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
With St. John's the Collegiate buildings cease and are succeeded by
the last remaining "Hithes," or quays, used for commercial traffic,
which of old lined the banks for the whole length of Cambridge. We
read of Corn Hithe, Pease Hithe, Flax Hithe, Garlic Hithe and others.
For the river was to old Cambridge all and more than all that the
railways are now, the great artery of traffic, by which goods were far
more easily and cheaply conveyed than along the roads of the period,
which were always rough and often mere "Sloughs of Despond." Most
especially was this the case with fuel, so that in the seventeenth
century it was a familiar local saying that "here water kindleth
fire." These ancient hithes, like the street-ways leading to them,
have been almost all absorbed by the various College precincts. The
last, as we have said, are to be seen yet, still in use, with barges
(still laden chiefly with firewood) lying at them, below St. John's,
by the side of the "Great Bridge," that famous passage of the river to
which Cambridge owes both its name and its very existence. Opposite
the lowest of them there is one more riverside College, Magdalene, an
old monastic educational establishment turned to its present purpose
at the time of the Reformation by Lord Thomas Audley of Saffron
Walden, a courtier of King Henry the Eighth, who had obtained a grant
of it from that rapacious monarch.
Our Cam byway here ends; for the river here passes out of the
populated area of Cambridge. It is noteworthy that this area abuts on
its banks to the same extent and no more than it did seven hundred
years ago. The King's Ditch, which then bounded it, left the stream at
the King's Mill, where our voyage started, and rejoined it just
opposite Magdalene, where that voyage closes. It is well worth while,
however, to retrace our course, for we shall find fresh loveliness in
the reverse views of the exquisite scenery through which we have
passed; and may note the many disused archways in the College walls,
which tell how, scarcely a generation ago, this unique gem of English
landscape was actually defiled by being used as a shamelessly open
sewer.
CHAPTER III
=Queens' College=, Erasmus, Cloisters, Carmelites, Chapel.--Old
Mill Street.--=King's College=, Henry the Sixth, King's and Eton,
Henry's "Will."--King's College Chapel, Wordsworth, Milton,
Windows, Rosa Solis, Screen, Stalls, Vaulting, Side-Chapels, View
from Roof.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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