LINCOLN, FROM CANWICK.LINCOLN, FROM CANWICK.
LINCOLN, FROM CANWICK.
After the Romans departed, the history of Lincoln for a time is a blank. Doubtless the English invaders plundered, and burnt, and slaughtered, as was their wont, but we hear little more till after the missionaries of Augustine had begun to preach the Gospel to the heathen conquerors of the land. In Lincoln there is a little modern church, a short distance south of the Newport arch, and very near the remnants of the Roman basilica. This marks the site of thefirst Christian church in Lincoln, the first sign of its second and peaceful conquest by the followers of the Crucified. It was founded by Paulinus, Bishop of York, and his newly-made convert Blæcca, the Governor of Lincoln. Within its walls, as Canon Venables tells us, Honorius, fourth Archbishop of Canterbury after Augustine, was consecrated by Paulinus. Doubtless the church of Paulinus—now St. Paul’s—like that of St. Martin at Canterbury, was constructed of Roman materials—perhaps was a restoration of an earlier building, but of this unhappily no trace remains. The Danish invaders sorely harried Lincoln and all the region round. Indeed, in 876 the invaders parcelled out the county among themselves. “Lindsey became largely a Danish land, and Lincoln became pre-eminently a Danish city.” Then for a time followed more peaceful days, till William the Norman became master of England. His eye was attracted by the natural advantages of Lincoln, so on the highest point of the plateau, at the south-western angle of the Romancastrum, he built a strong castle, remnants of which can still be discerned in the existing walls of that building. To secure space for its outworks he cleared away 166 houses, and in connection with this we have the first distinct notice of the lower town, which at the present day, commercially speaking, is the most important part of Lincoln. It is, however, probable that a suburb had already sprung up at the spot where the Roman road crossed the nearest channel of the Witham—obtaining from its situation the name of Wickerford or Wigford—to which the families dislodged from the upper town no doubt transferred themselves. For them—on land granted by the Conqueror—one Colswegen built some houses, and at the same time founded the churches of St. Mary-le-Wigford and St. Peter-at-Gowts. The towers, and in case of the latter some other portions, of both these churches still remain, and though built somewhere between the years 1068 and 1086 are so completely survivals of the rude style which prevailed in England before the Normans came that they are often quoted as examples of “Saxon” churches.
About the same time Remigius, a Norman monk, was consecrated to the See of Lincoln. At that time Dorchester, in Oxfordshire, was the site of the bishop’s stool, but then, as now, it was a place of little importance, and inconveniently situated for the management of so vast a diocese; so he commenced the building of a cathedral at Lincoln, of which a part of the western front still remains incorporated into the grand façade of the present cathedral. The severe simplicity of this early Norman fabric was relieved by the more ornate work of a later bishop in the middle part of the twelfth century, which may still be seen in the entrance doors of the western façade and the lower parts of the two western towers. Then by degrees the remainder of the fabric was rebuilt. Most of the work from the eastern transept to the western façade dates from between the end of the twelfth and the middle of the thirteenth century, commencing with that of Bishop Hugh, afterwards St. Hugh, and ending with that of the illustrious Englishman Robert Grostête, who may be numbered with the “Reformers before the Reformation.”To receive the relics of the former the famous Angel choir, or Presbytery, was built about the year 1280. The cloisters and upper part of the central tower were added some twenty years later, and certain alterations subsequently made, the most important being the upper stages of the western towers, which are assigned to the middle of the fifteenth century. Thus, while Lincoln Cathedral presents us with examples of English architecture from the very earliest Norman to the close of the so-called Gothic, and even, in its rebuilt northern cloister, of the classic Renaissance, it is in the main a specimen of the First Pointed or Early English style, from its beginning till it merged almost insensibly in the Middle Pointed or Decorated. Over its details and its history, its damage from earthquake and spoiler, the labours of St. Hugh of Avalon, and the tragedy of the little St. Hugh of Lincoln, its sieges and its narrow escape from destruction in the days of Cromwell, it is impossible to linger. Suffice it to say that the building is as beautiful as the site is commanding, and that the minster garth is girdled by ancient houses full of interest, although Lincoln was never, as the popular name would suggest, the centre of a great monastery.
LINCOLN CATHEDRAL, FROM THE SOUTH-WEST.LINCOLN CATHEDRAL, FROM THE SOUTH-WEST.
LINCOLN CATHEDRAL, FROM THE SOUTH-WEST.
BOSTON CHURCH: THE TOWER.BOSTON CHURCH: THE TOWER.
BOSTON CHURCH: THE TOWER.
We must endeavour to summarise the chief attractions of the town and the leading features of the scenery. Of the former it may be said that few towns in England are more full of relics of olden time or more fruitful in pleasant impressions. We never know what the next turn in the most unpromising street may disclose. The Roman relics have been already mentioned, but these and the cathedral do not nearly exhaust the list of its antiquities. Would you look at a wealthy burgess’ residence in the earlier part of the twelfth century? You may find it in the Jews’ House of the upper town, or “John of Gaunt’s” stables in the lower. Would you seek for domestic architecture belonging to the later periods of Pointed work? The gate-houses of the close belong to the earlier part of the fourteenth century; “the chequer or exchequer gate with its shops in the side passage, and the Pottergate remain; several residentiary houses were erected at the same period, and are partly remaining, though much altered and disfigured.” At every turn in the older parts of the town the eye falls upon some remnant of ancient days, doorway or gatehouse, window or corner of a wall; it may be merely a fragment, a little block, of mouldering masonry, or it may be an almost perfect example of mediæval architecture. But Lincoln is not only interesting in detail; the town, as a whole, when seen from the flat land by the Witham, is exceptionally attractive. True, it has lost much in recent days. It has become a manufacturing town of some importance; large foundries and other works have sprung up on the meadows by the Witham. The lowland begins to bristle up with tall chimneys, which discharge their clouds of dusky smoke. New and old are in sharp contrast. The tower of St. Mary-le-Wigford looks down on a railway, the quaint little conduit on its churchyard wall is close to a signal-box. Still, ugly as the foreground in many places has become, it cannot spoil the beauty of the town itself, as its houses and gardens climb the steep hillside to the summit of the plateau, where above all peer up the grey remnants of the ancient castle, and the vast mass of the cathedral with its lofty towers rises high above the picturesque buildings of the close and the green trees upon the slope beneath.
From the walls of Lincoln the Witham can be watched as it passes onwards to enter the fenland, into which the level valley opens out as the plateau shelves down towards the east. This part of its course is naturally monotonous, so we shall not attempt to describe it in detail, and shall pause only at the old town which forms its port. Boston, anciently Botolph’s Town, is a thriving market town, which, as every lover of architecture knows, possesses one of the finest churches in the county, or indeed in the whole country. It stands in an ample churchyardclose to the left bank of the Witham; the magnificent tower, crowned by an octagonal lantern, which is supported by flying buttresses, is about 300 feet high, a beacon for many a league of fen and sea. The church itself is not unworthy of the tower, and is one of the largest in England, perhaps the largest of those built on a similar plan. The style is Late Decorated and Perpendicular, though doubtless there was an earlier structure on the same site. The tradition runs that “the first stone was laid in the year 1309 by Dame Margery Tilney, and that she put five pounds upon it, as did Sir John Twesdale the vicar, and Richard Stevenson, a like sum; and that these were the greatest sums at that time given.” Progress, however, must at first have been slow, for most of the building is of rather later date. The interior, though rather plain, is very fine, producing an impression which may be summed up in the word “spaciousness.” Lofty aisles are connected with the nave by corresponding arches; the clerestory is comparatively small. The chancel is large, and open to the body of the church, so that there is little interruption in any direction to the view. Formerly Boston Church was exceptionally rich in brasses, but most of these have perished; two, however, one of a merchant named Peascod, whose dress is appropriately ornamented with pea-pods, and another of a priest vested in a richly-ornamented cope, still remain at the east end. Among the many minor objects of interest to be found in this grand church, which was carefully restored about thirty years since, may be mentioned the stone roof of the tower, the lower storey of which is open to the church, the chancel-stalls, and the curious Elizabethan pulpit.
NORTHAMPTON.NORTHAMPTON.
NORTHAMPTON.
Above the church is a great sluice, below it a bridge, which may be reckoned as the head of the port of Boston. Here sea-going vessels may be seen afloat athigh tide, or stranded on the mud bank at low water. The sea itself is about four miles away, and the dead level of the fens extends all around the town. Except the church there is little of interest in Boston, but probably its tower is surpassed by none in the kingdom, in either its fine design or its extensive prospects.
PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL.PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL.
PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL.
From the table-land about Naseby, much of which lies at an elevation of some six hundred feet above the sea, flow two of the rivers which ultimately pass through the fenland into the Wash. These are a source of the Nen and the Welland. Near the springs of these rivers, on the undulating upland not far from Naseby, was the last great struggle in the field between Royalist and Roundhead; Charles and Rupert on one side, Cromwell and Fairfax on the other, “looked one another in the face.” Both sides were brave enough; but on the one were rashness and incapacity, on the other discipline and skill; so that before four hours had passed the king’s army was shattered before the “new model,” and he became “like a hunted partridge flitting from one castle to another.”
Thus theNenhas its sources quite on the western side of the county—thence each feeder flows through a pleasant rolling region, where pastures alternate with cornfields, and both with copses, broadening its valley, as it proceeds, until they join and reach the chief town of the county, by which time the water meadows bordering its banks are of considerable extent. Northampton is a town which has increased rapidly in size, and in consequence diminished rapidly in attractiveness. While it possesses some very interesting remains of ancient days, its older buildings for themost part are those of a midland market town of the last century, and these have been seldom replaced with the more imposing structures erected at the present day; thus, if we except the new Town Hall, the chief additions to Northampton are blocks of factories, and rows of small houses, monotonous wildernesses of red bricks and purple slates. The place is very old, but the politics that prevail are very modern; for some years one of its parliamentary representatives was the late Mr. Bradlaugh.
ROCKINGHAM VILLAGE AND CASTLE. / GATEWAY OF THE CASTLE.ROCKINGHAM VILLAGE AND CASTLE. / GATEWAY OF THE CASTLE.
ROCKINGHAM VILLAGE AND CASTLE. / GATEWAY OF THE CASTLE.
This slope above the Nen, where its course begins to bend towards the north, was a town full a thousand years ago, when it bore the shorter name of “Hamtune.” For a considerable time it was in the hands of the Danes; it was burned by them in 1010, and harried by the forces of Morkere a year before the Norman Conquest. The successors of William often kept court here, for the Forest of Rockingham—which then spread over a large part of the county—was a favourite hunting ground, and many councils and parliaments were held in the castle. In its hall Becket confronted Henry II., and at a later date, the constitutions of Clarendon were ratified. Its annals have not always been peaceful. De Montford struggled for it with Prince Edward, and the Duke of York with Henry VI. Once Northampton seemed in the way to become a seat of learning, for owing to the state of feeling between “town and gown” in the year 1260 the students abandoned Oxford and settled there; their stay, however, was not long, the “town” found that a proud stomach would soon be an empty one, and made interest with the king to recall the “gown,” so the Nen did not replace the Isis.
The ruins of the castle are inconspicuous, but Northampton possesses two churches of great interest, one, St. Peter’s—a fine, and in some respects remarkable, example of a rather late Norman parish church—which, notwithstanding some alterations, retains in the main its original character, and is an unusually ornate example of that style—and St. Sepulchre’s, one of the four churches in England which commemorate in their plan the ancient church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. This church has been much altered and added to, but the rotunda, or rather octagon, is still in fair preservation, and indicates a date rather later than that of its three companions. The Queen’s Cross, on the higher ground about a mile south of Northampton, is one of the three which remain to mark the resting-places of Queen Eleanor’s body and the affection of her husband. Though somewhat injured, it is still in fair preservation.
STAMFORD.STAMFORD.
STAMFORD.
The valley of the Nen below Northampton affords scenery which, if a little monotonous, is generally pretty. There are flat water meadows by the winding stream, forming a plain a mile or so wide, bounded by slopes, rising sometimes gently, sometimes more rapidly, to a low plateau on either side, and pleasantly diversified with copses and hedgerow timber. The district is an excellent example of the ordinary Midland scenery, quiet, peaceful, seemingly fairly opulent, notwithstanding agricultural depression, but offering few subjects, so far as the scenery is concerned, for pen or pencil, though occasionally an ancient bridge and frequently an old farmhouse of grey stone will attract the artist. As we pass along we note high on the left bank the church of Earls Barton, of which the solid and curiously ornamented tower was built before the Norman Conquest, and the body retains remnants of almost every succeeding period of architecture. Indeed, all this part of the valleyof the Nen, which is followed for the most part by the railway to Peterborough, if comparatively uninteresting in its scenery, is exceptionally rich in its churches. In the words of the late Canon James: “The Saxon tower of Earls Barton; the complete Early English Church of Warmington, with its wooden vaulting and exquisite capitals; the unique octagon of Stanwick; the lanterns of Lowick, Irthlingborough, and Fotheringay; the spires of Raunds, Rushden, and Irchester; Finedon, perfect in the best style; Strixton, the model of an earlier one; the fine steeple of Oundle—are but selections cut of a line of churches, some but little inferior, terminating in the grand west front and more solemn interior of Peterborough Cathedral.” Besides this, opposite to Earls Barton lies Castle Ashby, the home of the Marquis of Northampton, overlooking from its terrace a great extent of the valley of the Nen, and the wooded hills on its other bank. The house, which is built round a quadrangle, replaces a castle which had disappeared by Leland’s time. Three sides were built in the reign of Elizabeth, the fourth was added by Inigo Jones. A lettered balustrade, a rather favourite device in Elizabethan and Jacobean work, is to be seen here. The house contains some interesting pictures and some memorials—according to the author of the account in Murray’s Guide-book—of the famous spendthrift election, when my Lord Northampton, my Lord Halifax, and my Lord Spencer all ran candidates for the borough of Northampton, and the race cost the winner ahundred thousand pounds, and each of the losers a hundred and fifty thousand pounds! Yardley Chase, a fragment of one of the old Northamptonshire forests, adjoins the park.
BEDFORD BRIDGE.BEDFORD BRIDGE.
BEDFORD BRIDGE.
The Nen winds on to Wellingborough, with its chalybeate spring, a town which began to prosper when the iron ore of Northamptonshire found favour in the market. The ore, which is the oxide of iron, popularly known as “rust,” occurs in a group of sands of no great thickness at the base of the lower oolites, and overlying the stiff blue lias clay. According to Horace Walpole, quoted in the Guide-book, Wellingborough was not well provided with hotels in 1763. “We lay at Wellingborough—pray never lie there—the beastliest inn upon earth is there! We were carried into a vast bed-room, which I suppose is the club-room, for it stunk of tobacco like a justice of the peace! I desired some boiling water for tea; they brought me in a sugar-dish of hot water in a pewter plate.” The church is a fine one, and interesting in more respects than space allows us to enumerate. For the same reason we must pass rapidly by Higham Ferrers, with its old bridge (the best of two or three over this section of the river), and the buildings founded by Archbishop Chichele as a mark of affection for his birthplace. The grand church dates from various periods, commencing with the Early English, and ending with the first half of the seventeenth century, when the steeple was rebuilt, but on the old pattern. The church was made collegiate by Chichele in 1415, to which date belongs the woodwork of the chancel. A brass indicates the burial-place of his parents, and there are several other monuments of great interest. The school-house on the north side of the churchyard, quite close to the steeple, and the bede-house on the south, are also Chichele’s work, together with the college, which stood in the main street, but is now in ruins. Probably no townlet in England possesses such a remarkable group of ecclesiastical buildings. The shafts also of two crosses remain. The castle, however, which once belonged to the Earls Ferrers, has now disappeared.
Hence the Nen flows on by bridge or mill to the little town of Thrapston, noted for its grain market. “There is a very pretty view from the bridge which crosses the Nen between Thrapston and Islip. The river sweeps round between green meadows, overhung in the foreground by masses of fine trees. Loosestrife, arrowhead, the flowering rush, and many of the rarer water plants, abound, and the tall rushes which border the stream are used here for plaiting the outer portion of horse collars and mats, and for the seats of chairs.” Then comes Thorpe with its fragment of a castle and the old bridge over a tributary of the Nen, which near here for a while parts into two channels. The scenery generally in this part of the valley is attractive, especially near Lilford, where the old mansion stands on rising ground surrounded by fine trees; and near to the river are the churches and the ruined Castle of Barnwell. Then, hurrying on, Oundle is reached, with its lofty steeple and fine church, its ancient bridge over the river, and its quaint old houses. Oundle has been inhabited since the days of the Romans, and is justlynoted as “one of the pleasantest towns in Northamptonshire.” Cotterstock with its memories of Dryden, Tansor with its curious church, come next, then Fotheringay with its “fair builded paroche church” and its ruined castle, in the hall of which stern justice was done to Mary Stuart, overlooks the valley of the Nen. At Wansford the river sweeps round to the east, and glides slowly through a less interesting district down to Peterborough, passing on its way Castor with its interesting church and relics of a Roman station. This, Durobrivæ by name, appears to have occupied both sides of the river, and was evidently a wealthy and important settlement. It was famed also for its pottery; “kilns and great works extended round Castor and its neighbourhood for about twenty miles up and down the Nen valley. Roman potters’ kilns have been found nowhere else in England so perfect or in so great numbers.”
Far above the lowland, far above the fens upon which the river is now entering, rises the huge mass of the Cathedral of Peterborough. The town, once a mere appendage to the great monastery, is now an important centre of railways and of works connected therewith. Within the last forty years the population has trebled; acres and acres of land have been covered with rather commonplace dwellings; but the nucleus of the town, the houses by the Nen bridge, the picturesque market-place, the old residences of the close, and above all the Cathedral, are little changed. A few years ago it was found necessary to rebuild completely the central tower of the Cathedral, for it was on the point of falling; much underpinning and other structural work has had to be done in the choir, during which some very remarkable remnants of the older fabric have been found; and it will probably be some years before the work of restoration is completed, for the expense is great, and neither the chapter nor the diocese is rich.
At Peterborough we stand on the brink of the lowland. It is not yet actual fen; the Cathedral, the town, stand on a thin bed of rock, which overlies clay and provides a foundation. Here, about the year 655, the place being then called Medeshamstede, a monastery was founded. For more than two centuries it flourished; then the Dane swooped down on the fenland abbey, and for nearly a hundred years it was desolate. It was rebuilt about 966, and in less than a century had become so wealthy that in the days of Abbot Leofric, a great benefactor, it was called the golden burgh of Peter. The splendour for a time was dimmed when the monastery was burnt, and the church sacked, by Hereward the Wake as an English welcome to the first Norman Abbot. All of this church that was above ground has long disappeared, but considerable portions of the foundation have been discovered during the recent alterations, and will not be again buried. The grand Norman structure which still remains—one of the most complete in the kingdom—was begun about 1118, and completed, except the west front, about 1190. That—a structure perfectly unique, a gigantic portico, in the form of three huge pointed arches—is assigned to the first quarter of the thirteenth century. For boldness of design and perfection of execution it is unsurpassed by anything of this period inthe kingdom. The small spires, the pinnacles, and the porch, unfortunately stuffed between the piers of the central arch, are of later date. The “new building” or lady chapel at the east end is a fine piece of Tudor work, but it has not improved the lower part of the Norman church. The Perpendicular architects have inserted poor tracery in many of the windows, and have made other alterations, seldom for the better, but less mischief has been done at Peterborough by these meddlesome blunderers than in most other Norman cathedrals.
HUNTINGDON BRIDGE.HUNTINGDON BRIDGE.
HUNTINGDON BRIDGE.
TheWellandrises, as has been said, on the high ground near Naseby, but runs parallel with the outcrop of the rocks, while the stream going to the Nen descends with their slope. Thus the valley of the former widens rapidly, and before reaching Market Harborough is already trench-like in outline. This, for long a sleepy little town, seems to have been stimulated into some life by the meeting of railways. Still it possesses one or two old houses, a chapel and a church of some interest; and from it Charles led his army to the fatal field of Naseby. Below Harborough the valley of the Welland continues to broaden and flatten its bed, the slopes often rising steeply on both northern and southern sides. Though sometimes pleasantly wooded around the site of some old family mansion, they are commonly rather bare, and the scenery is on the whole less attractive than is usual in this region of England. Such churches also as are near the river are not remarkable, and it is not till we come to Rockingham that we care to pause. Here, however, high on the right bank, backed by shady woods, are the terraces, gables, and the remaining bulwarks of Rockingham Castle. The road climbs through the picturesque village to the grey old gateway, which, with other portions, dates from the thirteenth century, but the part more conspicuous from the valley is mainly of the reign ofElizabeth. “Anywhere the high site of Rockingham, backed with its avenues of limes and groups of forest trees, would be a fine one, but in Northamptonshire the wild and broken ground of the park, and the abrupt slopes and earthworks on which the castle stands, make it signally unique.” The earlier kings of England not seldom used this for a hunting seat in the days when Rockingham Forest was a reality instead of a name.
The river winds on with little change in the general character of the scenery; the tower of Gretton looks down from the high scarp of the right bank, the little spire of Seaton rises among trees hardly less high on the left, the small village of Harringworth, with its grey stone houses, its interesting church, and its old cross still standing in the market-place, lies by the river side, near to which a branch of the Midland Railway crosses river and valley on a mighty viaduct of brick arches. Then Collyweston crowns the slope on the right. Here are the quarries of so-called slate, which in former days roofed all the churches and most of the mansions for miles round—a material in its slight irregularity of form and colour far more pleasing to the eye than the formal smoothness and dull tints of the slates of Wales or Westmorland, which now find favour with builders. Then near the river are more grey houses, always worth a passing glance, for they are often at least a couple of centuries old, and as stone was plentiful and good, men in those times forbore to do their work “on the cheap.” But here is something more, for above them rises the steeple of Ketton church, perhaps the most graceful to be found in any village in England. High on the hills behind are the famous quarries, which for long took the place of those of Barnack, but are now in their turn becoming exhausted.
OLD BRIDGE, ST. IVES.OLD BRIDGE, ST. IVES.
OLD BRIDGE, ST. IVES.
Then above the willow trees by the water, grey houses, towers, and spires, rise from the bed of the valley, climb the slope on the left, and that on the right also, till the suburb is arrested by densely massed woods. These hide from view the palatial mansion of Burghley; this is “Stamford town,” once a noted halting-place on the great North Road. There is, perhaps, no town in England of the same size which is more picturesque or more interesting. Grey stone houses, often of excellent design, overhang the river, and border the streets; the steeple of St. Mary’s is very similar, and hardly inferior, to that of Ketton; that of All Saints is also fine. In St. Martin’s, near the gate, Burghley, the great Lord Treasurer, the founder of the houses of Exeter and Salisbury, lies buried; the Burghley Bede House, Browne’s Hospital, and the ruined priory of St. Leonard’s, are full of interest, and the town boasts that to it, as to Northampton, there was once a migration from Oxford.
At Stamford itself one would hardly suppose that the fens were near. The ground on either side is fairly high, the valley not notably broad, but the river, like the Witham at Lincoln, after cutting through the great limestone escarpment, passes out into the vast expanse of marsh-land that borders the Wash.
TheOuserises in Buckinghamshire not far from Banbury, noted among children for its cross and cakes, and wanders leisurely on by the quiet county town of Buckingham, by Newport Pagnell, and Olney, known to admirers of Cowper, its scenery for the most part opulent, but rather monotonous, till it approaches Bedford—once a town wholly agricultural, now the site of important works of agricultural implements, and evidently prospering. Sleepily the Ouse glides along by its reedy banks through the wide lowland, silently it slides by the waterside houses, the pretty gardens, and the modern bridge which has replaced an earlier and more picturesque structure. Among the fields towards the south, the massive tower of Elstow church rises above the trees, indicating the birthplace of John Bunyan, who “lighted on a den” in Bedford gaol, and there “dreamed the dream” of the “Pilgrim’s Progress.” Bedford Castle has disappeared, the churches are of little interest, the houses commonplace. Except for a few memorials of Bunyan, Bedford does not offer much to detain the traveller, unless he would examine its excellent schools or search for the remains of palæolithic man in the neighbouring gravels.
Below Bedford the Ouse passes on through wide meadows, near the pine-clad hills of Sandy, and the market gardens, fertile from the happy mixture of the light sand of the slopes with the mud of the river; by the old town of St. Neots, with its fine church tower; by Huntingdon with its picturesque bridge and its memories of Cromwell, where the old mansion of the Earls of Sandwich looks from its terrace over the wide and often flooded river plain; and beneath the ancient bridge of St. Ives. The valley becomes less and less definite, the scenery flat, flatter, flattest, till somewhere or other in the fens the Ouse receives the Cam, and somewhere or other at last reaches the sea. This enigmatical sentence will be presently explained; let us now turn back to notice briefly the course of the last-named river.
TheCamis shorter than any which have been noticed, yet a stream which passes through Cambridge, and may claim to glide by Ely, may well demand a longer notice than any of them. This, however, the limitations of space forbid, so we shall pass over, as generally known, the history of Cambridge and of its University. We will merely glance at the site of the Roman camp on the low plateau and the old “Saxon” tower of St. Benet’s on the plain across the Cam, indicating, as at Lincoln, an early separation of the military and the civil element. We will only mention the Round church, another memorial of the Holy Sepulchre. We will not discuss the rise and progress of the University, whether or no its founder was Sigibert, king of the East Angles, nor speak of the work of many a pious benefactor, royal, noble, and lowly born, or of its illustrious sons, its treasures of literature, its museums and colleges. We will merely trace the course of the Cam through the town, because there is no mile of river scenery in all England, or, so far as we know, in all Europe, which can be exactly compared with it.
The Cam at Cambridge results from the union of two or three streams which have stolen sluggishly down, from sources a few miles distant among the chalk hills or the yet lower undulations of the clay district, to form a river rather wider and deeper, but hardly more rapid than an ordinary canal. Meadows and osier beds end at a mill, up to which barges can come, and below the pool, at the first bridge leading into the town, the characteristic scenery may be said to begin. Close to this the buildings of Queen’s College overhang the water, linked to the garden on the left bank by a picturesque wooden bridge. With tall trees to the left, with another garden on the right, we then glide beneath a single-arch bridge into the precincts of King’s College. On the left bank are meadows bordered by tall trees; on the right, from smooth-shaven lawns, rise the master’s lodge, the massive Fellows’ Buildings, and the stately chapel, the pride of King’s College. Overlooking the lawns, but parted by a garden from the river, is the single court of Clare College, an excellent example of seventeenth century domestic architecture, behind which is the group of buildings belonging to the University Library, the older part of which was erected for the students of King’s College. A handsome three-arched bridge links Clare to its beautiful gardens on the opposite bank of the Cam, and almost closes the view along the stream, though beneath its arches glimpses are obtained of more gardens and yet more bridges. Rowing on, with some care for our oars, we pass beneath an arch, and glide by the gardens of Clare College and beneath the terraced wall which hides that of Trinity Hall, but not its stately chestnut trees. Then, through a single arch of iron, which carries one of the roads leading into the town, we enter the grounds of Trinity College, the largest, richest, and most aristocratic of the educational foundations of Cambridge. Before us is its bridge, interrupting the noble avenue of limes, which on the one side separates its tree-fringed meadows, on the other leads up to the gateway tower in the façade of the “New Court.” There are now neither shrubs nor flowers by the river, but here and there a weeping willow overhangs the water. Aswe pass beneath one of the arches we obtain on the one side a clearer view of the Trinity meadows; on the other, of Wren’s stately but rather ugly library adjoining the “New Court,” and in front, across more meadows, and yet more aged trees, we see the grand mass of the “New Court” of St. John’s College.
JUNCTION OF THE CAM AND THE OUSE.JUNCTION OF THE CAM AND THE OUSE.
JUNCTION OF THE CAM AND THE OUSE.
On approaching these the river bends to the right. Old elms border the meadows of St. John’s, an ivy-clad wall bounds an old garden belonging to Trinity, and then, beyond another three-arched bridge, the Cam passes between the buildings of St. John’s. They rise directly from the water, like the palaces of Venice; on the right, a picturesque group of red brick and old grey stone, dating from the seventeenth century, linked by a covered bridge of stone—a Gothicised Rialto—to the loftier mass of the New Court on the left. Bridge and buildings were erected rather more than half a century since; the material is a cream-coloured limestone; the style is late Perpendicular. Passing between these and by the gable of the college library, a view is obtained of the Master’s lodge and of the west front of the chapel with its heavy inappropriate tower. Both are the work of Gilbert Scott, and the latter is by no means one of his successes. These left behind, some rather poor but not unpicturesque houses border the Cam, till it is crossed by an iron bridge, supporting the main street of the town. Then we glide past the buildings of Magdalene College, which of late years have been opened to the river. Soon after this we emerge from the town, to see, below a lock and weir, the boat-houses of the college rowing-clubs borderingthe left bank of the Cam, and the grassy expanse of “Midsummer Common” on the opposite side. For the next three or four miles the margin of the Cam, uninteresting as its scenery may be, is often lively enough, for skiffs, pairs, four-oars, eight-oars, dart up and down, propelled by the strong arms of sturdy rowers. Dingeys or “tubs” progress more leisurely, while now and again a long string of barges is towed or punted onwards, and almost blocks the waterway. As a result of this, the representatives of learning and of commerce exchange compliments, when the language is vernacular rather than classic. Brightest of all is the scene on occasions of the college races. Carriages and spectators crowd the right bank, on the left runs a yelling crowd, which, as it follows the boats, resembles in its motley mixture of uniforms a huge party-coloured water-snake. Age and youth, don and undergraduate, mingle in one confused mass, like a pack of hounds in full cry. Oh, the music of that shout! Oh, the memories of those days when friends were many and cares were few—when many a face was bright which has now faded away into the shadow-land, many a heart was warm which is now mouldering in the dust!
QUEEN’S BRIDGE, CAMBRIDGE.QUEEN’S BRIDGE, CAMBRIDGE.
QUEEN’S BRIDGE, CAMBRIDGE.
Before long the Cam fairly enters the fenland, and creeps along by willows and reeds, by wide tracts of black earth, once marshy and malarious, now rich plains of corn land. Here and there a cluster of trees, a tower or a spire, marksthe spot where some insular bank afforded in olden times a site for a village among the wild waste of flooded fen. When the winter frost has gone, when the spring north-easter is still, when the summer sun is high, it is indeed a sleepy land. The spirit of the scenery may be not inappropriately summed up in the words written over the door of a waterside inn, half-way between Cambridge and Ely: “Five miles from anywhere; no hurry!” One object only breaks the monotony of the horizon; this is the vast mass of Ely Cathedral towering up from its island hill, and overlooking the fens of the Cam and of the Ouse.
This isle of Ely, a large but low plateau surrounded by meres and marshes, was of old a place of note. It was the dower of Etheldreda, daughter of Anna, king of the East Anglians, and she, soon after the year 673, founded a monastery near to the site of the present cathedral. Of this she became abbess, and here she died and was ultimately enshrined. To her memorial festival pilgrims crowded from all quarters, and the trifles sold at “St. Awdry’s” fair have left their mark upon our language. The Danes came and the monastery was devastated, but it was founded anew about a century before the Norman Conquest. At that epoch it became a “Camp of Refuge” for the patriots who refused submission to the invaders. The deeds of Hereward the Wake are too well known to need recounting; suffice it to say that the resistance was long and stubborn, and that the Normans were more than once beaten off from the isle with heavy loss. The scene of their gravest defeat is still marked by an old causeway which crosses both the fens and a channel of the Ouse to a spot near Haddenham, about four miles distant from Ely.[6]Along this William advanced from Cambridge to the attack. By the river brink there was a desperate struggle, but at last the dry reeds above the causeway on the Norman side were fired by the English; the flame fanned by the evening breeze came roaring down on the invader’s column; then was a wild rush for dear life, but between fire and morass many a Norman never got back again to his camp.
The monastery which sheltered Hereward’s men, the church where they worshipped, have now disappeared. The foundations of the present cathedral were laid by Simeon, the first Norman abbot, who was appointed in 1082. Most of it belongs to a yet later date. The oldest work is found in the transepts; the upper parts of these, with the nave, are Late Norman, the west tower and remaining part of the façade not being completed till near the end of the twelfth century. The singularly beautiful choir is partly Early English, partly Decorated; the eastern bays dating from about 1240, the western nearly a century later. In the year 1322 the Norman central tower fell in with a mighty crash, and was replaced by the octagon and lantern, which form the unique glory of Ely. About the same timethe great Lady-chapel at the east angle of the northern transept was added. The beautiful western Galilee porch was built in advance of the western façade, perhaps a quarter of a century after the completion of the latter, which has lost, at what date it is uncertain, its northern wing or transept.
ELY CATHEDRAL, FROM THE RIVER.ELY CATHEDRAL, FROM THE RIVER.
ELY CATHEDRAL, FROM THE RIVER.
Of the additions and alterations made by the architects of the Perpendicular period—rarely improvements—it is needless to speak, and through want of space we must pass over the beautiful monuments, the stall work ancient and modern, the decoration of the roof, and the many enrichments which the cathedral has received during the latter part of the present century. Nor can we do more than mention the interesting remains of the annexed monastery—the ruins of the infirmary, the ancient gateway, the deanery and other old houses, or the Bishop’s Palace, which stands a little apart from these to the south-west of the cathedral. In this respect its precincts are not less interesting than those of Lincoln and Peterborough.
We have not attempted to follow either Nen, Welland, or Ouse, to the sea, because their courses through the fenlands are now to a considerable extent artificial, forming part of a connected system of drainage; and because the whole district is an almost unbroken plain. A description written for one part will apply to any other; a few trees, more or less, grouped a little differently by the dykes or on thelow shoals which rise a few feet above the plain; a little more or less of marsh or peat still left among the enclosures: that is all; the only differences are in the sluices, pumping-stations, windmills, houses, churches—in short, in the artificial, not in the natural features of the scenery.
The history of the drainage of the fens and the rectification of its river courses is a long and complicated one.[7]Restricting ourselves to the vast plain west and south-west of the Wash, the silted-up estuary, rather than the river delta of the Welland, Nen, and Ouse, it may suffice to say that, while works were executed so far back as Roman times, the first great effort for the reclamation of the land dates from the seventeenth century. Formerly these rivers branched in the fenland. The Welland divided at Crowland, one arm passing by Spalding, the other inosculating with an arm of the Nen, which was thrown off near Peterborough; of this river the other arm passed through Whittlesea Mere to Wisbeach, and so to the sea. The Ouse also divided at Erith, one arm passing northward to join part of the Nen, the other, that mentioned above, flowing south of the Isle of Ely and uniting with the Cam. The part of the fens which lay north of the Nen was partially reclaimed in the reign of James I. The drainage was completed by Rennie in the beginning of the present century, but some sixty years afterwards powerful pumps had to be added to his work to discharge the drainage into the sea. The reclamation of the district south of the Nen was undertaken by Vermuyden with the help of the Earl of Bedford. His scheme was elaborate and open to criticism, its history complicated and unsatisfactory. It may suffice to say that the work, begun under Charles, was completed under Cromwell; that the rivers were conducted along channels, mainly artificial, enclosed by banks, and that before long, owing to the drying of the peat, the consequent reduction of the slope of the ground, and the silting-up of the outfalls, it was found necessary to introduce windmills for pumping. Since then many improvements and alterations have been made. Whittlesea Mere, for example, a sheet of water from 1,000 to 1,600 acres in extent, has been drained, new sluices have been added, steam pumping engines erected, and the drainage of the fens may now be regarded as complete. The wild marsh-land, once a steaming swamp in summer, a vast sheet of water in winter, is now a plain of dry black earth, “green in springtime with the sprouting blade, golden in autumn with the dense ears of grain. It is a strange, solemn land, silent even yet, with houses few and far between, except where they have clustered for centuries on some bank of Jurassic clay, which rises like a shoal not many feet above the plain; with water yet dank and dark, but brightened in summer with arrowhead and flowering rush and the great white cups of water-lilies. Strange kinds of hawks yet circle in the air, the swallowtail butterfly yet dances above the sedges, though the great-copper no longer spreads its burnished wings to the sunshine. Few trees, except grey willows or rows of rustling poplars, break the dead level which stretches away to the horizon, like a sea,beneath a vast dome of sky kindled often at sunrise and at sunset into a rare glory of many colours.”[8]