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
License, on the petition of their Foundress, Mary de Sancto
Paulo, Countess of Pembroke, to have a Chapel founded and built
by the said Countess within their walls, wherein Masses and other
Divine Offices may be celebrated by Priests of the said College;
saving the rights of the Parish Church."
The Parochial rights here spoken of mean the exclusive right of the
Parish Priest to celebrate marriages and to receive the dues known as
"Easter Offerings "and "Surplice Fees."
The dedication of St. Botolph's Church notifies us that we are now
entering Cambridge proper. For this Saint, who was historically an
abbot, the pioneer of the Benedictine Order in East Anglia, became
adopted by travellers as their special patron; and his churches were,
accordingly, placed for the most part at the gates of towns that his
benediction might speed the parting voyager. We thus find them at no
fewer than four of the London exits, Aldgate, Aldersgate, Bishopsgate,
and Billingsgate, and in more than sixty other places, mostly in East
Anglia. That which we are now considering was associated with the
entrance to Cambridge known as "Trumpington Gate," where the mediaeval
traveller from London made his way into the town by crossing the
ancient defensive work called "The King's Ditch."
The construction of this great trench was popularly ascribed to King
Henry the Third, who, in his struggle with the Barons, desired to keep
a firm hold on the important strategic centre of Cambridge. There is
some reason, however, to suppose that he did not actually initiate the
idea of thus insulating the town by running a ditch across the bend of
the river on which it stands, but merely deepened and widened an
earlier trench, originally made, perhaps, by the Danes during their
occupation of the place, and remade by King John. However this may
be, the ditch utterly failed of its purpose. Not only was it unequal
to keeping the Barons out, but it could not even preserve the town
from being pillaged by a local marauder, Geoffry de Magnaville or
Maundeville, who made his lair in the neighbouring fens.
The King's Ditch left the river at "the King's Mill" (now Newnham
Mill), and re-entered it opposite Magdalene College. It remained an
open watercourse (and a common sewer) till near the beginning of the
nineteenth century, when it was filled in, none too soon, for sanitary
reasons. Timber bridges spanned the stream at "Barnwell Gate," where
the "Via Devana" entered the town, as well as here at "Trumpington
Gate." These gates themselves, if they ever had any material
existence, were probably, at the most, little more than toll-bars.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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