ELY CATHEDRAL (in full, The Cathedral Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Ely) is the principal church of the diocese of Ely, in Cambridgeshire, England, and the seate of the Anglican Bishop of Ely. It is known locally as "the ship of the Fens", because of its prominent shape that towers above the surrounding flat and watery landscape.

THE FENS are an area of former wetlands in the counties of Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire and Norfolk in eastern England. The region lies west and south of THE WASH. Geologically, the fenlands are a silted-up bay of the North Sea that embraces the lower drainage basins of the rivers Witham, Welland, Nene and Great Ouse. By the Little Ouse, goods to Brandon, and Thetford, by the Lake to Mildenhall, Barton-Mills, and St. Edmunds-Bury; by the river Grant to Cambridge, by the Great Ouse itself to Ely, to St. Ives, to St. Neots, to Barford-Bridge, and to Bedford; by the River Nyne, to Peterboro'; by the dreyns and washes to Wysbich, to Spalding, Market-Deeping, and Stamford; besides the several counties, into which these goods are carryed by land carriage, from the places where the navigation of those rivers ends. Parishes and ancient towns near River Ouse that there are more navigable rivers, empty themselves into the sea, including the Washes which are branches of the same port, than at any one mouth of waters in England, except the Thames and the Humber.

THE OWSE is large and deep, close to the town itself, and ships of good burthen may come up to the key, no bridge, the stream being too strong, and the bottom moorish and unsound. A pass over in boats into the fenn-country, and over the famous washes into Lincolnshire and from Lynn to Downham, the fenn country to Wisbech passes a wooden bridge, roads, dreyns, dykes of water, back to Ely and the cathedral on a level flat country. The rivers which thus empty themselves into these fenns, and which thus carry off the water, are the Cam or Grant, the Great Ouse, and Little Ouse, the Nene, the Welland, and the river which runs from Bury to Milden-Hall; the counties which these rivers drain: Warwick, Norfolk, Cambridge, Oxford, Suffolk, Huntingdon, Leicester, Essex, Bedford, Northampton, Buckingham, Rutland. For a course of fifty miles or more, parts the two counties of Suffolk and Essex; passing thro' or near Haveril, Clare, Cavendish, Halsted, Sudbury, Buers, Nayland, Stretford, Dedham, Manningtree, and into the sea at Harwich.

Wisbech market town, port, on the Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire is known as the "Capital of the Fens" or FENLAND. Hereward Leofricsson, later called Hereward the Wake, who was raised on the fen margin, opposed the loss of his inheritance to the Norman incomers in around the yeare 1070. Hereward's base was the Isle of Ely in Cambridge and he roamed the surrounding fenlands of what is now Lincolnshire, leading popular opposition to William the Conqueror. It is said that the title the Wake was popularly assigned to him many years after his death and is believed to mean the watchful. 300 years ago, the Fens were similar to the subtropical marshland that is Florida Everglades, a large area of low-lying land, though in a cooler climate, an area of former wetlands.

Florida Everglades

The Fens may also refer to the Back Bay Fens, a park in Boston, Massachusetts. They opposed incursions by outsiders and defended their valuable traditional rights of commonage, turf cutting, fishing and fowling from St. Ives to London. The Wisconsin (in North America), Weichsel (in Scandinavia), Devensian (in the British Isles), Midlandian (in Ireland) and Würm glaciation (in the Alps) are the most recent glaciations of the Pleistocene, which ended around 10,000 BC and vegetation cover at the Last Glacial Maximum period ~18,000 years ago, describing the type of vegetation cover present, based on fossil pollen samples recovered from lake and bog sediments by maximum extent and latest advance.

FEN CAUSEWAY or the Fen Road is the modern name for a Roman road of England that runs between Denver in the east and Peterborough in the west near a bronze age site, Flag fen. Its path covers 24 miles, passing March and Eldernell (near Whittlesey) before joining the major Roman north-south route Ermine Street west of modern-day Peterborough. Flag fen in the 10th century BC the ground level was much lower than today, increasing around 1 mm per yeare as autumnal debris is added to the surface of the fens to cause the structure to be covered up and preserved. It provided a link from the north and west of England to East Anglia. It is possible that the route continued east of Denver to meet Peddars Way at Castle Acre.

The anaerobic conditions found in the waterlogged soil prevented the timbers and other wooden objects from rotting away. There is also an exposed section of the Roman road known as the Fen Causeway which crosses the site and a reconstruction of a Prehistoric droveway. Between two bronze age and one Iron age roundhouses freeze drying preserves wood as it is used to preserve Seahenge timber circles and nearby Holme II-dates to the centuries before Holme I (c. 2400-2030 BC) oak logs.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, Ely

 

Index