PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL.
AISLE AND CHOIR, PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL.
North-westward of Ely, and just on the border of the Fenland, Saxulf, a thane of Mercia who had acquired great wealth, founded the first and most powerful of the great Benedictine abbeys of this region in the year 655. Around this celebrated religious house has grown the town of Peterborough, now one of the chief railway-junctions in Midland England. The remains of the monastic buildings, and especially of the cathedral, are magnificent, the great feature of the latter being its western front, which was completed in the thirteenth century, and has three great open arches, making probably the finest church-portico in Europe. On the left of the cathedral is the chancel of Becket's Chapel, now a grammar-school, while on the right is the ancient gateway of the abbot's lodgings, which has become the entrance to the bishop's palace. The main part of the cathedral is Norman, though portions are Early English. It is built in the form of a cross, with a smaller transept at the western end, while the choir terminates in an apse, and a central tower rises from four supporting arches. Within the cathedral, over the doorway, is a picture of old Scarlet, Peterborough's noted sexton, who buried Catharine of Arragon and Mary Queen of Scots. The nave has an ancient wooden roof, carefully preserved and painted with various devices. The transept arches are fine specimens of Norman work. Queen Catharine lies under a slab in the aisle of St. John's Chapel, but the remains of Queen Mary were removed to Westminster Abbey by James I., to the magnificent tomb he prepared there for his mother.
CROWLAND ABBEY.
Farther northward in the Fenland, and over the border in Lincolnshire, was the Benedictine abbey of "courteous Crowland," though its remains are now scanty. It derives its name from the "Land of Crows," which in this part is drained by the Welland River and the great Bedford Level. On one of the many islands of firmer soil abounding in this oozy region the monks constructed their monastery, but had little space for cultivation, and brought their food from remoter possessions. Now, Crowland is no longer an island, for the drainage has made fast land all about, and the ruins have attracted a straggling village. Here is the famous "triangular bridge," a relic of the abbey. Three streams met, and the bridge was made to accommodate the monks, who, from whatever direction they approached, had to cross one of them. The streams now are conveyed underground, but the bridge remains like a stranded monster which the tide has abandoned, and gives the children a play-place. Its steep half-arches, meeting in the centre, are climbed by rough steps. The dissolved abbey served as a quarry for the village, and hence on this strange bridge and on all the houses fragments of worked stone and of sculpture everywhere appear. It was located at the eastern end of the village, where its ruins still stand up as a guide across the fens, seen from afar. Most of it is in complete ruin, but the north aisle of the nave has been sufficiently preserved to serve as the parish church of Crowland; round about the church and the ruins extends the village graveyard. Set up in the porch beneath the tower is a memorial for William Hill, the sexton, who died in 1792. When forty years old he was blinded by exposure during a snowfall, yet he lived for twenty-five years afterwards, able to find his way everywhere and to know every grave in the churchyard.
