Ely Cathedral Pilgrimage in a Day

Ely Cathedral Pilgrimage in a Day, 7-19 miles, 1 day

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In the Google Map below, the maroon route from Littleport was conceived by Guy Hayward of the British Pilgrimage Trust.
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The blue route from Mildenhall via Prickwillow, by Dr Sarah Gull.
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See also St Edmundsbury Cathedral to Ely Cathedral – 35 miles.

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The text below is an edited version of Victoria Preston’s ‘Why Pilgrim?‘ blog piece.

From wherever you come though, do centre yourself on arrival at the cathedral by walking the labyrinth at the West Door, holding the intention with which you started your day pilgrimage.

The one-day pilgrimage from Littleport to Ely was, for the most part, straight and clear, the path raised high above a canalised section of the Cam. One of the waterways which once carried goods to and from the Isle of Ely, on this day it carried only two boats of coxless fours and their coach who followed behind in a small motorised dinghy. The views stretched uninterrupted in all directions to the horizon, with watery rhynes the only notable feature of the view. Once the domain of country folk who made a living from fishing and wildfowling, the fens were systematically drained in the 17^th century and with the help of Dutch engineer Cornelius Vermuyden, the boggy wetlands were turned into valuable if somewhat less biodiverse arable land. Stretching from Lincolnshire in the north to the borders of Suffolk in the east, almost 90% of England’s vast fenland acres are now cultivated, accounting for half of the country’s ‘grade 1’ farmland.

The subject of conflict marked our way; starting from St George’s Church Littleport where a sign commemorated that, in 1816, ‘It was here that rioters were read the Riot Act by the Reverend Vachell’. The rioters were impoverished farmhands whose meagre wages were insufficient to feed themselves or their families, and in this regard they were far from unique. In the late 18^th and early 19^th century many rural communities in Europe were living a hand-to-mouth existence, and their lives were often cut short due to poverty.

No matter the justice of their cause, 23 of the Ely and Littleport rioters were arrested and tried; not by local judiciary, but by a Special Commission, set up by the government of the day. We can only presume they took such an extreme measure to ensure a verdict that would send the right message to any other would-be rioters elsewhere in the country. Or perhaps they simply did not trust the Chief Justice of Ely at the time; Edward Christian, elder brother to Fletcher Christian, who had famously led the mutiny on the HMS Bounty, two decades earlier. In any event, the rioters were found guilty; five were hung and others transported to Australia.

At one point we stopped to admire a body of water fringed with reeds; a flurry of water fowl rising up and away at our intrusion. This small pocket of nature gave a clue to how the fens might have looked before they were drained, or when work halted for a short period during the English Civil War and Parliament ordered the dikes broken and the land flooded to stop a Royalist army advance. Oliver Cromwell hailed from the fens and he understood Ely’s strategic value as a refuge, an inland isle which could be more easily defended. As with other settlements in this area, Ely stands on higher ground and the cathedral was in our sights long before we reached it, this ‘ship of the fens’ rising up against the ever-leadening sky.

Once the second richest monastery in England, next only to Glastonbury, Ely’s cathedral was spared the extreme destruction of Henry VIII’s reforming zeal, thanks to the fact that Goodrich, who was Ely’s Bishop at the time of the Reformation, was a declared supporter of both the king and his divorce from Catherine of Aragon. After Henry’s death, his eldest daughter Queen Mary came to the throne and for a while Catholicism returned as the official credo in Britain. During the five bloody years of her reign, hundreds of Protestants were executed for not embracing her Catholic beliefs and among them were two Cambridgeshire men, William Wolsey and Robert Pygot, who, being found guilty of heresy were burned at the stake in front of Ely Cathedral on October 1555. For Wolsey and Pygot, it was enough to think and speak against the prevailing ideology to be condemned; for Goodrich, there was much to be gained by backing a powerful leader, irrespective of how far that leader had deviated from prior norms and values.

Finally, entering this truly magnificent building we received a warm welcome from Ely’s cheerful volunteers and from the immense cylindrical radiators with their steel fins that keep this cavernous building heated on even the freshest winter’s day. There is not space enough here to describe the glories of Ely Cathedral, the soaring perpendicular arches, the stained glass, the exquisitely carved altarpiece, the impressive sweep of the nave; only a visit in-person can really do it justice. Even then, Ely really is worth approaching on foot if only to fully appreciate its scale and majesty. Here as elsewhere, sometimes the clearest view is to be had from a distance.