The village of Haddenham lies chiefly along the road running southward to the hamlet of Aldreth, on the very verge of the Island. The nearest point of the low-lying mainland is only half a mile away; the "Old River" of the Ouse (now, since the construction of the Bedford Rivers, become quite a scanty watercourse) flowing between. This was the point selected by William the Conqueror for the famous Causeway, whereby, after being once and again baffled by the valour of Hereward, he ultimately succeeded in forcing his way into the Island.[192] For centuries afterwards this continued to be the chief entrance from the Cambridge district, till superseded by the present road viâ Stretham. A small barrow at the southern end of this causeway, which is now a mere field-track, still bears the name of Belsar's Hill, after the knight who, in this campaign, acted as the Conqueror's Commander-in-Chief.
Wilburton, a mile to the east, was given to Ely by St. Ethelwold, Bishop of Winchester, the prelate who aided in King Edgar's restoration of the Monastery of Ely, after its destruction by the Danes, in 870, had laid it waste for upwards of a century. The church has some fine woodwork in stalls, screen, and roof, adorned on the spandrills and bosses with the three cocks of Bishop Alcock, the founder of Jesus College. While Archdeacon of Ely he here entertained Henry the Eighth, when, as Prince of Wales, he accompanied his father on the last Royal Pilgrimage ever made to the shrine of St. Etheldreda at Ely, which he himself was so soon to despoil and destroy. A good brass (now affixed to the wall) commemorates Alcock's predecessor in the archidiaconate, Richard Bole (1477). And yet another Archdeacon, Wetheringset, is also here buried. Some curious metal-work hangs from the roof, and on the north wall of the nave are ancient frescoes, representing not only St. Christopher, the usual subject, but the much less known St. Blaise and St. Leodegar. The former was Bishop of Sebaste, and was martyred in 316 A.D. He became the patron saint of wool-combers, and was specially venerated in Leeds and Bradford. The latter was Bishop of Autun in Gaul, during the seventh century. There is here a fine old red-brick manor-house, called the Burgh-stead (or Bury-stead), built in 1600 by a London alderman to whom Queen Elizabeth sold the Manor,—after filching it from the Bishop of Ely, according to her usual practice.
Wilburton.
The whole peninsula is specially rich in memorials of long past ages. In the peat of the old Ouse channel by Wilburton was found a great hoard of bronze weapons, lying in a promiscuous heap, "in such a manner as to suggest that a canoe with a cargo of bronze scrap had been upset there," as Professor and Mrs. Hughes picturesquely put it, in their "Geography of Cambridgeshire." Grunty Fen has produced a bronze sickle, and two splendid ornaments of twisted gold; while, a mile east of Wilburton, a British urn was discovered, associated with the bones of the urus, or gigantic wild ox of the Neolithic Age. And between Earith and Wilburton there has been dug out gold ring-money.
The Burystead, Wilburton.