St Mary, Eynesbury, St Neots, Cambridgeshire
And so to the final parish church in Cambridgeshire. It could be stated that it has taken me extended to comprehensive this county than any other, mainly because I was initially taken into a Cambridgeshire church to be baptised fifty-7 decades back at the age of two months. Be that as it may possibly, I started browsing the Cambridgeshire churches in earnest about 4 many years back, partly as a final 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 very last 4 generations. Listed here, they ended up baptised, married and sent on their ultimate journey to the grave.
Cambridgeshire is a curious county. A pleasing parallelogram in form, stretching some forty miles from corner to corner, it has only existed in its current form considering 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 made in their convert in 1965 out of four lesser counties, these remaining Huntingdonshire, the Soke of Peterborough, Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely. The Isle was returning to its status of right before the 1890s, when it experienced been hived off from Cambridgeshire for administrative purposes. Prior to the 1890s, the Soke of Peterborough experienced been a part of Northamptonshire. However with me? Good. The 1974 iteration of the county took in a solitary parish each individual from Bedfordshire and Essex, and then in the 1990s shed one parish to Suffolk.
It all appears a bit of a hotchpotch, and nonetheless it would seem to operate. Of all the amalgamated counties developed in 1974, Cambridgeshire is the only just one which has survived by general public will. Avon and Humberside have been consigned to historical past, Leicestershire broken up once again into its constituent components. But in Cambridgeshire, the previous county of Huntingdonshire has been authorized to endure as a neighborhood governing administration district, as has the Soke of Peterborough which proceeds in expanded variety as the Peterborough unitary authority.
The metropolitan areas of Cambridge and Peterborough have both equally expanded spectacularly due to the fact 1965, and the county is the only non-metropolitan area to have an elected mayor directing hundreds of thousands of lbs . to growth projects. The population of about a million is break up extra or significantly less half-and-fifty percent in between city and rural options. The west and south of the county are incredibly affluent, but the Fenland district in the north-east has deep pockets of poverty, as do the towns of Cambridge and Peterborough.
I spent the 1st twenty years of my daily life in Cambridgeshire, most of it in Cambridge, and it is continue to challenging not to think of it as dwelling. And so this has given a specific resonance to my journeys all over the county. Cambridgeshire’s church buildings are not magnificent. Indeed, it is really hard to establish a distinct Cambridgeshire type at all, other than a liking for octagonal tower tops, and they are not so quite 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 choose on the traits of the other county – big, marshland churches up around Norfolk and Lincolnshire, smaller, homely church buildings down toward Hertfordshire and Essex, grand Perpendicular churches by the Suffolk border, even though west of Huntingdon the spired churches merge seamlessly into their Northamptonshire counterparts. Strikingly, Cambridgeshire’s extremely ideal church buildings are fairly a great deal all around a border with a further county.
Of training course, the county has two key medieval cathedrals at Peterborough and Ely, as very well as a collection of school chapels in Cambridge, some of which are medieval in origin, like the spectacular chapel of King’s College, as very good as a cathedral. I have incorporated 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 final parish church.
We hadn’t intended to be so late. We’d arrived in St Neots at about two o’clock, all set to stop by the 3 town centre church buildings, all of which before 1965 served different cities. If Cambridgeshire is an odd amalgam, then St Neots is odder nevertheless. 5 cities and villages merge into each and every other in the south-west corner of the county to sort St Neots, which, with more than 40,000 men and women, can claim to be ‘the largest town in Cambridgeshire’ (Cambridge and Peterborough both staying metropolitan areas of system). The parishes of St Neots city and Eynesbury kind the city centre, with the parish of Eaton Socon on the opposite bank of the Great Ouse, and Eaton Ford, which types a aspect of the parish, to the north of it. Tiny Paxton, the poshest parish, retains itself a bit at arms size, but again only by the width of a river. The Bedfordshire border runs alongside two sides of the city, and in truth, right until 1965 parts of the city were being in Bedfordshire.
All a few medieval churches in St Neots town centre are major, and all 3 are dedicated 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, separated by a tiny 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 city churches are each in the Anglo-Catholic tradition, and I am tricky place to feel of two other such Significant church buildings so close collectively, especially in a tiny city, and thinking about that they are in different benefices.
We had discovered the Eaton Socon church locked. The signal appeared to recommend that if you tipped up in the morning on a weekday you could find the adjacent business open, and presumably they just may well let you into the church, even though as impressive as the Perpendicular exterior is there would not be a great deal to see, as the church was gutted by hearth in 1930. The only aged point remaining is the font. Still, this was our thirteenth church of the day, and the very first one particular we experienced discovered locked, so we were not also unhappy.
We headed off and parked in close proximity to the Eynesbury church. This was also locked, but there was a keyholder see, so I rang him up. He appeared a minor shocked, but advised us he’d be coming down in about an hour’s time, would that do? I said it would. We walked the short length up to the St Neots town church, which was open of course, as it is each and every day. Another large, amazing Perpendicular church, but not sufficient inside of of it to fill an hour, so we drove out to Good Paxton and its late Saxon church, which John experienced not frequented in advance of, and then again into city to continue to keep our appointment.
Eynesbury church is huge, although in contrast to its two sisters it is mostly Early English in origin, with before arcades and afterwards aisles. The tower was significantly rebuilt in the 17th Century, and appears to be 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 road line, which is also in opposition to the north facet, and so this explains the tower’s situation. Of the a few church buildings, this is the most city in appearance, and would not look out of position in the centre of Cambridge.
The Early English inside is at first alternatively dim, for as at St Neots, this church was just about totally glazed in the 19th Century with colored glass, significantly of it by Hardman & Co. But, although the nave is practically as huge as at the other church, it does not come to feel like a barn. Alternatively, the lessen roof and the dusty furnishings give a feeling of litter, while not in a negative way. This is a rough and prepared church which has shaped alone to the requires and wants of its parishioners around the generations. Arthur Blomfield led the 19th Century restoration, and his common ambiance lies closely below. The look at east is to the good rood, the 1933 get the job done of Albert Richardson who experienced 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 inquiries, but remaining us just to wander all around as he pottered about. I asked him about the Anglo-catholic tradition of the two churches. He didn’t seem to feel it was strange to find two city churches in the Anglo-Catholic custom so shut alongside one another, which I observed strangely reassuring. “We like to feel we’re just that minimal bit bigger than that good deal up the road,” he noticed. I requested him how to pronounce Eynesbury (I have constantly rhymed the first syllable with lines). “Nicely, we get in touch with it Ains-bury,” he said, “even though I you should not know if which is appropriate.”
However we wandered. The 17th Century pulpit was declared unusually wonderful by Pevsner’s revising editor, and he is ideal, the outcome partly the consequence of its resetting on an tasteful stem in the 1970s. Other woodwork involves the very best medieval bench ends we had witnessed all day, carved with animals such as pigs, bulls and a camel. Some of them appear to have been adapted and added to relatively crudely, maybe in the 17th Century. Could this have been an try to repair the effects of iconoclasm? If so, it would be intriguing to know what was there prior to.
In the center of the nave is a fashionable memorial slab to an Eynesbury parishioner who died two hundred many years ago. James Toller was just 20 just one yrs outdated. What will make him outstanding is that he was one of the tallest people today who have at any time lived. Close to this place lies all that is mortal of James Toller (The Eynesbury Giant) who died 4th February 1818 aged 21 yrs, 8 feet 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 introduced to the Russian Tsar. He was toured throughout Europe with a Dutchman identified as Simon Paap who was only twenty 8 inches tall.
The excellent people of Eynesbury seem to have treated James cheerfully as one of their very own, but his common fame sooner or later made it impossible for him to stay a typical everyday living, and, as his overall health deteriorated, he spent his final yrs guiding the large walls of the rectory backyard 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 span a height of 8 foot six was claimed for James, but a measurement of his skeleton when it was reburied right after the 19th Century restoration of the inside gave a truer measurement, which was nonetheless impressive.
And so, that was it, the final parish church in Cambridgeshire, a suitably quirky position for a quirky county. There are even now loads of non-conformist chapels to pay a visit to, as perfectly as the chapels of cemeteries, colleges and other institutions of course. But for now, the satisfaction of a work accomplished accompanied me as we headed again to Ely station.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2018-11-11 08:36:32
Tagged: , Eynesbury , St Neots , Cambridgeshire , Cambs , Huntingdonshire , Hunts , church , East Anglia
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