Highways and Byways in Cambridge and Ely

by John William Edward Conybeare

Grant O God to Owen Thy light and rest. Amen.

A little further on, still in the south aisle, we come to the "Monks' Door," with its strange outer carvings of dragons, its one door-post enriched with spiral fluting, a sister doorway to the prior's, but by no means a twin. Almost touching it is the half of an ancient arched doorway now walled up, its door-post spirally and deeply sculptured. In both doorways one door-post is hidden by the masonry of a great buttress built here by Alan of Walsingham to support his central tower. We are here in the last remnant of Ely's cloisters, and let us not fail to observe the recessed archway for books in the southern wall of the nave mentioned above. Before leaving the aisle we should notice that its windows are for the most part late insertions, the original Norman fenestration being replaced by Perpendicular.

We now come to the wonder of Ely, of which we have already heard much, its Octagon Tower and Lantern. Other features in the cathedral we may meet with elsewhere, but this central feature was not itself a copy, nor has it served as a pattern—it remains alone, a brilliant make-shift, a great Necessity having proved the mother of a great Invention. We can hardly here enter into the details of this Octagon Tower as an engineering feat, but we can remind our readers how, by enlarging the base of his steeple, by making it rest on eight supporting piers, instead of on four like its fallen predecessor, Alan of Walsingham gave it greatly increased stability.

The Tower from the Cloisters.

Thomas Fuller, whom we have quoted before, thus racily describes the Lantern at Ely, as it was at the close of the Commonwealth, and draws from it the lesson he loved to find underlying outward things. After speaking of the beauty of the minster, he goes on to say, "The lanthorn therein, built by Bishop Hotham, is a masterpiece of architecture. When the bells ring the woodwork thereof shaketh and gapeth (no defect but perfection of structure) and exactly chocketh into the joints again; so that it may pass for the lively emblem of the sincere Christian who, though he has motum trepidationis of fear and trembling, stands firmly fixed on the basis of a true faith."

We, too, can admire the ingenuity with which the woodwork forming the Lantern is fitted together so as to be self-supporting; and our attention should be called to the vast size of the eight upright beams of oak above us, fore-shortened, as we see them from the floor, so that we hardly realise that the length of each is sixty-eight feet. We can well believe the chronicler who tells us that Alan "procured them with much trouble, searching far and wide, and with the greatest difficulty finding them at last, paying a great price for them, and transporting them by land and water to Ely." During the nineteenth century, when this woodwork had to be restored, and to some extent replaced, the difficulty met with in procuring and conveying the timber required was almost enough to daunt those responsible for the work.

On the central boss of the groining we see a half-length figure of Christ in Glory, carved in oak, the right hand raised to bless, considerably above life size. In the sacrist's accounts for the building of the Lantern, under the date of 1340, occurs this item: "Paid to John of Burwell, for carving the figure upon the principal Key Vault, two shillings and his keep at the Prior's table." A good two-shillings' worth, even if we multiply the sum by thirty to make it equivalent to the present value of coin.

The modern glass of the windows above these arches commemorates those whose names are connected with Ely; eight personages in each window. The south-east window gives us in its upper lights, St. Etheldreda as Queen, with her father and her two husbands; below she appears again as Abbess, with Bishop Wilfrid and the two sisters who followed her as Abbesses, Sexburga and Ermenilda. In the north-east window is represented her niece Werburga, who also became Abbess, and St. Withburga; and, on a line with these ladies, St. Edmund and Archbishop Dunstan; in the lower four lights stand Bishop Ethelwold, Earl Brithnoth, Abbot Brithnoth, and King Edgar the Peaceful, the refounder of the Abbey after the Danish desolation. The north-west window depicts in the upper tier four kings of England, William the Conqueror, Henry the First, Henry the Third, and Edward the Second. In the row beneath stand Abbot Simeon, Hervey, the first Bishop of Ely, Bishop Northwold, and Alan of Walsingham. In the four upper lights of the south-west window are portrayed Queen Victoria in her Coronation robes, Prince Albert arrayed as Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge, Edward the Third and Queen Philippa; below come Bishop Turton and Dean Peacock, who both contributed to the cost of this glass, and in a line with them are Bishop Hotham and Prior Crauden.