St Mary, Eynesbury, St Neots, Cambridgeshire
And so to the final parish church in Cambridgeshire. It could be mentioned that it has taken me for a longer period to complete this county than any other, for the reason that I was very first taken into a Cambridgeshire church to be baptised fifty-seven several years ago at the age of two months. Be that as it may, I began visiting the Cambridgeshire church buildings in earnest about four many years ago, partly as a consequence of an enthusiasm for family members background. Extra than thirty Cambridgeshire parishes and their churches were homes to my ancestors of the final 4 generations. Listed here, they were being baptised, married and sent on their remaining 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 type given that 1974, when it was produced by the union of the two shorter-lived counties of Huntingdon & Peterborough and Cambridgeshire & the Isle of Ely. These had been created in their change in 1965 out of four more compact counties, these being Huntingdonshire, the Soke of Peterborough, Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely. The Isle was returning to its standing of ahead of the 1890s, when it experienced been hived off from Cambridgeshire for administrative purposes. Prior to the 1890s, the Soke of Peterborough had been a portion of Northamptonshire. Nevertheless with me? Very good. The 1974 iteration of the county took in a single parish each and every from Bedfordshire and Essex, and then in the 1990s shed just one parish to Suffolk.
It all seems a bit of a hotchpotch, and but it would seem to do the job. Of all the amalgamated counties created in 1974, Cambridgeshire is the only one which has survived by public will. Avon and Humberside have been consigned to record, Leicestershire broken up once more into its constituent sections. But in Cambridgeshire, the former county of Huntingdonshire has been authorized to survive as a nearby government district, as has the Soke of Peterborough which carries on in expanded kind as the Peterborough unitary authority.
The cities of Cambridge and Peterborough have each 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 kilos to enhancement assignments. The populace of about a million is split a lot more or less 50 percent-and-fifty percent amongst city and rural configurations. The west and south of the county are very prosperous, 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 tricky not to think of it as dwelling. And so this has provided a special resonance to my journeys all-around the county. Cambridgeshire’s churches are not magnificent. In fact, it is difficult to determine a specific Cambridgeshire fashion at all, other than a liking for octagonal tower tops, and they are not so pretty plentiful. But Cambridgeshire shares borders with additional other counties than any other English county, and the churches around all those borders tend to consider on the features of the other county – massive, marshland churches up close to Norfolk and Lincolnshire, little, homely church buildings down in 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 quite finest church buildings are very significantly all in close proximity to a border with a different county.
Of course, the county has two major medieval cathedrals at Peterborough and Ely, as nicely as a selection of college or university chapels in Cambridge, some of which are medieval in origin, such as the magnificent chapel of King’s Faculty, as great as a cathedral. I have integrated 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 experienced now frequented 314 Cambridgeshire church buildings. St Mary at Eynesbury would be the final parish church.
We hadn’t intended to be so late. We would arrived in St Neots at about two o’clock, completely ready to take a look at the a few city centre churches, all of which before 1965 served independent cities. If Cambridgeshire is an odd amalgam, then St Neots is odder still. Five towns and villages merge into each and every other in the south-west corner of the county to sort St Neots, which, with much more than 40,000 persons, can assert to be ‘the most significant town in Cambridgeshire’ (Cambridge and Peterborough both of those becoming metropolitan areas of program). The parishes of St Neots town and Eynesbury sort the city centre, with the parish of Eaton Socon on the reverse bank 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 by itself marginally at arms duration, but again only by the width of a river. The Bedfordshire border operates alongside two sides of the city, and in truth, right up until 1965 areas of the town ended up in Bedfordshire.
All three medieval churches in St Neots town centre are massive, and all three are devoted to St Mary, which can be the trigger of some confusion. St Mary at St Neots and St Mary at Eynesbury are just a pair of hundred yards apart, separated by a modest 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 churches are equally in the Anglo-Catholic tradition, and I am challenging set to imagine of two other these kinds of Significant church buildings so shut with each other, particularly in a smaller city, and taking into consideration that they are in individual benefices.
We had discovered the Eaton Socon church locked. The sign seemed to recommend that if you tipped up in the early morning on a weekday you might locate the adjacent place of work open up, and presumably they just may well let you into the church, even though as magnificent as the Perpendicular exterior is there would not be much to see, as the church was gutted by fire in 1930. The only old point left is the font. Even now, this was our thirteenth church of the working day, and the initially a single we experienced located locked, so we were not also 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 minor amazed, but explained to us he’d be coming down in about an hour’s time, would that do? I reported it would. We walked the limited length up to the St Neots town church, which was open of class, as it is every single day. An additional significant, amazing Perpendicular church, but not adequate inside of it to fill an hour, so we drove out to Great Paxton and its late Saxon church, which John had not visited ahead of, and then back into town to retain our appointment.
Eynesbury church is significant, although contrary to its two sisters it is mainly Early English in origin, with earlier arcades and later on aisles. The tower was substantially rebuilt in the 17th Century, and seems 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 road line, which is also versus the north facet, and so this explains the tower’s posture. Of the three churches, this is the most urban in look, and would not glance out of area in the centre of Cambridge.
The Early English interior is at 1st fairly dim, for as at St Neots, this church was pretty much totally glazed in the 19th Century with coloured glass, significantly of it by Hardman & Co. But, despite the fact that the nave is almost as extensive as at the other church, it does not truly feel like a barn. Fairly, the reduced roof and the dusty furnishings give a sense of clutter, however not in a undesirable way. This is a tough and ready church which has formed alone to the demands and wishes of its parishioners in excess of the generations. Arthur Blomfield led the 19th Century restoration, and his common ambiance lies intensely right here. The see east is to the wonderful rood, the 1933 perform of Albert Richardson who had just concluded restoring Eaton Socon.
I was happy to explore 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 asked him about the Anglo-catholic tradition of the two churches. He did not appear to be to assume it was abnormal to find two city church buildings in the Anglo-Catholic custom so close alongside one another, which I identified unusually reassuring. “We like to think we are just that very little bit larger than that good deal up the street,” he noticed. I questioned him how to pronounce Eynesbury (I have constantly rhymed the initially syllable with traces). “Effectively, we get in touch with it Ains-bury,” he reported, “although I never know if that is right.”
Nonetheless we wandered. The 17th Century pulpit was declared unusually attractive by Pevsner’s revising editor, and he is ideal, the impact partly the consequence of its resetting on an classy stem in the 1970s. Other woodwork involves the best medieval bench ends we experienced noticed all working day, carved with animals such as pigs, bulls and a camel. Some of them look to have been adapted and included to rather crudely, perhaps in the 17th Century. Could this have been an attempt to repair service the final results of iconoclasm? If so, it would be interesting to know what was there prior to.
In the center of the nave is a modern memorial slab to an Eynesbury parishioner who died two hundred a long time back. James Toller was just twenty a person yrs old. What will make him remarkable is that he was just one of the tallest people who have at any time lived. Close to this position lies all that is mortal of James Toller (The Eynesbury Giant) who died 4th February 1818 aged 21 a long time, 8 toes 1½ inches in peak. 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 known as Simon Paap who was only twenty 8 inches tall.
The superior persons of Eynesbury appear to be to have addressed James cheerfully as a person of their individual, but his common fame sooner or later built it not possible for him to stay a ordinary lifestyle, and, as his wellness deteriorated, he used his past years driving the large walls of the rectory backyard garden. He was buried inside the church for, it was claimed, a bounty of £20 had been issued for his corpse by dissectionists. In his life time a peak 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 interior gave a more true measurement, which was nonetheless impressive.
And so, that was it, the last parish church in Cambridgeshire, a suitably quirky position for a quirky county. There are even now a lot of non-conformist chapels to pay a visit to, as perfectly as the chapels of cemeteries, faculties and other establishments of course. But for now, the fulfillment of a career completed accompanied me as we headed back again to Ely station.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2018-11-11 08:36:33
Tagged: , Eynesbury , St Neots , Cambridgeshire , Cambs , Huntingdonshire , Hunts , church , East Anglia
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