Highways and Byways in Cambridge and Ely

by John William Edward Conybeare

From Duxford, a pretty byway—far prettier till, a year or two ago, the picturesque wooden foot-bridge across the Granta was replaced by an iron modernity—leads to Hinxton, where the church has some interesting architectural developments, and a good brass to Sir Thomas de Skelton, steward to "old John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster." He is shown in full plate-armour, and his two wives lie beside him. The Parochial Register here dates back to the very first institution of such documents, in 1538, by Thomas Cromwell. This is quite rare; for the idea was, in its first inception, to the last degree unpopular both with clergy and people, who suspected, from their experience of Henry's illimitable greed, that a tax would be exacted upon each of the ecclesiastical functions thus registered.

On the outside of the spire, which is of wood covered with lead, hangs a "Sanctus" (or "Sacring") Bell, which of old was rung at those places in the High Mass where a small bell is sounded by the Server at the Altar; that is to say, at the Ter Sanctus and the Consecration of the Host. Thus those of the faithful who were unable to attend church were invited to unite themselves in spirit with the worshippers there at the most solemn moments of the Service. Few of these bells remain, as their associations were, of course, specially distasteful to Protestant feeling, so that they were mostly destroyed at the Reformation.

At Hinxton we are on the borders of Essex, and a shady westward-running lane takes us on, across the river and the railway, to the last Cambridgeshire village on this line, Ickleton, where the church is of quite unique interest. Here, too, there is a Sacring Bell, on the side of the steeple; surviving, doubtless, through the same unknown local influence which also saved that on the sister spire of Hinxton. But the real interest of the church is entirely hidden from passers by. Those even who look from the pretty little Village Green to the southward see nothing that calls for notice, except the Sacring Bell and a fairly good Geometrical window in the steeple. The rest of the exterior shows only poor fourteenth century work—and cruelly "restored" at that.

But, once inside, we discover that the unsightly exterior is but an outer shell, built round, and over, a smaller and far older church, still standing, and so entirely enclosed that its clerestory lights now open into the existing aisles. Above them are the lights of the later fourteenth century clerestory, which, no doubt, originally contained Geometrical, or more probably Flowing, tracery. Now, however, they are mere "churchwarden" apertures, of various indefinite shapes, with mean wooden sashes, having been remorselessly doctored in the second decade of the nineteenth century.

It is when we look closely at this interior church that we note its truly astonishing features. At the first glance it might be taken for an ordinary Norman structure, with its round pillars and round arches; and, in fact, it is usually so described by the few authorities who notice it at all. The rudeness of the capitals, however, and the general aspect of the arcade, does not somehow look like Norman work, but more suggests Saxon architecture. And the very small clerestory lights, mere loopholes, still more lead us to this conclusion. Some archæologists, therefore, consider this interior church at Ickleton to be a Saxon edifice; and, so far as the clerestory is concerned, it is exceedingly probable that they are right. The piers of the tower arches, however, are unmistakably Norman, as is also the west doorway.

But what is the arcade? When we examine the massive circular pillars which support it, we see to our amazement that, instead of being built up in the usual manner, every one of them is a monolith! We are now obliged to confess ourselves in the presence not of Norman or Saxon but of Roman work, for no example of such monolithic construction is known in any later architecture, and was, indeed, sparingly employed even by the Romans.

How did these pillars come to be here? They are of Barnack stone from Northamptonshire, and must have been brought at an expense well-nigh prohibitory to the finances of a small country parish. We may dismiss the idea that they were hewn out of the quarry in this specially costly form, and fetched all the way from Barnack by the builders of this little unpretending church.

Dismissing this, there remain two other alternatives. A mile distant from Ickleton to the southward stands Chesterford, the site of an important Roman station, commonly identified with the Icianos of the third century "Antonine" Itinerary. The place derived its name, and its importance, from its position at the point where the River Granta is crossed by the Icknield Way, the line of communication along the strip of greensward between the Cambridgeshire fens and the forest topping the East Anglian heights, which gave access to the territory of the Iceni in Norfolk and Suffolk. The Saxon builders of Ickleton Church may have found these pillars amid the ruins of Icianos, or of some villa in the neighbourhood, and have brought them that short distance for their edifice. As they were ready made this would be a cheap job.

Such is the one alternative. The other, to which I myself incline, is that they did not need to fetch the pillars at all, but utilised them on the very spot where they originally stood. According to this view we have here an example, unique in Britain, of Roman work in situ. The very arcading which we see I take to have stood north and south of the central hall of some large Roman mansion. Such a mansion usually contained an oblong central hall of this kind (often roofless), with a peristyle, or cloister, on either side opening into it, a portico at one end, and a smaller tablinum or guest-chamber at the other. Lanciani has pointed out how this structural arrangement suggested the nave, aisles, porch, and chancel of the earliest ecclesiastical edifices at Rome.[169] The same suggestion may have influenced the builders of Ickleton Church to utilise this old Roman arcading, roofing in the enclosed space, but with a clerestory to prevent too great loss of light. If this view is correct the narrow north aisle probably represents the width of the original peristyle.

The south aisle is far wider, as wide indeed as the nave and north aisle together; and one asks why the fourteenth century architect planned his work so very unsymmetrically. The answer, I think, is to be found in the remarkable architectural development of the steeple. The piers of the tower are, as I have said, unmistakably Norman, but upon them are set, quite unconformably, arches at least a century later in date. The tower is pierced by these arches on all four sides, and was evidently meant as the centre of a cruciform church with transepts. For some reason this Norman plan was never completed, but it is very probable that the south wall of the church marks the limit to which the transept (which may have been actually begun) was meant to extend.