Through East Anglia in a Motor CarVincent, James Edmund
General
Through East Anglia in a Motor Car
Vincent, James Edmund
Norfolk (England) -- Description and travel; Suffolk (England) -- Description and travel
Nor did Watton detain us, any more than it need detain anybody else.
Brandon, the next place passed, was renowed in ancient times for its
rabbits and its quarries of gunflints, and the "Grime's graves" in the
vicinity are said to be interesting earthworks. The glory of the rabbits
remains, but the gunflint trade was, of course, vanished. "Murray," it is
true, says that flints "are still (1875) exported to Arab tribes round the
Mediterranean," but that was more than thirty years ago, and Mr. Rye is, no
doubt, correct in saying that the old industry has, naturally enough, died
out of late years. But those desert tribes on the African coast of the
Mediterranean still use some charmingly antique pieces, and it may be that
Brandon flints are still fitted to some of them. They were the same kind of
flints which the ancient Briton, or perhaps Neolithic man, used to dig out
at Brandon, for excavations some time since revealed a stag's antler, says
"Murray," in what was clearly a "working" of a prehistoric flint quarry.
Thus much the writer tells us and no more. It would really have been much
more interesting to know something of the nature of the antler; but on that
point he is silent.
If one were in a hurry, and a train happened to be convenient, it would,
for once, be simpler to reach Ely from Brandon by train than by car: for
the railway follows the course of the Brandon River across Mow Fen and then
cuts straight across Burnt Fen and Middle Fen to Ely. On the other hand the
road, dating very likely to a period long before the reclamation of the
fens, and keeping to the high ground, turns south-west by south to
Mildenhall and then, skirting Mildenhall Fen, nearly due west to Fordham
and Soham, and from Soham north-west to Ely: and this is a long way round.
Here there would be a first rate opportunity for saying something of the
romantic history of the Fens, for it is truly romantic, and of the real
glamour which they exercise upon a traveller through their midst. The
opportunity is deliberately reserved to a later point for three reasons.
First, there is much to be said on other matters; secondly, you really do
not see very much of the Fens by this line of route; thirdly, it was found
later that the drive from Lynn to Ely is _par excellence_ the occasion
upon which the peculiar character of the Fens, their limitless extent,
their rich and black soil, and the reflection that all this wealth has been
reclaimed from the wasting waters by the industry and the enterprise of
man, the very spirit of the Fens in fact, enter into the traveller's soul.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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