[This is the twenty-fourth of
a series of articles giving a brief description of each of the 26 ancient
Anglican cathedrals coupled with a sketch of a person, activity or institution
connected to the area]
Ely Cathedral in
Cambridgeshire, with its high West Tower and unique and distinctive Lantern, is one of
the great sights of England,
as it rises high over the flat fenland surrounding it. Founded by the Saxon
Saint Etheldreda in the 7th century, the building we now see was built
mainly in the Norman manner including important Early English and Decorated
Gothic elements from 1082 to 1375.
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| Ely Cathedral |
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| The Nave at Ely |
The
austere and majestic Norman Nave with its wooden painted ceiling gives way to
exuberant Early English at the crossing, where the light comes from the
octagonal Lantern. It was built to replace a central tower which collapsed in
1322 and it is one of the masterpieces of medieval construction. The choir and
presbytery are richly adorned with fan vaulting, fine stalls and misericords.
The almost separate Lady Chapel in Decorated Gothic must have been sumptuous
before Puritan iconoclasts smashed the carved figures depicting the life of
Mary; it is still a lovely place with the arcades below the windows carved in
delicate “nodding ogee” form. The West front boasts a beautiful central tower
but is incomplete as the North West
tower collapsed in the 15th century and was never rebuilt.
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| The Octagon at Ely |
 |
| The Lady Chapel |
Ely
is a delight in East Anglia;
a journey of discovery there is immensely rewarding.
----------------------------------
14
miles South of Ely lies the City famous the world over as the home of Cambridge University. The University was formed
around 1209 by scholars from Oxford
University who had
quarrelled with townspeople there. Oxford and Cambridge universities
are similar in organisation and together are often referred to as “Oxbridge”.
The universities have a subtly different atmosphere and there is much friendly
rivalry. Although I am an Oxford man myself, I
have to say that Cambridge is in some ways more
beautiful and it has in recent years marginally surpassed Oxford
academically as the best university in England; it currently ranks third
in the world after Harvard and MIT. Cambridge
graduates have won 65 Nobel Prizes, more than any other university in the
world. It is a hugely influential and admired institution.
Like
Oxford, Cambridge
is a federation of 31 independent and self-governing Colleges with the
university providing central teaching and research facilities. The
undergraduates’ first loyalty is to their College, some of which are of surpassing
beauty like Trinity and King’s. The oldest College is Peterhouse founded in
1284: Computer pioneer Charles Babbage and Lord Kelvin of thermodynamic fame
were graduates there: Emmanuel (John Harvard’s), Christ’s (John Milton and
Charles Darwin were there) and Sidney Sussex (Oliver Cromwell an alumnus) once
had a Puritan reputation. All the colleges, Clare, Magdalene, Gonville and
Caius, St John’s,
Girton etc etc can boast of distinguished graduates.
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| Great Court, Trinity College |
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| King's College and Chapel |
Cambridge has a particularly high
reputation in mathematics and the advancement of science. The pre-eminent
polymath Isaac Newton (1643-1727) studied at Trinity, the precursor of a
glittering parade of scientific talent –J J Thomson (the electron), Cavendish
(hydrogen), Crick and Watson (DNA), Cockcroft (nuclear physics), Darwin
(natural selection), Turing (computers) and Dirac (quantum mechanics). Along
with East Anglia generally, Cambridge was also
attracted to Reformation doctrines and Puritan standards and developed a
logical, austere mind-set rather at odds with the easy-going conservatism of
Anglican Oxford. But all that is now history.
As
an unashamedly intellectually elitist institution (although Cambridge offers generous bursaries to poor
scholars) the University has spawned a number of cliques, like that surrounding
the literary critic FR Leavis. The most famous is The Apostles, a secretive debating
society founded in 1820 of which philosopher Bertrand Russell was a member and
later Lytton Strachey, Maynard Keynes and Leonard Woolf. There was often an
element of homosexuality about the Apostles and it was not surprising that gay
Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt became members. Both were later exposed as
members of a KGB spy ring operating in the 1930s and 40s, “The Cambridge Spies,”
which also included diplomat Donald Maclean and MI6 operative Kim Philby.
Certainly Philby did much damage to UK and NATO interests. These
close-knit groups with their fierce loyalties accentuated a sharp dilemma:
better to betray your friend or your country? I thought that otherwise
admirable writers like Arthur Marshall and Alan Bennett were rather too quick
to rush to the defence of Guy Burgess, who was no doubt an amusing fellow, but
a traitor nevertheless.
Cambridge University is not just about
laboratories and espionage. The great bulk of the undergraduate body have their
wits tested for three unforgettable and civilised years in a wide variety of faculties. They
also have fun and laughter; they punt lazily on the idyllic Backs, canoodling
with their latest beloved.
Long
may they do so.
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| Punting on the Backs at Cambridge |
SMD
12.12.12
Text
Copyright © Sidney Donald 2012
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