THE ISLE of ELY

joemasonspage

Apr 30

THE ISLE of ELY is a city in Cambridgeshire, dominated on its skyline by its cathedral. A thousand years ago it was already an important religious community; it was a key outpost of East Anglia. The Abbey was founded 1400 years ago by a royal princess of the East Anglian Royal Family. Her name was Etheldreda, and she was the first Abbess of the joint establishment (holding both male and female members). Ely was then surrounded by water, and the secular inhabitants survived largely by catching eels. The consumption of these fish must have nourished the devout too; the name Ely derives from the Anglo-Saxon word meaning the "District of Eels". There are some who dispute this, but considering the the sound and even the spelling of the word (and the large eel population that used to swim in the ample waterways that surrounded the settlement) this seems incontrovertible. In the building of the Abbey at Ely many locals were employed, and this gave them a good level of remuneration. In 1109 the bishopric of Ely was established, and the Abbey church became a cathedral.

On February the 13th 1322, the central tower came crashing down; instead of replacing it with a rebuilt stone tower, the crossing was enlarged; a timber octagon was constructed instead. One Alan of Walsingham was responsible, and in a great adaptation he removed all four of the original piers. He incorporated the adjoining bays of the nave, chancel and transepts into an open space far larger than the square base of the former tower. This was a radical solution, which and his assistants designed. The large stone octagon, with its eight internal archways, leads up to timber vault that has the large glazed lantern atop the slender supports. The roof and lantern are held up by a complex timber structure which could not be built in this way today; there is no longer a sufficient number of oak trees big enough. At the centre is a wooden boss, carved from a single piece of oak, showing Christ in Majesty. This lantern is the crowning glory of Ely cathedral, although the Lady Chapel also deserved a mention.

In the middle ages the town saw several periods of rebellion against the central power; most notably, the ultimately unsuccessful revolt of Hereward the Wake. This was not the last revolt by the townspeople of Ely. There was a particularly vicious uprising at the time of the PEASANTS' REVOLT of 1381, but this too was put down.

Ely railway station was opened in 1845, as a part of the line which was being extended from Cambridge towards Norwich. Ely has, since that original station was built has become a major junction, with trains to King's Lynn, Ipswich, Peterborough as well as to Cambridge and Norwich. Ely is on the route to all the other parts of the country from East Anglia. You can go south from Norwich to London and west from Newmarket to Cambridge without going through Ely, but otherwise it is virtually impossible to leave Norfolk or Suffolk without going through the junction at Ely.

Ely was a stop on the Fenman Express that was introduced by British Railways in 1949. At first this train was normally hauled by an ex-LNER B1 locomotive. This class of engine had been designed by Edward Thompson in 1942, and was given the classification 5MT – denoting a powerful mixed traffic locomotive. These were called the Antelope class, and (as the name suggests) the early example were named after types of deer. The Fenman Express ran from Liverpool Street in London to Lynn and on to terminate at Hunstanton. By the 1960s the express was largely being hauled by diesel locomotives, but on one occasion the diesel hauling the train (carrying the Queen on the way to Sandringham via Wolferton station) failed near Ely. A steam locomotive had to complete the journey!