He failed to look to think it was unusual to come across two urban church buildings in the Anglo-Catholic custom so near jointly, which I observed strangely reassuring. “We like to imagine we’re just that tiny bit increased than that large amount up the road,” he observed. I requested him how to pronounce Eynesbury (I have often rhymed the to start with syllable with traces). “Effectively, we get in touch with it Ains-bury,” he reported, “even though I will not know if that is right.”
However we wandered. The 17th Century pulpit was declared unusually gorgeous by Pevsner’s revising editor, and he’s ideal, the result partly the end result of its resetting on an tasteful stem in the 1970s. Other woodwork features the greatest medieval bench ends we had observed all day, carved with animals such as pigs, bulls and a camel. Some of them appear to have been adapted and added to instead crudely, potentially in the 17th Century. Could this have been an attempt to restore the results of iconoclasm? If so, it would be exciting to know what was there just before.
In the middle of the nave is a modern day memorial slab to an Eynesbury parishioner who died two hundred yrs in the past. James Toller was just 20 a person yrs old. What would make him outstanding is that he was just one of the tallest folks who have at any time lived. Around this spot lies all that is mortal of James Toller (The Eynesbury Giant) who died 4th February 1818 aged 21 yrs, 8 ft 1½ inches in height. James Toller was born in the street beside the church in 1797. Tall from an early age, in his teens he was exhibited in London and offered to the Russian Tsar. He was toured through Europe with a Dutchman identified as Simon Paap who was only twenty 8 inches tall.
The excellent persons of Eynesbury feel to have dealt with James cheerfully as one particular of their individual, but his popular fame at some point produced it extremely hard for him to are living a normal existence, and, as his wellness deteriorated, he used his final many years guiding the substantial partitions of the rectory garden. He was buried inside the church for, it was claimed, a bounty of £20 experienced 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 right after the 19th Century restoration of the interior gave a truer measurement, which was continue to outstanding.
And so, that was it, the last parish church in Cambridgeshire, a suitably quirky position for a quirky county. There are nonetheless a great deal of non-conformist chapels to check out, as well as the chapels of cemeteries, schools and other establishments of course. But for now, the fulfillment of a job finished 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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