Highways and Byways in Cambridge and Ely

by John William Edward Conybeare

Sawston, moreover, is not only full of present interest, but rich in associations with the past. The Village Cross stands on its ancient site, and the church, which retains some Norman features, has several mediæval brasses, though none of special merit. The Hall is yet more remarkable. It was built in the reign of Queen Mary with materials from the ruins of Cambridge Castle, granted by her in consideration of the earlier hall having been destroyed for sheltering her. At the death of her brother Edward the Sixth, the Protestant Lords of the Council sought to arrest her as she approached London. Hearing of their design she took refuge at Sawston Hall, then as now the seat of the Huddleston family, who then as now steadfastly adhered to the ancient faith. Her presence there being reported at Cambridge, a Protestant mob, under the direction of the authorities, pounced upon the hall so suddenly that she had barely time to escape on horseback behind one of the serving men, her course lighted by the flames of the burning building, which was utterly destroyed by the disappointed Protestants. A missal taken in the sack was, on the following Sunday, held up to public derision and formally torn to pieces in the University Church.

By the time the rebuilding of the hall was completed another, and more thoroughgoing, Protestant persecution had broken out. To hear Mass was made treason-felony, punished by forfeiture of goods and perpetual imprisonment, while to say it was an act of high treason, for which the offending priest suffered the lingering death assigned by the law to traitors, being first half-hanged, then disembowelled, and finally quartered. The Catholic chapels of the day were accordingly placed in the garrets, as in that still existing at Sawston Hall, where the worshippers had most warning in case of a domiciliary visit by the authorities. Secret cupboards were contrived for hiding the sacred vessels, books, and vestments, and secret exits by which the priest might, if possible, be smuggled out of the house, and, in case these proved unavailable, "Hiding Holes" in which he might take refuge. That at Sawston Hall is in the staircase, and is described by Mr. Allan Fea in his Secret Chambers and Hiding Places:

"The entrance is so cleverly arranged that it slants into the masonry of a circular tower, without showing the least perceptible sign, from the exterior, of a space capable of holding a baby, far less a man. A particular board in the landing is raised, and beneath it, in a corner of the cavity, is found a stone slab containing a circular aperture, something after the manner of our modern urban receptacles for coal. From this hole a tunnel slants downwards, at an angle, into the adjacent wall, where there is an apartment some twelve feet in depth, and wide enough to contain half a dozen people.... The opening is so massive and firm that, unless pointed out, the particular floor-board could never be detected, and when secured from the inside could defy a battering ram."

This is an unusually commodious Hiding Hole, large enough to hold not only the refugee priest but provisions to maintain him during the search, a very necessary item of the precautions. For when the pursuivants pounced upon a Catholic mansion they always began by locking up the inmates, that no succour might be given to the outlaw whose presence they suspected, and then proceeded to a most systematic and thoroughgoing search, in which chimneys, cellars, and roofs were exhaustively explored, panellings pulled down, and floors torn up, for days together. The ransacking and wrecking sometimes lasted a whole fortnight on end; but with such art were these retreats constructed that they constantly defied even so stringent a test, unless betrayed—sometimes by the unintentional emotion of those in the secret.

Like most others in England this Hiding Hole at Sawston Hall was due to the ingenuity of a Jesuit, one Nicolas Owen (nicknamed "Little John" from his diminutive stature), who, "with incomparable skill and inexhaustible industry," devoted his life to contriving these recesses. "And by this his skill," says a seventeenth century writer, "many priests were preserved from the prey of persecutors." Finally he was himself betrayed into the hands of the Protestant Government, who write exultingly of their "great joy" in his arrest; "knowing his skill in constructing hiding-places, and the innumerable number of these dark holes which he hath schemed for hiding priests throughout the kingdom." It was hoped that he might be induced to reveal these places, "to the taking of great booty of priests." But Owen remained staunch against all threats and blandishments, and finally allowed himself to be tortured to death without suffering the secret "to be wrung from him," as Cecil ordered that it should be. "The man is dead—he died in our hands," is the laconic report of the Governor of the Tower in answer to this order.

The knee-holm, or butchers' broom, used in the Sawston leather work, grows at Whittlesford, on the other side of the Granta, a pretty, shady village with an interesting church; the development of which, from a Saxon nucleus, is a nice (and not yet satisfactorily solved) problem for lovers of mediæval architecture. There is a wooden porch (oak) of the fourteenth century. At Whittlesford Bridge, where the Granta is crossed by the Icknield Street, close to the railway station, one sees, hard by the road, a decayed stone edifice, with a high pitched roof thatched with reeds, now used as a barn.

Whittlesford.

This is the chapel of the ancient Hospital of St. John, founded in the thirteenth century. There were several such institutions in Cambridgeshire, started, not specially for the care of the sick, but for "hospitality" in the widest sense of the word. Here travellers were entertained, the hungry were fed, the needy were ministered to, according to their several necessities. The Hospitals were rarely large institutions, and this one, as the size of its chapel shows, was quite a small affair, only endowed with some sixty acres of meadow land and a water-mill, equivalent, probably, to some £200 a year in all. But having been under the direction of a prior (appointed by the Bishop of Ely), it is sometimes known by the high-sounding title of Whittlesford Priory. The interior of the building still retains some beautiful early English work. A specially pleasant roadside hostelry next door (the Red Lion), with deliciously quaint carvings on mantel and ceiling, may be held, in some sense, its modern representative; and, indeed, is thought by many authorities to have actually formed part of it.