London Road.--Trumpington, Church, Brass, Chaucer's Mill, Byron's
Pool, Upper River.--Grantchester, Church.--Cam and Granta.--The
Shelfords.--Sawston, Old-world Industries, Hall, Hiding-Hole,
"Little John."--Whittlesford, Old Hospital.--Duxford.--Triplow
Heath, Civil War.--Fowlmere, Hinxton, Sacring Bell.--Ickleton,
Monolith Pillars.--Chesterford.--Icknield Way.--Saffron Walden.
Due south from Cambridge goes the great London Road, a name now
practically supplanted by the local designation of Trumpington Road.
Trumpington, two miles out, is already joined to Cambridge by a string
of suburban villas; but these are only on one side of the road, while
the other is a continuous line of nightingale-haunted elms, not even
the stench and dust of the motorist having availed to drive away those
fearless songsters. In leaving the Town the road starts along Hobson's
Conduit, passing the Botanic Gardens, and crosses Vicar's Brook at the
historic milestone already described on page 160, the first to be set
up in England since the days of the Romans.
Trumpington Church shares with Salisbury Cathedral the distinction of
being built wholly in the Early English style at its best; and it has
what is, perhaps, the best-known brass in England, that of Sir Roger
de Trumpington, one of the crusading comrades of Edward the First. The
knight is in full panoply of chain-armour, with steel epaulettes (or
ailettes as they were then called) protecting his shoulders. His
helmet is secured by a chain to his girdle, an unusual precaution, and
his large concave shield is charged with his punning arms, two golden
trumpets.
From the Church an alluring hollow lane winds down to a flat green
island meadow (once a swamp, and still often flooded) between two
branches of the Cam, dividing Trumpington from the sister village of
Grantchester. On the Grantchester side of this island we come to a
mill, with a specially delicious mill-pool below it, overhung by a
wreath of foliage, chiefly chestnut. This is the representative of the
mill immortalised by Chaucer, in the Canterbury Tale which describes
so picturesquely the somewhat unsavoury adventures of the Cambridge
"clerks":
At Trompyngtoun, nat far fro Cantebrigge,
There goth a brook, and over that a brigge,
Upon the whiche brook ther stant a melle,
And this is verray sothe that I you telle.
The present mill, however, is not on the actual site of Chaucer's,
which stood some quarter of a mile higher up the stream. Its mill-pool
still exists, and is famed as "Byron's Pool." Hither the poet used
constantly to make his way when an undergraduate, as a retired spot
where he might enjoy his favourite delight of bathing, which even in
his day was a practice somewhat frowned upon by the academic
authorities. A century or so earlier, as has been already said, any
student found guilty of it was publicly flogged in the Hall of his
College.[164] It is a fascinating place, overhung by fine trees, and
remained in favour as a bathing-place even to the middle of the
nineteenth century. Now it has become so silted up as to be
practically useless. But on the river above it there is still a good
swimming reach, little used, however, as most students are content
with the University bathing sheds between Grantchester and Cambridge.
[Footnote 164: See p. 153. After this preliminary domestic castigation
he was again flogged on the morrow in the University Schools by the
Proctors. A second offence meant expulsion from the University!]
The footpath past these sheds is a pleasant byway between the two
places, through the green meadows along the riverbank, and so also is
the river itself, hereabouts no more than the "brook" which Chaucer
calls it. It is, however, by no means a water to be played with
rashly, having a tortuous course full of deep holes, in which many
lives have been lost. Indeed, no student is now allowed on this "Upper
River," unless a certified swimmer. A third alternative route is
afforded by the lane between Grantchester and Newnham. Though the
southern half of this suburb is actually in Grantchester parish, the
lane still runs through open fields, and Grantchester itself is in no
sense suburban.
A strangely zig-zag road (with no fewer than four right-angle bends to
left and right alternately in as many hundred yards), climbs from the
mill to the church, which stands, like Trumpington, on the gravel
terrace above the river. These river gravels are amongst the most
interesting of Cambridgeshire geological formations. Not only does
their height above the present stream level (sometimes as much as
thirty feet) point to an age when the rivers must have been much
larger than now, but they are prolific in organic remains, indicating,
sometimes a warmer, sometimes a colder climate than ours. Here, at
Grantchester, bones of the mammoth and of the woolly rhinoceros
connote subarctic conditions; but a few miles further up the Cam, at
Barrington, the terrace is full of hippopotamus, along with elephant
and rhinoceros of African type, postulating a sub-tropical
temperature.
Grantchester Church is chiefly noteworthy for its singularly beautiful
chancel, an almost ideal example of fourteenth century work, perched
most effectively above one of the bends in the road. The name, with
its "chester" has led many antiquarians to hold that here was a Roman
station.[165] But the application of the name to the village is only
some three centuries old. In earlier days it is always "Grantset." We
do find "Grantchester" in Bede (as mentioned in our account of Ely);
but the spot indicated is almost certainly Cambridge, then still in
ruins after its destruction during the English conquest of Britain.
[Footnote 165: "Chester," "Caster," "Cester," are various Anglicised
forms of the Latin "castra" (= camp), which our conquering forefathers
applied to the Romano-British cities which they so ruthlessly
destroyed in the first sweep of their invasion.]
On the top of the church-tower here we may notice a weird-looking
piece of iron work. This was put up in 1823 to facilitate the
astronomical work in the University Observatory, as it is exactly
south of the telescope dome there, two miles and a half away. With the
acquisition of collimating telescopes, in 1869, this relationship
ceased to be of value, and now the growth of trees has rendered the
tower wholly invisible from the Observatory.
Not far from Byron's Pool we find the watersmeet of the two main
streams which make our Cambridge river; each so equal in size to its
sister that neither can be called the tributary of the other. The name
Granta is usually appropriated to the eastern stream, that of Cam to
the western. On some maps the latter is called the "Rhee," but this
(like the Isis at Oxford), is merely a map-maker's name.[166]
[Footnote 166: On the western bank, hard by, is a large meadow known
as Lingay Fen, which is always (artificially) flooded during the
winter, in hopes of a frost. It forms an excellent skating ground, on
which even National Championships have been decided.]
And as the river divides, so also does our London Road, one route
following either valley. The Granta route goes via Bishop Stortford
and Epping Forest, entering London by the Mile End Road, the other via
Royston, Ware, and Tottenham, coming in by Bishopsgate Street. The
division comes just as we leave Trumpington, at the lych-gate of the
village cemetery, whence the left-hand branch brings us to the twin
villages of Great and Little Shelford, with the Granta running between
them. Both churches are good, the former with an octagonal steeple,
and a churchyard kept like a garden, and the latter with a grand
square-headed Decorated window in its transept, where are preserved
some nice fragments of the ancient alabaster reredos. There are also
various good fifteenth century monuments of the De Freville family,
whose name still lives on as that of a suburban district in Cambridge.
Great Shelford Church is richly decorated, as it seems to have been of
old, for here Dowsing destroyed no fewer than 128 "superstitions." The
bridge over the Granta between the two villages was in mediaeval times
under the charge of a hermit, like Newnham Bridge at Cambridge.[167]
[Footnote 167: See p. 41.]
[Illustration: _Great Shelford Church._]
Villages continue to be found on both banks as we ascend the Granta.
The main road, on the east of the stream, leads through Stapleford, a
small place, to the large and important Sawston. Its size and
importance are due to the existence of that all too rare development,
a really thriving rural industry. For here is not only a flourishing
paper-mill, turning out its twenty tons a week of superfine
copper-glazed paper, but the much more uncommon manufacture of
parchment, and of the "shammy" leather used for cleaning plate, etc.
And this is produced in a delightfully rural and old-time fashion.
There are no machines here automatically grinding out facsimile
products; every process is confided to the skill and judgment of the
individual in charge of it. There are fifteen or sixteen such
processes involved, and a very little carelessness in any one of them
would spoil the whole series. Thus every workman is an expert, and
takes a pride in his work impossible to the mere driver of a machine.
The great aim of each is to "keep his skin in condition" while under
his hands, so as to have a right to glory in the finished article.
The very terms used in this manufacture have an ancient smack about
them. The sheepskins used are called "pelts," and are supplied by the
"fell-monger." They are first immersed for a while in a solution of
lime, and then hung over nothing less primitive than the half of a
tree, sawn lengthwise, while a "flesher" scrapes and "couches" them
(_i.e._, removes all wrinkles). They are then "split," the inner skin,
called the "mutton" or "lining," being adroitly separated from the
outer "grain." This "lining" is next "frized" (_i.e._, rubbed), to
remove all fat, then again "limed," and thoroughly washed. It is then
"squeezed" and "punched" till "the water is killed," then soaked with
cod-liver oil. This causes fermentation to set in, during which the
skins have to be carefully watched by men whose duty it is to "turn
the heats" before "burning" takes place. Alkaline treatment follows,
and, finally, the skins are "ground," _i.e._, pared with a round knife
and smoothed with a wooden "scurfer," being sprinkled the while with
water from a bunch of butchers' broom, called by its old English name
"knee-holm." They are then packed in "kips" of thirty apiece, and put
on the market. Before "grounding," the taste of the ordinary customer,
who likes a pretty white "shammy," is consulted by bleaching most of
the skins with sulphur. Appearance, however, is thus dearly purchased,
for sulphur blackens silver, besides shortening the life of the skin.
The useful colour is dark brown.
"For parchment the 'linings' are tied in a frame by strings fastened
round grooved pegs, on the same principle as a Spanish windlass....
After being scraped with a 'half-round' knife, dried, 'shaved,' dabbed
with whitewash, and heated in a stove to remove the grease, they are
then scalded and rubbed with pumice until they are fine and
smooth.... The parchment workers wear clogs, sheepskin leggings, and
'basil' aprons. A basil is an unsplit tanned sheepskin. In this
well-managed factory all the refuse goes to make soap, glue, dubbin,
or manure, and not one scrap of material is wasted."[168]
[Footnote 168: Prof. Hughes' _Geography of Cambridgeshire_, p. 106.]
Sawston, moreover, is not only full of present interest, but rich in
associations with the past. The Village Cross stands on its ancient
site, and the church, which retains some Norman features, has several
mediaeval brasses, though none of special merit. The Hall is yet more
remarkable. It was built in the reign of Queen Mary with materials
from the ruins of Cambridge Castle, granted by her in consideration of
the earlier hall having been destroyed for sheltering her. At the
death of her brother Edward the Sixth, the Protestant Lords of the
Council sought to arrest her as she approached London. Hearing of
their design she took refuge at Sawston Hall, then as now the seat of
the Huddleston family, who then as now steadfastly adhered to the
ancient faith. Her presence there being reported at Cambridge, a
Protestant mob, under the direction of the authorities, pounced upon
the hall so suddenly that she had barely time to escape on horseback
behind one of the serving men, her course lighted by the flames of the
burning building, which was utterly destroyed by the disappointed
Protestants. A missal taken in the sack was, on the following Sunday,
held up to public derision and formally torn to pieces in the
University Church.
By the time the rebuilding of the hall was completed another, and more
thoroughgoing, Protestant persecution had broken out. To hear Mass was
made treason-felony, punished by forfeiture of goods and perpetual
imprisonment, while to say it was an act of high treason, for which
the offending priest suffered the lingering death assigned by the law
to traitors, being first half-hanged, then disembowelled, and finally
quartered. The Catholic chapels of the day were accordingly placed in
the garrets, as in that still existing at Sawston Hall, where the
worshippers had most warning in case of a domiciliary visit by the
authorities. Secret cupboards were contrived for hiding the sacred
vessels, books, and vestments, and secret exits by which the priest
might, if possible, be smuggled out of the house, and, in case these
proved unavailable, "Hiding Holes" in which he might take refuge. That
at Sawston Hall is in the staircase, and is described by Mr. Allan Fea
in his _Secret Chambers and Hiding Places_:
"The entrance is so cleverly arranged that it slants into the
masonry of a circular tower, without showing the least
perceptible sign, from the exterior, of a space capable of
holding a baby, far less a man. A particular board in the landing
is raised, and beneath it, in a corner of the cavity, is found a
stone slab containing a circular aperture, something after the
manner of our modern urban receptacles for coal. From this hole a
tunnel slants downwards, at an angle, into the adjacent wall,
where there is an apartment some twelve feet in depth, and wide
enough to contain half a dozen people.... The opening is so
massive and firm that, unless pointed out, the particular
floor-board could never be detected, and when secured from the
inside could defy a battering ram."
This is an unusually commodious Hiding Hole, large enough to hold not
only the refugee priest but provisions to maintain him during the
search, a very necessary item of the precautions. For when the
pursuivants pounced upon a Catholic mansion they always began by
locking up the inmates, that no succour might be given to the outlaw
whose presence they suspected, and then proceeded to a most systematic
and thoroughgoing search, in which chimneys, cellars, and roofs were
exhaustively explored, panellings pulled down, and floors torn up, for
days together. The ransacking and wrecking sometimes lasted a whole
fortnight on end; but with such art were these retreats constructed
that they constantly defied even so stringent a test, unless
betrayed--sometimes by the unintentional emotion of those in the
secret.
Like most others in England this Hiding Hole at Sawston Hall was due
to the ingenuity of a Jesuit, one Nicolas Owen (nicknamed "Little
John" from his diminutive stature), who, "with incomparable skill and
inexhaustible industry," devoted his life to contriving these
recesses. "And by this his skill," says a seventeenth century writer,
"many priests were preserved from the prey of persecutors." Finally he
was himself betrayed into the hands of the Protestant Government, who
write exultingly of their "great joy" in his arrest; "knowing his
skill in constructing hiding-places, and the innumerable number of
these dark holes which he hath schemed for hiding priests throughout
the kingdom." It was hoped that he might be induced to reveal these
places, "to the taking of great booty of priests." But Owen remained
staunch against all threats and blandishments, and finally allowed
himself to be tortured to death without suffering the secret "to be
wrung from him," as Cecil ordered that it should be. "The man is
dead--he died in our hands," is the laconic report of the Governor of
the Tower in answer to this order.
The knee-holm, or butchers' broom, used in the Sawston leather work,
grows at Whittlesford, on the other side of the Granta, a pretty,
shady village with an interesting church; the development of which,
from a Saxon nucleus, is a nice (and not yet satisfactorily solved)
problem for lovers of mediaeval architecture. There is a wooden porch
(oak) of the fourteenth century. At Whittlesford Bridge, where the
Granta is crossed by the Icknield Street, close to the railway
station, one sees, hard by the road, a decayed stone edifice, with a
high pitched roof thatched with reeds, now used as a barn.
[Illustration: _Whittlesford._]
This is the chapel of the ancient Hospital of St. John, founded in the
thirteenth century. There were several such institutions in
Cambridgeshire, started, not specially for the care of the sick, but
for "hospitality" in the widest sense of the word. Here travellers
were entertained, the hungry were fed, the needy were ministered to,
according to their several necessities. The Hospitals were rarely
large institutions, and this one, as the size of its chapel shows, was
quite a small affair, only endowed with some sixty acres of meadow
land and a water-mill, equivalent, probably, to some L200 a year in
all. But having been under the direction of a prior (appointed by the
Bishop of Ely), it is sometimes known by the high-sounding title of
Whittlesford Priory. The interior of the building still retains some
beautiful early English work. A specially pleasant roadside hostelry
next door (the Red Lion), with deliciously quaint carvings on mantel
and ceiling, may be held, in some sense, its modern representative;
and, indeed, is thought by many authorities to have actually formed
part of it.
Though, for some reason, always associated with the name of
Whittlesford, this Hospital is actually in the adjoining parish of
Duxford, or rather in one of the two (now consolidated) parishes of
St. John and St. Peter, between which this little village is divided.
Both churches still exist (though St. John's is now only used for
burials in its churchyard), and both are very much of the same build,
mainly Early English, with a little Norman, of which St. John's
steeple is the most noteworthy example. St. Peter's has a beautiful
"low-side" window in the northern wall of the chancel.
To the west of Duxford the Icknield Street traverses a wide bleak
expanse of treeless fields which, until the nineteenth century, were
the unenclosed turf-land forming the famous Triplow Heath, the scene
of the first breach between the Long Parliament and its army. In the
view of the Parliament that force had now done its work. The Cavalier
levies had been stamped out, the king had been "bought" from the
Scots, and was in Parliamentary custody at Holmby House in
Northamptonshire, the Scots themselves had withdrawn to their own
country; why then should not this costly, and rather dangerous, army
be disbanded?
But this was far from being the view of the soldiers themselves. A
return to the monotonous routine of civil life, after the thrilling
excitements of civil war, had no attractions for them; least of all, a
return without their pay. That pay--one shilling a day--was more than
double the current wages; and now it was many months behindhand--a
whole year in some cases. The suggestions of disbandment were met,
accordingly, by the concentration of the troops, including Cromwell's
famous regiments, on Triplow Heath, in his own East Anglian district.
This was on the 10th of June, 1647.
[Illustration: _St. Peter's Church, Duxford._]
Commissioners from the Parliament were sent down from Westminster,
with offers of two months' pay in cash and debentures for the
remaining arrears, contingent on disbandment. But this was not nearly
good enough; and the offers were met with cries of "Justice! Justice!"
from the men, and with significant hints from the officers of a march
on London if their claims were not speedily satisfied, "for a rich
city may seem an enticing bait to poor beggarly soldiers to venture
far to gain the wealth thereof."
And, while the baffled Commissioners returned, to call out the London
train-bands to meet the threatened attack (finding them so reluctant
to face this new and terrific foe that the death-penalty had to be
denounced against all malingerers), the Army took more effective
action by despatching Cornet Joyce, with a troop of horse, to seize
the King at Holmby House and bring him along as a prisoner; or, as
they put it, to rescue him from his Parliamentary jailers, and invite
him to trust his person with his faithful soldiers. They might thus be
able to sell him again to the Parliament, as the Scots had done, or
they might really restore him, for a sufficient consideration, or make
their own of him some way. And, while Charles was being thus carried
off, as we have already seen, to Chippenham, they struck their camp
and marched off along the Icknield Street to Royston, and thence to
St. Albans, as a demonstration against London. When the unhappy
monarch, a fortnight later, on Midsummer Day, was brought by the same
route from Newmarket, crossing Whittlesford Bridge and passing through
the midst of Triplow Heath, the scene had already returned to its
habitual loneliness.
Triplow itself lies to the west of the Heath, and has a far-seen
cruciform Church, sister to that in the adjoining village of Foulmire,
or Fowlmere as it ought to be spelt. An actual mere, noted for its
wealth of wild fowl, existed here till little more than half a century
ago. It is now a worthless patch of land, full of springs and runlets.
There is also a small prehistoric earthwork, known as "The Round
Moats."
From Duxford, a pretty byway--far prettier till, a year or two ago,
the picturesque wooden foot-bridge across the Granta was replaced by
an iron modernity--leads to Hinxton, where the church has some
interesting architectural developments, and a good brass to Sir Thomas
de Skelton, steward to "old John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster."
He is shown in full plate-armour, and his two wives lie beside him.
The Parochial Register here dates back to the very first institution
of such documents, in 1538, by Thomas Cromwell. This is quite rare;
for the idea was, in its first inception, to the last degree unpopular
both with clergy and people, who suspected, from their experience of
Henry's illimitable greed, that a tax would be exacted upon each of
the ecclesiastical functions thus registered.
On the outside of the spire, which is of wood covered with lead, hangs
a "Sanctus" (or "Sacring") Bell, which of old was rung at those places
in the High Mass where a small bell is sounded by the Server at the
Altar; that is to say, at the _Ter Sanctus_ and the Consecration of
the Host. Thus those of the faithful who were unable to attend church
were invited to unite themselves in spirit with the worshippers there
at the most solemn moments of the Service. Few of these bells remain,
as their associations were, of course, specially distasteful to
Protestant feeling, so that they were mostly destroyed at the
Reformation.
At Hinxton we are on the borders of Essex, and a shady
westward-running lane takes us on, across the river and the railway,
to the last Cambridgeshire village on this line, Ickleton, where the
church is of quite unique interest. Here, too, there is a Sacring
Bell, on the side of the steeple; surviving, doubtless, through the
same unknown local influence which also saved that on the sister spire
of Hinxton. But the real interest of the church is entirely hidden
from passers by. Those even who look from the pretty little Village
Green to the southward see nothing that calls for notice, except the
Sacring Bell and a fairly good Geometrical window in the steeple. The
rest of the exterior shows only poor fourteenth century work--and
cruelly "restored" at that.
But, once inside, we discover that the unsightly exterior is but an
outer shell, built round, and over, a smaller and far older church,
still standing, and so entirely enclosed that its clerestory lights
now open into the existing aisles. Above them are the lights of the
later fourteenth century clerestory, which, no doubt, originally
contained Geometrical, or more probably Flowing, tracery. Now,
however, they are mere "churchwarden" apertures, of various indefinite
shapes, with mean wooden sashes, having been remorselessly doctored in
the second decade of the nineteenth century.
It is when we look closely at this interior church that we note its
truly astonishing features. At the first glance it might be taken for
an ordinary Norman structure, with its round pillars and round arches;
and, in fact, it is usually so described by the few authorities who
notice it at all. The rudeness of the capitals, however, and the
general aspect of the arcade, does not somehow look like Norman work,
but more suggests Saxon architecture. And the very small clerestory
lights, mere loopholes, still more lead us to this conclusion. Some
archaeologists, therefore, consider this interior church at Ickleton to
be a Saxon edifice; and, so far as the clerestory is concerned, it is
exceedingly probable that they are right. The piers of the tower
arches, however, are unmistakably Norman, as is also the west doorway.
But what is the arcade? When we examine the massive circular pillars
which support it, we see to our amazement that, instead of being built
up in the usual manner, every one of them is a monolith! We are now
obliged to confess ourselves in the presence not of Norman or Saxon
but of _Roman_ work, for no example of such monolithic construction is
known in any later architecture, and was, indeed, sparingly employed
even by the Romans.
How did these pillars come to be here? They are of Barnack stone from
Northamptonshire, and must have been brought at an expense well-nigh
prohibitory to the finances of a small country parish. We may dismiss
the idea that they were hewn out of the quarry in this specially
costly form, and fetched all the way from Barnack by the builders of
this little unpretending church.
Dismissing this, there remain two other alternatives. A mile distant
from Ickleton to the southward stands Chesterford, the site of an
important Roman station, commonly identified with the _Icianos_ of the
third century "Antonine" Itinerary. The place derived its name, and
its importance, from its position at the point where the River Granta
is crossed by the Icknield Way, the line of communication along the
strip of greensward between the Cambridgeshire fens and the forest
topping the East Anglian heights, which gave access to the territory
of the Iceni in Norfolk and Suffolk. The Saxon builders of Ickleton
Church may have found these pillars amid the ruins of _Icianos_, or of
some villa in the neighbourhood, and have brought them that short
distance for their edifice. As they were ready made this would be a
cheap job.
Such is the one alternative. The other, to which I myself incline, is
that they did not need to fetch the pillars at all, but utilised them
on the very spot where they originally stood. According to this view
we have here an example, unique in Britain, of Roman work _in situ_.
The very arcading which we see I take to have stood north and south of
the central hall of some large Roman mansion. Such a mansion usually
contained an oblong central hall of this kind (often roofless), with a
peristyle, or cloister, on either side opening into it, a portico at
one end, and a smaller _tablinum_ or guest-chamber at the other.
Lanciani has pointed out how this structural arrangement suggested the
nave, aisles, porch, and chancel of the earliest ecclesiastical
edifices at Rome.[169] The same suggestion may have influenced the
builders of Ickleton Church to utilise this old Roman arcading,
roofing in the enclosed space, but with a clerestory to prevent too
great loss of light. If this view is correct the narrow north aisle
probably represents the width of the original peristyle.
[Footnote 169: See my _Roman Britain_, p. 266.]
The south aisle is far wider, as wide indeed as the nave and north
aisle together; and one asks why the fourteenth century architect
planned his work so very unsymmetrically. The answer, I think, is to
be found in the remarkable architectural development of the steeple.
The piers of the tower are, as I have said, unmistakably Norman, but
upon them are set, quite unconformably, arches at least a century
later in date. The tower is pierced by these arches on all four sides,
and was evidently meant as the centre of a cruciform church with
transepts. For some reason this Norman plan was never completed, but
it is very probable that the south wall of the church marks the limit
to which the transept (which may have been actually begun) was meant
to extend.
The church has also later features of interest. There are some good
mediaeval seat finials, shaped with the axe and bearing grotesque
figures, musical instruments, and symbols; the word ORATE being
decipherable upon one of them. The rood-screen is fifteenth century,
and is placed across the eastern arch of the tower, with no trace of
there having ever been a rood-loft.
The land of Ickleton was almost wholly _Terra Ecclesiae_. A priory of
Benedictine nuns existed here, founded in the twelfth century by
Aubrey de Vere, the first Earl of Oxford; while the Abbeys of East
Dereham in Norfolk, Tyltey in Essex, and even Calder (a "cell" of
Furness), in far-off Cumberland, each possessed a Manor in the
Parish. All alike were given by Henry the Eighth to Goodrich, Bishop
of Ely, in exchange for the far more valuable property of Hatfield
House. Queen Elizabeth, however, afterwards demanded them all back
again, with much other land, as a condition of appointing Bishop
Heton, in 1600, to the See, which she had kept vacant to fill her
coffers for no less than nineteen years. The Manors were sold by the
Crown, and are now in private hands. The benefice is in the gift of
the Lord Chancellor.
The name Ickleton, like those of Ickborough in Norfolk, Ickingham in
Suffolk, and Ickleford in Hertfordshire, is derived from the position
of the village on the line of the Icknield Way. It may indeed be the
direct linguistic descendant of the Roman _Icianos_. We must bear in
mind that a prehistoric track, such as the Icknield Way, was not one
single-metalled thoroughfare like a Roman road or a modern highway,
but a broad line of route along which each traveller made his own
"trek," so that the "Way" was a series of roughly parallel ruttings
over the breadth of a mile and more. Such, to this day, are the routes
across the Siberian steppes, which are often four or five miles
across. Thus we found the Icknield Way at Whittlesford, three miles
north of Chesterford, and it is probable that all the various "fords"
we have been meeting--Shelford, Stapleford, Whittlesford,
Duxford--have to do with its various passages of the Granta.
Beyond Chesterford the Granta comes down in tiny streamlets from the
Essex chalk near Saffron Walden, with its wide-naved church, which
Cromwell's troops used for a drill-shed and council-chamber, and its
historic mansion of Audley End, once Walden Abbey, and its memories of
the days, scarcely a century by-gone, when great crops of saffron were
grown in its fields, leaving their only existing trace in the name.
And even that is dying out; few of the inhabitants call their home
anything but Walden. But this town is beyond our Cambridgeshire
border.