Highways and Byways in Cambridge and ElyConybeare, John William Edward
History
Highways and Byways in Cambridge and Ely
Conybeare, John William Edward
Cambridgeshire (England) -- Description and travel; Isle of Ely (England) -- Description and travel
[Footnote 192: See Chap. XIV.]
Wilburton, a mile to the east, was given to Ely by St. Ethelwold,
Bishop of Winchester, the prelate who aided in King Edgar's
restoration of the Monastery of Ely, after its destruction by the
Danes, in 870, had laid it waste for upwards of a century. The church
has some fine woodwork in stalls, screen, and roof, adorned on the
spandrills and bosses with the three cocks of Bishop Alcock, the
founder of Jesus College. While Archdeacon of Ely he here entertained
Henry the Eighth, when, as Prince of Wales, he accompanied his father
on the last Royal Pilgrimage ever made to the shrine of St. Etheldreda
at Ely, which he himself was so soon to despoil and destroy. A good
brass (now affixed to the wall) commemorates Alcock's predecessor in
the archidiaconate, Richard Bole (1477). And yet another Archdeacon,
Wetheringset, is also here buried. Some curious metal-work hangs from
the roof, and on the north wall of the nave are ancient frescoes,
representing not only St. Christopher, the usual subject, but the much
less known St. Blaise and St. Leodegar. The former was Bishop of
Sebaste, and was martyred in 316 A.D. He became the patron saint of
wool-combers, and was specially venerated in Leeds and Bradford. The
latter was Bishop of Autun in Gaul, during the seventh century. There
is here a fine old red-brick manor-house, called the Burgh-stead (or
Bury-stead), built in 1600 by a London alderman to whom Queen
Elizabeth sold the Manor,--after filching it from the Bishop of Ely,
according to her usual practice.
[Illustration: _Wilburton._]
The whole peninsula is specially rich in memorials of long past ages.
In the peat of the old Ouse channel by Wilburton was found a great
hoard of bronze weapons, lying in a promiscuous heap, "in such a
manner as to suggest that a canoe with a cargo of bronze scrap had
been upset there," as Professor and Mrs. Hughes picturesquely put it,
in their "Geography of Cambridgeshire." Grunty Fen has produced a
bronze sickle, and two splendid ornaments of twisted gold; while, a
mile east of Wilburton, a British urn was discovered, associated with
the bones of the urus, or gigantic wild ox of the Neolithic Age. And
between Earith and Wilburton there has been dug out gold ring-money.
[Illustration: _The Burystead, Wilburton._]
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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