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
This chapel measures a hundred feet in length and is about half that
width, the roof is of a single span, with no pillars to support it.
Around it runs a stone bench, divided up by canopied niches still
bearing traces of the old colouring--red, blue, green and gold. The
canopied work over these niches is in almost perfect preservation,
rich and free in design, but the statuary which once abounded under
and above it has been ruthlessly and deliberately broken. Only one
head half hidden by sculptured foliage escaped the iconoclasts as they
went round the hallowed walls to "break down all the carved work
thereof with axes and hammers."
We look up and see some relics of stained glass, accidentally spared
when the rest was smashed, in colour most harmonious, the greens and
reds incomparably mellow in tone; while certain small outlined figures
strangely traversing it, stiff yet vigorous, recall the painting on
Egyptian monuments. A few square feet of this precious glass, a
multitude of headless yet graceful statuettes canopied by unblemished
stone-work, are still left to show us how beautiful the whole must
have been when in its glory. We leave with a sigh the chapel, designed
by Alan of Walsingham, and built by his faithful subsacrist John of
Wisbech.
Those who desire it can, before they quit the Minster, climb to the
top of the western tower, and if the day is clear they will be well
rewarded by a superb view over the "boundless plain" below; towns and
hamlets, steeples and spires, spread there beneath us, nor must we
forget the railways, with their kindly evidence of modern life at its
fullest. To the east the horizon is bounded by those East Anglian
uplands which nurtured Etheldreda for her great work here. But, beyond
almost any other, this is essentially a man-made landscape; its
salient features are not hills, but buildings, not rivers but lodes.
Peterborough, the sister Abbey-Cathedral, is in view twenty miles away
to the north-west, and many a church of note and beauty is prominent
within nearer range, including the towers and spires of Cambridge
fifteen miles to the south. The very cornfields and pastures beneath
us have been reclaimed from the marsh by man; while, far on the
north-east, is "Denvers Sluice" protecting the rich fenland from
inundation. The view from the top of the tower is well worth a climb,
if we have time and strength for the venture.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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