THE OUSE, HEMINGFORD ABBOTS, HUNTINGDONSHIRE
after the Protector from a tradition that within it he drilled his first local levies. St. Ives had no connection, like St. Neots, with the Cornish equivalent, but finds its origin in the incredible visitations of a Persian missioner, one Ivo. However that may be, the town was known till near Cromwell’s day as Slepe, and at Slepe Hall, a large mansion within it only removed in modern times, the Protector dwelt when he was farming the surrounding lands.
The town of course contains abundant matters of interest, but is in itself perhaps less attractive to the passing visitor than those higher up the Ouse. But the river itself, now increased considerably here, makes the finest display of all, skirting the houses in wider current and spanned by a bridge of six arches very like its fellow at Huntingdon. Two of the arches are of only Queen Anne date, but the others are lost in the mists of time. The special feature of the bridge, however, is a curious sexagonal chapel of apparently four stories and one room thick. It was originally a chapel, but since the Dissolution has served in many capacities—even that of a public-house—and is now a private dwelling. At the end of the bridge is an ancient Tudor building once the Manor House. Altogether the bridge at St. Ives with its fine swell of waters, its old quays and gable ends on one bank and pendent trees on the other, with the view upstream over spreading meadows and down-stream towards the spacious fen lands, is a notable one, a paradise for oarsmen and the joy of the bottom fisher. In the market-place of St. Ives, too, stands a statue to Cromwell on the strength of his long residence here and general association with the neighbourhood. Many, no doubt, of those who formed the early companies and troops of the “New Model” came from St. Ives. The parish church is a fine specimen of the Decorated style, while its tower has had the unusual experience of losing two spires by wind and collapse in quite modern times.
One is here at the very edge of Cambridgeshire, and well on towards the fen country. The Ouse below St. Ives is no longer confined to its natural course, but canalised and manipulated in various ways for drainage purposes of this great far-reaching fen-land. It is about 15 miles from here to Ely by road, and the journey along it takes the traveller into another kind of country from the ordinary grass and fallow and timbered hedgerow, sometimes flat and sometimes undulating through which the Ouse has hitherto meandered.
THE OUSE, NEAR HOLYWELL, HUNTINGDONSHIRE
It must be conceded that the fen country is forbidding. No doubt it has its compensating moments and aspects, but the intervals of waiting for them must be oppressive. Enthusiasts may be heard anon chanting its praises (theoretically) even as a region of permanent abode, but there is not a little posing nowadays in such matters. In the Middle Ages in the dead of winter the fen country must have been imposing; but the fen from St. Ives to Ely in the height of summer, with its continuously unfenced cultivation, its ever-recurring grain-fields, its lack of wood and of English landscape-graces generally, is very depressing. It is most interesting, however, to watch the isle of Ely rising out of the fat levels and drawing gradually nearer till the road itself at last rises on to it, and the beautiful Cathedral, lifted high above the fen-land and above the East Anglian levels that are not fen, looks southward to where the striking mass of King’s Chapel rises beneath the faint smoke-cloud which marks the famous town of Cambridge.
We meet the Ouse again at Ely. Since University rowing began it has been associated with Cambridge as an object of pilgrimage to enterprising oarsmen, and in a more professional way the time-honoured seat of the Annual race between the University trial eights. For I trust it is not necessary to remind the reader that the river Cam or Granta flows into the Ouse near Ely. At this preternaturally quiet and diminutive little cathedral town we must leave the Ouse to find its devious and much-bridled way to King’s Lynn and to the North Sea. Ely Cathedral is, of course, distinguished for the abundance of perfect Norman work that survives within it, while the old red brick episcopal palace contiguous to it, and the precincts generally, with their snug gardens and whispering leaves, are, as in such a place they should be, the veritable haunts of ancient peace.