Last week Olivia and I took the bus to the cathedral town of Ely. The history of the cathedral is particularly interesting to us because the original monastic community there was begun by a woman, a Saxon princess named Etheldreda . 1400 years ago Etheldreda married to a local prince and was given the Isle of Ely as a dowry. At that time, Ely was surrounded by marshes and accessible only by boat. Etheldreda’s first husband died and she married another prince, Egfrid. Seven years later Etheldreda had a vision and wished to become a nun. Egfrid released her from the bonds of marriage and she joined a monastery, but before long, Egfrid changed his mind and came to collect her. Etheldreda fled to the Isle of Ely and took refuge there. She founded a double monastery for monks and nuns in 673, but died six years later of a throat tumor brought on by the bubonic plague. When her wooden coffin was reopened in 695, her body had been preserved and the tumor healed. Thus the already revered woman became saintly. For 200 years the monastery flourished, but in 869 the Danes came and burned and pillaged everything.
In 970 the ruined monastery was reopened and in 1081 the work on the cathedral began. Many of the materials used in building the cathedral were brought to the site by boat. The cathedral is a wonderful mix of architecture from Norman all the way through to Victorian. Two unique features are the Lady Chapel completed in 1349 and the largest of its kind and the wooden octagonal lantern.
The Lady Chapel would have originally been brightly painted with beautifully colored stained glass and adorned with statues of saints. All this was destroyed in 1541 after the dissolution of the monasteries. Now, it is completely white with an striking statue of Mary in a bright blue gown, arms reaching towards the heavens, responding to God’s call. We both like the statue very much, but some people have criticized it for not being reverent enough.
The octagonal, wooden lantern was constructed after the central Norman tower fell in 1322. Instead of rebuilding a square tower a monk named Alan de Walsingham had the idea of opening the space up even more and created an eight-sided tower topped with a striking combination of 200 tons of wood and lead.
As we walked through the chapel pointing out scenes to each other in the stained glass windows, we both whispered. It does fill you with awe and wonder to be in such a place, marked and visited for more than a thousand years. As we left, we walked down the street and through the old porta, the huge stone gatehouse that you would have entered to get to the monastery originally. In a pasture on what used to be the site of the medieval vineyard, we watched 3 shaggy ponies munching on parsnips .
