The other lane, to the right, which leads to Madingley, is also worth traversing. From its hedgeless "switch-back" terraces we look northwards across the valley, not of the Cam but of the Ouse, bounded by the uplands of the island of Ely, ten miles away at the nearest point, and nearly twice as far where the ridge is crowned by the dim and distant towers of the cathedral. Conspicuous in the nearer distance is the red-brick mass of the Ladies' College at Girton, some three miles away from us. Madingley, to which half a mile or so of this prospect leads us, is a little place of steep pitches and tree-shaded lanes, very different from the usual Cambridgeshire village, but with a special charm of its own. It has a pretty little church nestling beneath a fine Elizabethan hall of red-brick. Both church and hall contain portions of the spoil of the church of St. Etheldreda, which once stood at Histon and was pulled down by Mr. Justice Hinde, the first builder of Madingley Hall, to whom the sacred edifice was given by Henry the Eighth. Its Norman font is now in Madingley Church, while part of its roof is still to be seen in the Hall.
At Madingley Hall King Edward the Seventh was quartered while an undergraduate of Trinity College. Tradition asserts that it once sheltered another monarch, the ill-fated Charles the First, in a momentary attempt to escape from the clutches of the rebel army during his enforced residence at the neighbouring Hall of Childerley, as will be narrated in connection with that place. The Hall has, since that date, passed from one family to another, and is now the seat of Colonel Harding, D.C.L.
Coton.
Madingley is a centre of pretty lanes. Besides that already spoken of, another, an avenue of greenery, leads northwards to the Via Devana, another westwards to the village of Dry Drayton, and another up the hill southwards, to rejoin our St. Neots road on the summit of the ridge. Here we are 220 feet above the sea, overlooking the valley of the Ouse to the north and to the south that of the Cam, or, rather, of its tributary the Bourn Brook. The road keeps the highest ground, almost on the level, while a succession of lanes to the right and left lead down to the villages on either slope.
First comes a southward turn to Hardwick, the church of which is so conspicuous an object in the view from the roof of King's College Chapel. Here, in 1644, "Mr. Mapletoft, parson thereof, with a wife and seven children, had these articles exhibited against him, viz., that he refused to read anything from the Parliament, but read many things from the King at Oxford with great boldness; that he prayeth not for the Parliament nor hath found them any arms at all; that he is a man devoted to many superstitious ceremonies, and commonly useth altar-worship, east-worship, and dropping-worship,[182] and after his sermon came out of the pulpit into the chancel and there made an end of his will-worship." Whereupon, by the Earl of Manchester's warrant, he was promptly ejected and sequestrated. The previous year the church had been purified by Dowsing, who notes with disgust that for dealing with "ten superstitious pictures and a cross" he was here paid only 3s. 2d. instead of the 6s. 8d., which was his regular fee.
The great iconoclast has the same grievance in the adjoining village of Toft, where he got "only 6s. 8d." for a specially heavy "purification" of the church, involving the destruction of "twenty-seven superstitious pictures in the windows, ten others in stone, three inscriptions, Pray for the souls, divers Orate pro animabuses [sic] in the windows, and a bell Ora pro anima Sancta Katharina." The "pictures in stone" were doubtless the alabaster images of the reredos, fragments of which are still preserved in the church, exquisite in modelling and colour. The most noticeable is a headless figure of St. Hubert, the mighty hunter of legend, who was converted by meeting a white hart with golden horns (supposed to be an emblem of Christ), and received from St. Peter a key wherewith to cure hydrophobia. The key is here in his hand, with a dog beneath it, and the golden-horned hart couched by his side.
Just before we reach the seventh milestone from Cambridge another south-running lane diverges to Caldecote, with its retired little fane on the hill-side over the Bourn, a very oasis of devotional peace and quietude. Confronting it across the stream is the steeple of Kingston, where there is a fine fourteenth century fresco in the north aisle, and a delicious little niche in the western wall of the tower, outside.