Highways and Byways in Cambridge and Ely

by John William Edward Conybeare

Fordham.

The landing-place of the Saint is still commemorated in the name Felixstowe near Harwich, and thence he proceeded to preach with entire success throughout all Sigebert's realm. Soham was his furthest point, for the fenland beyond was already Christian (the population being British, and provided for by Augustine's church at Cratendune).[131] And at Soham he set up an Abbey, where he himself was buried in 634, three years only after his landing. St. Etheldreda (who was probably Sigebert's niece) was at this time a young girl. Some imagine Soham to have been the site of a famous school set up by Felix, "after the model of those in France, with masters and teachers." But this is more likely to have been in his Cathedral city of Dunwich, once the leading town in East Anglia, now wholly submerged by the encroachments of the German Ocean. The See was transferred to Thetford and then to Norwich. Soham Abbey flourished on side by side with Ely, till both were destroyed in the great Danish raid of 870 A.D. Why, when Ely was rebuilt, a century later, Soham was not, is unknown.

The present parish church has a lofty Perpendicular nave, with fine flowing Decorated windows in the chancel and transept, and a really splendid tower, one hundred feet in height, crowned with a pinnacled parapet of flint-work. Shortly after the Norman Conquest, Soham became the objective of the first causeway to be made for civil purposes between the island of Ely and the mainland.[132] This was due to Bishop Hervey (the first to be Bishop of Ely as well as Abbot), and was felt to be so epoch-making a work that it was ascribed to supernatural influence. St. Edmund, the high-souled King of East Anglia (who, after his martyrdom by the Danes in 870, became the Patron Saint of the Eastern Counties), was said to have appeared in a dream to a man of Exning, bidding him suggest the design to the Bishop. The little island of Stuntney[133] formed a stepping-stone for this causeway, so that only three miles out of the six between Ely and Soham needed an actual embankment.

Soham.

Soham, as has been said, was on all sides surrounded by fen, except on the narrow ridge of firm ground between it and Fordham. So water-logged, indeed, was the country round that sea-going vessels made a port here. This fen is now all drained and become most prosaic cornland. But a few miles east and west of Soham two little patches, each about a mile square, remain in their original state. These are Chippenham Fen to the east, and Wicken Fen to the west. Both are fairly inaccessible spots, but when we get to them they enable us to form a vivid idea of what the state of things must have been when the whole fenland was such as this. Both give the impression of a morass hopelessly impenetrable, covered with a dense growth of tall reeds rising high above your head, through which you push your way blindly, to be constantly checked by some sluggish watercourse, too wide to jump, too shallow to swim, and impossible to wade, for the bottom is a fathomless stratum of soft turf and ooze giving no foothold. To stumble into one of these watercourses is, indeed, no small peril. If you are alone the case is well-nigh hopeless, and even a friend on the bank would find it hard to pull you out. His best course is to cut a fairly large bundle of reeds, by trampling which under your feet you may for a moment be able to stand while he rescues you.

One can well understand how it came about that such a country was an almost inviolable sanctuary for those whom despair drove to seek refuge in its recesses. These small fragments of it still form a sanctuary; for many rare plants and insects, exterminated elsewhere by the march of progress, here still nourish. Conspicuous amongst these is the lovely swallow-tail butterfly; which flits about, dashing with bright touches of colour the weird and sombre beauty of the silent scene. Very silent it is now. But it was not so of old, when the whole fen was crowded with the swarming bird-life, so vividly described by Kingsley in "Hereward the Wake": "where the coot clanked, and the bittern boomed, and the sedge-bird, not content with its own sweet song, mocked the notes of all the birds around, ... where hung motionless, high over head, hawk beyond hawk, buzzard beyond buzzard, kite beyond kite, as far as eye could see. Into the air whirred up great skeins of wildfowl innumerable, with a cry as of all the bells of Crowland; while clear above all their noise sounded the wild whistle of the curlews, and the trumpet note of the great white swan." Such was the fenland of old; but all this wealth of commotion is long since gone, and scarcely do we see a bird now at Wicken or Chippenham, except here and there a waterhen, and (at Chippenham) the pheasants which are reared in coops on its margin.

These birds belong to Chippenham Hall, a mansion built by Admiral Russell, the hero of La Hogue in 1692, our first great naval victory since the rout of the Armada, "and the first great victory that the English had gained over the French since the day of Agincourt."[134] It stands on the site of an earlier house, which, in its day, served as a place of confinement for Charles the First in 1647, after the raid by Cornet Joyce on Holmby House had transferred his custody from the hands of the Parliament to those of the Army. Here he remained for some weeks, while the somewhat sordid game of political intrigue (out of which he still hoped to make his own) was being played around him, "very pleasant and cheerful, taking his recreation daily at tennis, and delighting much in the company of Cornet Joyce," but refusing to listen to the famous Puritan stalwart, Hugh Peters, who was accustomed to hold forth "with the Bible in the one hand and a great pistol in the other," and who here "moved His Majesty to hear him preach. Which His Majesty did the rather decline."

Within sight of Soham, across the fen to the east, and only three miles away, stood for awhile another House of Religion, the Priory of Isleham. But to get from one to the other it was (and is) needful to go round by Fordham, making the distance at least double. A more out of the way place than Isleham cannot well be found, but it is worth a visit. All that remains of the Priory is an oblong structure of stone buttressed with red brick, looking on the outside like a barn, and, indeed, used as such. But it is, in fact, the hulk of the Priory Church; and, inside, the pillars and capitals are in very fair condition. The work is all Norman. This short-lived establishment was built in the eleventh century, as a "cell" (or outlying colony), of the Abbey of St. Jacutus de Insula, near Dol in Brittany. Within two centuries the monks abandoned it in favour of their sister house at Linton.[135]