That earthwork, however, is of far older date, being of British, or even earlier, inception. It is a triple ring of gigantic ramparts, like those of Maiden Castle near Dorchester, and nearly a mile in circumference. All is now buried in the shrubberies of Gog-Magog House, the seat successively of Lord Godolphin and of the Dukes of Leeds.[147] But before being thus planted out it must have been one of the most striking examples in the kingdom of such fortifications. Till the eighteenth century it was a favourite scene of bull-baiting and other illegal sports amongst undergraduates, because the bare open country all round made it impossible for the authorities to surprise the offenders. Vandlebury was the original home of the legend, used by Sir Walter Scott in Marmion, which told how in the ancient camp, by moonlight, an elfin warrior would answer the challenge of any adventurous knight bold enough to encounter him in single combat.
In the early decades of the nineteenth century the then Duchess of Leeds here set up for her tenantry one of the earliest rural elementary schools. Children of both sexes were taught in this institution to read and to sew, the boys making their own smock frocks. The boys might, if they would, also learn, as an extra, to write; but not the girls, for Her Grace considered that it would deleteriously affect their prospects in domestic service if they were possessed of the dangerous power of deciphering their employers' correspondence.
Our road climbs the hill to the gate of Gog-Magog House, and plunges down into woodlands on the other side, in a fashion very unlike the usual Cambridgeshire highway, to meet the infant stream of the Granta[148] on its meandering way to Cambridge. Our further course is amongst the pretty villages along its valley, the best-wooded vale in all the county. First of these comes Babraham (anciently Bradburgham), with a pretty little Saxon-towered church snuggling in the park beside the Hall. Babraham is noted for the epitaph of an old-time swindler, who was enabled to pocket the Peter Pence[149] which he collected under Queen Mary by sharing his spoil with Queen Elizabeth. It runs thus:
"Here lies Horatio Palavazene,
Who robbed the Pope to lend the Queen."
"He was a thiefe." "A thiefe? Thou liest;
For why? he robbed but Antichrist.
Him Death with besome swept from Babram
Into the bosome of old Abram.
But then came Hercules with his club,
And struck him down to Beelzebub."
A curious fresco on the north wall of the church is thought to represent King Edward the Second.
A little beyond Babraham we cross the Icknield Street, on its way from Newmarket to Chesterford. Beside it runs, what is almost unknown in England, a deserted railroad, built by the Eastern Counties Railway Company (now the Great Eastern) in 1848, to afford direct communication between Newmarket and London, and abandoned, as a financial failure, in 1852, since which date the trains have gone round by Cambridge. Where this long disused line runs on the level it has melted back again into the adjoining fields, but the old cuttings and embankments and bridges still exist, and a weird sight they are.
At the adjoining villages of Great and Little Abington the road makes a picturesque zig-zag through the village street, and passes on, beneath a fine beech avenue, to Hildersham, where a pretty byway leads across the stream to the fourteenth century church. Here there are four good brasses (to members of the Parys[150] family), one of them showing the unique feature of a lance-rest fastened to the cuirass, and another (of 1530) being simply a skeleton. There are also two very striking recumbent effigies representing a crusader and his wife, each carved out of a single block of wood, now black with age. The churchyard here is effectively planted with junipers and fir trees, and the east end of the church is embowered in shrubs of rosemary, said to be the finest in Cambridgeshire.
From Hildersham the road goes on to Linton, a mile or so further; while the two places are also connected by a specially pleasant footpath, starting from a fine old smithy, and so through the meadows by the clear trout-stream, and past the yews and thorn-trees of the moated grange of "Little Linton," while above rises (to nearly four hundred feet, a proud height in Cambridgeshire) the appropriately named Furze Hill, with some real gorse patches (also a proud distinction in Cambridgeshire) upon its ridge.
Before we reach Linton we cross the famous "Clapper" stile, which can best be described as formed by three huge sledge-hammers (of wood) with exceptionally long shanks, hinged near the head to an upright post, each about a foot above the next. Normally the three hammer-heads rest upon one another and look like a single post (about a foot from the first); but, on attempting to cross, the shanks (the ends of which are not fastened but slide in a grooved post at their side of the stile) yield to our weight, the heads fly apart, and, when we are over, come together again with the "claps" whence the name of the stile is derived. How old this curious device is does not appear, but it is here immemorial. An effective sketch of this stile is given by Dr. Wherry, in his "Notes from a Knapsack."
Linton is a tiny town, smaller than sundry villages, but obviously not a village, with a long street of undetached houses (duly lighted) swinging down the slopes on either side the little river. There is a fine Perpendicular church, with some Norman work remaining in it, and a good tower, on the top of which an Ascension Day service is annually held. Against a wall are suspended two fire-hooks (much lighter than the one at St. Benet's, Cambridge) for the destruction of burning houses. (See note on page [38]).