Highways and Byways in Cambridge and Ely

by John William Edward Conybeare

There are in this church two most noteworthy brasses, one a magnificent memorial, no less than nine feet in length, to John de Sleford, rector here, the rebuilder of the church. He was a distinguished personage, being Chaplain to Queen Philippa, Master of the Wardrobe to her husband King Edward the Third, and Canon both of Ripon and of Wells. The orphreys of his cope are embroidered with the figures of Saints, five on either side,[162] and in the canopy over his head his soul is being borne by angels to the Blessed Trinity with the prayer PERSONIS · TRINE · POSCO · ME: SVSCIPE · FINE. The other brass is no less magnificent in size and decoration, and commemorates a yet more magnificent pluralist, John Blodwell, who was Rector here in 1439, besides being Dean of St. Asaph, Canon of St. David's, Prebendary of Hereford, and Prebendary of Lichfield. He, too, has eight Saints on his cope, and eight more in his canopy.[163] Twelve Latin verses give a dialogue between himself and Death, whose words are incised, while his are in relief. The chancel has twelve fine stalls on either side, and a grand rood screen, all from the generosity of Rector Sleford. Yet another, and earlier, worthy connected with this place, is Hugh de Balsham, Bishop of Ely and Founder of the earliest Cambridge College, Peterhouse.

CHAPTER X

London Road.—Trumpington, Church, Brass, Chaucer's Mill, Byron's Pool, Upper River.—Grantchester, Church.—Cam and Granta.—The Shelfords.—Sawston, Old-world Industries, Hall, Hiding-Hole, "Little John."—Whittlesford, Old Hospital.—Duxford.—Triplow Heath, Civil War.—Fowlmere, Hinxton, Sacring Bell.—Ickleton, Monolith Pillars.—Chesterford.—Icknield Way.—Saffron Walden.

Due south from Cambridge goes the great London Road, a name now practically supplanted by the local designation of Trumpington Road. Trumpington, two miles out, is already joined to Cambridge by a string of suburban villas; but these are only on one side of the road, while the other is a continuous line of nightingale-haunted elms, not even the stench and dust of the motorist having availed to drive away those fearless songsters. In leaving the Town the road starts along Hobson's Conduit, passing the Botanic Gardens, and crosses Vicar's Brook at the historic milestone already described on page 160, the first to be set up in England since the days of the Romans.

Trumpington Church shares with Salisbury Cathedral the distinction of being built wholly in the Early English style at its best; and it has what is, perhaps, the best-known brass in England, that of Sir Roger de Trumpington, one of the crusading comrades of Edward the First. The knight is in full panoply of chain-armour, with steel epaulettes (or ailettes as they were then called) protecting his shoulders. His helmet is secured by a chain to his girdle, an unusual precaution, and his large concave shield is charged with his punning arms, two golden trumpets.

From the Church an alluring hollow lane winds down to a flat green island meadow (once a swamp, and still often flooded) between two branches of the Cam, dividing Trumpington from the sister village of Grantchester. On the Grantchester side of this island we come to a mill, with a specially delicious mill-pool below it, overhung by a wreath of foliage, chiefly chestnut. This is the representative of the mill immortalised by Chaucer, in the Canterbury Tale which describes so picturesquely the somewhat unsavoury adventures of the Cambridge "clerks":

At Trompyngtoun, nat far fro Cantebrigge,
There goth a brook, and over that a brigge,
Upon the whiche brook ther stant a melle,
And this is verray sothe that I you telle.

The present mill, however, is not on the actual site of Chaucer's, which stood some quarter of a mile higher up the stream. Its mill-pool still exists, and is famed as "Byron's Pool." Hither the poet used constantly to make his way when an undergraduate, as a retired spot where he might enjoy his favourite delight of bathing, which even in his day was a practice somewhat frowned upon by the academic authorities. A century or so earlier, as has been already said, any student found guilty of it was publicly flogged in the Hall of his College.[164] It is a fascinating place, overhung by fine trees, and remained in favour as a bathing-place even to the middle of the nineteenth century. Now it has become so silted up as to be practically useless. But on the river above it there is still a good swimming reach, little used, however, as most students are content with the University bathing sheds between Grantchester and Cambridge.

The footpath past these sheds is a pleasant byway between the two places, through the green meadows along the riverbank, and so also is the river itself, hereabouts no more than the "brook" which Chaucer calls it. It is, however, by no means a water to be played with rashly, having a tortuous course full of deep holes, in which many lives have been lost. Indeed, no student is now allowed on this "Upper River," unless a certified swimmer. A third alternative route is afforded by the lane between Grantchester and Newnham. Though the southern half of this suburb is actually in Grantchester parish, the lane still runs through open fields, and Grantchester itself is in no sense suburban.

A strangely zig-zag road (with no fewer than four right-angle bends to left and right alternately in as many hundred yards), climbs from the mill to the church, which stands, like Trumpington, on the gravel terrace above the river. These river gravels are amongst the most interesting of Cambridgeshire geological formations. Not only does their height above the present stream level (sometimes as much as thirty feet) point to an age when the rivers must have been much larger than now, but they are prolific in organic remains, indicating, sometimes a warmer, sometimes a colder climate than ours. Here, at Grantchester, bones of the mammoth and of the woolly rhinoceros connote subarctic conditions; but a few miles further up the Cam, at Barrington, the terrace is full of hippopotamus, along with elephant and rhinoceros of African type, postulating a sub-tropical temperature.