Ely, Cambridgeshire
Ely is a cathedral city and civil parish in the district of East Cambridgeshire in Cambridgeshire, England, northeast of Cambridge, southeast of Peterborough and from London. At the 2021 census, the built-up area had a population of 19,200. The parish which includes the villages of Chettisham, Prickwillow, Queen Adelaide and Stuntney and the hamlet of Mile End had a population of 20,574 in 2021.
Ely is built on a Kimmeridge Clay island which, at, is the highest land in the Fens. It was due to this topography that Ely was not waterlogged like the surrounding Fenland, and an island separated from the mainland. Major rivers including the Witham, Welland, Nene and Great Ouse feed into the Fens and, until draining commenced in the eighteenth century, formed freshwater marshes and meres within which peat was laid down. Once the Fens were drained, this peat created a rich and fertile soil ideal for farming.
The River Great Ouse was a significant means of transport until the Fens were drained and Ely ceased to be an island in the seventeenth century. The river is now a popular boating spot and has a large marina. Although now surrounded by land, the city is still known as the Isle of Ely.
There are two Sites of Special Scientific Interest in the city: a former Kimmeridge Clay quarry, and one of the United Kingdom's best remaining examples of medieval ridge and furrow agriculture.
The economy of the region is mainly agricultural. Before the Fens were drained, eel fishing was an important activity, from which the settlement's name may have been derived. Other important activities included wildfowling, peat extraction, and the harvesting of osier and sedge. The city had been the centre of local pottery production for more than 700 years, including pottery known as Babylon ware. A Roman road, Akeman Street, passes through the city; the southern end is at Ermine Street near Wimpole and its northern end is at Brancaster. Little direct evidence of Roman occupation in Ely exists, although there are nearby Roman settlements such as those at Little Thetford and Stretham.
A coach route, known to have existed in 1753 between Ely and Cambridge, was improved in 1769 as a turnpike. The present-day A10 closely follows this route. Ely railway station, built in 1845, is on the Fen Line and is now a railway hub, with lines north to King's Lynn, northwest to Peterborough, east to Norwich, southeast to Ipswich and south to Cambridge and London.
Henry II granted the first annual fair, Saint Etheldreda's seven-day event, to the abbot and convent on 10 October 1189. The word "tawdry" originates from cheap lace sold at this fair. A weekly market has taken place in Ely Market Square since at least the 13th century. Markets are now held on Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, with a farmers' market on the second and fourth Saturdays of each month.
Present-day annual events include the Eel Festival in May, established in 2004, and a fireworks display in Ely Park, first staged in 1974. The city of Ely has been twinned with Denmark's oldest town, Ribe, since 1956. Ely City Football Club was formed in 1885.
Toponymy
The origin and meaning of Ely's name have always been deemed obscure by place name scholars and are still disputed. The earliest record of the name is in the Latin text of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, where he wrote Elge. This is apparently not a Latin name, and subsequent Latin texts nearly all used the forms Elia, Eli, or Heli with inorganic H-. In Old English charters, and in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the spelling is usually Elig.Skeat derived the name Ely from what he called "O Northumbrian" ēlġē, meaning "district of eels". This uses a hypothetical word *ġē, which is not recorded in isolation but thought by some to be related to the modern German word Gau, meaning "district". The theory is that the name then developed a vowel to become ēliġē, and was afterwards re-interpreted to mean "Eel Island". This essentially is the explanation accepted by Reaney, Ekwall, Mills and Watts.
But difficulties remain. Bailey, in his discussion of ġē names, has pointed out that Ely would be anomalous if really from ēlġē "eel district", being remote from the areas where possible examples of ġē names occur, and moreover, there is no parallel for the use of a fish-name in compounds with ġē. More seriously, the usual English spelling remains Elig, even in the dative case used after many prepositions, where Elige would be expected if the second element were īġ "island". This is in conflict with all the other island names which surround Ely.
Problems also remain, as pointed out by historian Mac Dowdy, as the word eel did not exist at the time of the founding of Ely, and they were instead referred to as aguilla or anguilles until the 1300s. Mac proposes that instead the city gets its name from the word "Elysium", later shortened to Ely. This is believed as Etheldreda's chamberlain, Ovin, described it as "an ancient place of great spiritual importance to the people of the region, a paradise". This was later changed as Wilfrid's chronicler used the Latin term for Paradise "Elysium".
Another option, discussed by Miller in Fenland Notes and Queries, is that the name is an old Celtic name deriving either from the Brythonic helig meaning willows or heli meaning salt water. Miller construes the name as meaning the singular and thinks it odd a place so abounding in the trees would be called 'a willow'.
History
Pre-history
are a palaeontologically significant Site of Special Scientific Interest northeast of the city. The Jurassic Kimmeridge Clays were quarried in the 19th and 20th centuries for the production of pottery and for maintenance of river embankments. Many specimens of ammonites, belemnites and bivalves were found during quarrying, in addition to an almost complete specimen of a pliosaur.There is some scattered evidence of Late Mesolithic to Bronze Age activity in Ely such as Neolithic flint tools, a Bronze Age axe and spearhead. There is slightly denser Iron Age and Roman activity with some evidence of at least seasonal occupation. For example, a possible farmstead, of the late Iron Age to early Roman period, was discovered at West Fen Road and some Roman pottery was found close to the east end of the cathedral on The Paddock. There was a Roman settlement, including a tile kiln built over an earlier Iron Age settlement, in Little Thetford, to the south.
Medieval period
The city's origins lay in the foundation of an abbey in 673, to the north of the village of Cratendune on the Isle of Ely, under the protection of Saint Etheldreda, daughter of King Anna. St Etheldreda was a queen, founder and abbess of Ely. She built a monastery in 673 AD, on the site of what is now Ely Cathedral. This first abbey was destroyed in 870 by Danish invaders and rededicated to Etheldreda in 970 by Ethelwold, Bishop of Winchester. The abbots of Ely then accumulated such wealth in the region that in the Domesday survey it was the "second richest monastery in England". The first Norman bishop, Simeon, started building the cathedral in 1083. The octagon was rebuilt by sacrist Alan of Walsingham between 1322 and 1328 after the collapse of the original nave crossing on 22 February 1322. Ely's octagon is considered "one of the wonders of the medieval world". Architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner believes the octagon "is a delight from beginning to end for anyone who feels for space as strongly as for construction" and is the "greatest individual achievement of architectural genius at Ely Cathedral". This gave the cathedral its distinctive shape, earning it the moniker, "The Ship of the Fens". Building continued until the dissolution of the abbey in 1539 during the Reformation. The cathedral was sympathetically restored between 1845 and 1870 by the architect George Gilbert Scott. As the seat of a diocese, Ely has long been considered a city; in 1974, city status was granted by royal charter.File:Ely Oliver Cromwell House.jpg|left|thumb|alt=East aspect of the Oliver Cromwell House in Ely|East aspect of St Mary's vicarage, a Grade II* listed building. Oliver Cromwell lived here between 1638 and 1646. Since 1990, the building has been open as the Oliver Cromwell's House tourist attraction and as Ely's tourist information centre.
Cherry Hill is the site of Ely Castle which is of Norman construction and is a United Kingdom scheduled monument. Of similar construction to Cambridge Castle, the diameter, high citadel-type motte and bailey is thought to be a royal defence built by William the Conqueror following submission of the Isle from rebels such as the Earl Morcar and the folk-hero Hereward the Wake from the Ely Rebellion. This would date the first building of the castle to 1070.
Henry III of England granted a market to the Bishop of Ely using letters close on 9 April 1224 although Ely had been a trading centre prior to this. Present weekly market days are Thursday and Saturday and seasonal markets are held monthly on Sundays and Bank Holiday Mondays from Easter to November.