St Mary, Eynesbury, St Neots, Cambridgeshire
And so to the previous parish church in Cambridgeshire. It could be explained that it has taken me longer to finish this county than any other, simply because I was first taken into a Cambridgeshire church to be baptised fifty-7 a long time in the past at the age of two months. Be that as it may, I commenced viewing the Cambridgeshire church buildings in earnest about four many years ago, partly as a result of an enthusiasm for family historical past. Additional than 30 Cambridgeshire parishes and their church buildings were being properties to my ancestors of the last four generations. Listed here, they ended up baptised, married and despatched 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 existing kind considering that 1974, when it was developed by the union of the two limited-lived counties of Huntingdon & Peterborough and Cambridgeshire & the Isle of Ely. These experienced been designed in their change in 1965 out of 4 smaller 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. Just before the 1890s, the Soke of Peterborough experienced been a aspect of Northamptonshire. However 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 one particular parish to Suffolk.
It all appears a little bit of a hotchpotch, and still it looks to work. Of all the amalgamated counties established in 1974, Cambridgeshire is the only a person which has survived by public will. Avon and Humberside have been consigned to historical past, Leicestershire damaged up again into its constituent sections. But in Cambridgeshire, the former county of Huntingdonshire has been authorized to endure as a community authorities 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 both expanded spectacularly considering that 1965, and the county is the only non-metropolitan region to have an elected mayor directing hundreds of thousands of kilos to growth assignments. The populace of about a million is break up more or much less 50 percent-and-50 % amongst city and rural options. 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 towns of Cambridge and Peterborough.
I put in the 1st twenty several years of my daily life in Cambridgeshire, most of it in Cambridge, and it is nevertheless challenging not to imagine of it as home. And so this has given a special resonance to my journeys close to the county. Cambridgeshire’s churches are not amazing. Indeed, it is tricky to establish a unique Cambridgeshire fashion at all, other than a liking for octagonal tower tops, and they are not so really plentiful. But Cambridgeshire shares borders with extra other counties than any other English county, and the church buildings in close proximity to those borders are inclined to acquire on the features of the other county – large, marshland churches up near Norfolk and Lincolnshire, tiny, 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 greatest churches are fairly substantially all close to a border with one more county.
Of program, the county has two major medieval cathedrals at Peterborough and Ely, as effectively as a assortment of higher education chapels in Cambridge, some of which are medieval in origin, together with the impressive chapel of King’s College or university, as fantastic as a cathedral. I have bundled 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 experienced previously visited 314 Cambridgeshire churches. St Mary at Eynesbury would be the ultimate parish church.
We hadn’t intended to be so late. We’d arrived in St Neots at about two o’clock, all set to take a look at the three town centre church buildings, all of which just before 1965 served different cities. If Cambridgeshire is an odd amalgam, then St Neots is odder nevertheless. Five towns and villages merge into each and every other in the south-west corner of the county to sort St Neots, which, with a lot more than 40,000 people, can assert to be ‘the major city in Cambridgeshire’ (Cambridge and Peterborough both being cities of study course). The parishes of St Neots town and Eynesbury kind the town centre, with the parish of Eaton Socon on the reverse lender of the Good Ouse, and Eaton Ford, which sorts a component of the parish, to the north of it. Little Paxton, the poshest parish, keeps itself a bit at arms length, but yet again only by the width of a river. The Bedfordshire border operates together two sides of the city, and in truth, right up until 1965 areas of the city had been in Bedfordshire.
All 3 medieval churches in St Neots town centre are big, and all three are focused to St Mary, which can be the induce of some confusion. St Mary at St Neots and St Mary at Eynesbury are just a couple of hundred yards aside, divided by a little bridge, while 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 town church buildings are the two in the Anglo-Catholic custom, and I am hard put to feel of two other these types of Higher church buildings so shut with each other, primarily in a little city, and thinking of that they are in individual benefices.
We experienced observed the Eaton Socon church locked. The signal seemed to counsel that if you tipped up in the morning on a weekday you may discover the adjacent place of work open, and presumably they just may possibly allow you into the church, while as magnificent as the Perpendicular exterior is there would not be a lot to see, as the church was gutted by fireplace in 1930. The only old detail left is the font. However, this was our thirteenth church of the day, and the 1st just one we experienced found locked, so we were not much too upset.
We headed off and parked near the Eynesbury church. This was also locked, but there was a keyholder observe, so I rang him up. He seemed a small astonished, but told us he’d be coming down in about an hour’s time, would that do? I mentioned it would. We walked the shorter length up to the St Neots town church, which was open of course, as it is just about every working day. Another massive, breathtaking Perpendicular church, but not plenty of inside of it to fill an hour, so we drove out to Good Paxton and its late Saxon church, which John had not visited just before, and then back again into town to hold our appointment.
Eynesbury church is significant, while in contrast to its two sisters it is largely Early English in origin, with before arcades and later aisles. The tower was substantially rebuilt in the 17th Century, and appears to be it. The tower is most abnormal 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 street line, which is also against the north facet, and so this clarifies the tower’s place. Of the three churches, this is the most city in physical appearance, and would not look out of area in the centre of Cambridge.
The Early English interior is at 1st relatively dim, for as at St Neots, this church was practically totally glazed in the 19th Century with coloured glass, a lot of it by Hardman & Co. But, whilst the nave is almost as wide as at the other church, it does not feel like a barn. Relatively, the reduce roof and the dusty furnishings give a perception of litter, though not in a undesirable way. This is a tough and ready church which has formed itself to the demands and dreams of its parishioners about the generations. Arthur Blomfield led the 19th Century restoration, and his acquainted environment lies intensely right here. The check out east is to the excellent rood, the 1933 function of Albert Richardson who experienced just completed restoring Eaton Socon.
I was happy to discover that what I experienced taken for reticence in our host turned out to be a cheerful dryness. He was extremely welcoming, answered our inquiries, but left us just to wander about as he pottered about. I questioned him about the Anglo-catholic custom of the two church buildings. He failed to appear to be to think it was unusual to obtain two urban church buildings in the Anglo-Catholic tradition so near alongside one another, which I discovered surprisingly reassuring. “We like to think we’re just that tiny bit higher than that large amount up the road,” he observed. I requested him how to pronounce Eynesbury (I have normally rhymed the very first syllable with traces). “Properly, we connect with it Ains-bury,” he claimed, “however I really don’t know if that’s suitable.”
Even now we wandered. The 17th Century pulpit was declared unusually gorgeous by Pevsner’s revising editor, and he is proper, the effect partly the final result of its resetting on an elegant stem in the 1970s. Other woodwork includes the best medieval bench ends we had witnessed all working day, carved with animals including pigs, bulls and a camel. Some of them seem to have been adapted and included to relatively crudely, maybe in the 17th Century. Could this have been an attempt to maintenance the benefits of iconoclasm? If so, it would be appealing to know what was there before.
In the center of the nave is a fashionable memorial slab to an Eynesbury parishioner who died two hundred yrs back. James Toller was just 20 one a long time aged. What tends to make him exceptional is that he was a single of the tallest folks who have ever lived. Close to this spot lies all that is mortal of James Toller (The Eynesbury Big) who died 4th February 1818 aged 21 a long time, 8 feet 1½ inches in top. 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 introduced to the Russian Tsar. He was toured during Europe with a Dutchman identified as Simon Paap who was only 20 8 inches tall.
The superior people of Eynesbury look to have addressed James cheerfully as 1 of their individual, but his widespread fame ultimately built it impossible for him to dwell a normal lifetime, and, as his wellbeing deteriorated, he spent his final yrs powering the significant walls of the rectory garden. He was buried within the church for, it was claimed, a bounty of £20 experienced been issued for his corpse by dissectionists. In his life span a height of eight foot six was claimed for James, but a measurement of his skeleton when it was reburied following the 19th Century restoration of the inside gave a truer measurement, which was still impressive.
And so, that was it, the past parish church in Cambridgeshire, a suitably quirky location for a quirky county. There are continue to plenty of non-conformist chapels to check out, as perfectly as the chapels of cemeteries, colleges and other institutions of program. But for now, the fulfillment of a job completed accompanied me as we headed back to Ely station.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2018-11-11 08:36:35
Tagged: , Eynesbury , St Neots , Cambridgeshire , Cambs , Huntingdonshire , Hunts , church , East Anglia
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