"Back in medieval times..."

Yesterday, we made the journey to Ely, which was only a hop, skip, and jump away from here. It took longer to walk to the train station (40 minutes) than it did for the train to get to Ely (15 minutes.) Cheap, easy travels are by far the best travels.

We realized we had seen the Ely Cathedral before when we were here in March visiting Cambridge. Ely is the first stop between Cambridge and Edinburgh, and we saw this massive church through the train window. We wondered what it was, but never in a million years thought we would be back to find out!

Once we got off the train, we headed for the church. Ely is a very quaint, quiet town. We took a sort of back roads way to the cathedral on accident, but it worked out because we got to see some pretty great sights.

Contrary to what my posture implies, I didn't have to go to the bathroom. My hands were cold, and I was ducking under this eel trap. Yes, eel trap. Ely used to be the Isle of Ely back when it was surrounded on all sides by swamplands, hence the word being said like "eel-ee." The people would go fishing for eels in nets made out of reeds. This was kind of an upside down replica of some sort.

Approaching the Cathedral. I wish there was some way to show how huge it was. To think it was built in the Dark Ages without modern machinery is incredible.

Getting closer...

Then, right before you turn toward the Cathedral, there are random horses. My husband is super smart, but he had a bit of a brain fart when we were approaching the horses. He was convinced they were fake, like stuffed or statues or something. I mean, they were small and being really still because I guess they were sleepy or bored, but really? Fake? Haha.

These two were so funny and so chubby! The baby one was disgustingly muddy, like it was just rolling around in the dirt and rain. I imagined the brown one to be the mom, rolling her eyes in disinterested disgust because her son was being such a boy. Nice place for a pasture though.

I don't know if you can tell, but they had their eyes closed. It was like they were asleep standing up, in the middle of the afternoon.

I'm getting better at making my camera focus on what I want it to focus on.

Scary gargoyle guys.

There is no way to capture all that we learned at the Cathedral. We took an awesome guided tour from Kevin, our super British guide. We happened to come on the Harvest Festival weekend, so admission was free! A happy surprise. I'll try to retell what we learned as I come to each picture. It was really fascinating.

Parts of the building are over 1300 years old! That's like over 6 times as old as the United States!

The decoration was so pretty because of the Harvest Festival. Of course I took more pictures of the flowers than of the building that's centuries old.

Some of the elaborate brass/bronze/wood work on the choir stalls.

This lady, Ethel Dreda, founded the original monastery on the Isle of Ely and died in 673!!! Not 1673, 673. She had been allowed by the Church to leave her husband who was the King of East Anglia in order to become a nun. A year later, her ex hubby decided he needed some heirs, so he tried to track her down at her convent. She ran to the Isle of Ely because it was so hard to get to and so secluded. She found refuge there and began the monastery.

View down the nave toward the west entrance from the choir stall. Because it was built in phases, the architecture ranges from Romanesque to Gothic to Victorian depending on what section was erected at what time.

More elaborate timber work.

The floral arrangements were just lovely, especially against the stained glass and gray stone.

Yeah, there were sheep and chickens. In the church.

You can just barely make out the paint on the arches. These are the only remnants of the original wall decoration. They were white-washed and covered over for centuries. Then during the Victorian Era, all the white wash was removed, and this was found. Originally, the green stripes would have been bright blue (copper pigments) and the red would have been a bold scarlet. In between would have been gold leaf. The medieval people liked it "in your face" colorful.

Matt tried his best to sneak a pic of our guide, Kevin. He was so amusing. The hour and a half we spent with him was thoroughly diverting. He kept saying the phrase, "Back in medieval times..." He repeated it no less than a hundred times, and it was humorous because he would catch himself starting to say it, then get annoyed, and try to think of another way to say the same thing. So it would come out like, "Back in mediev-...No...back in the olden days..." Thanks, Kevin for a wonderful afternoon.

Dead guy just chilling...interesting pose for a tomb topper.

This guy got to be buried next to both of his wives. He belonged to an ill-liked aristocratic family. According to Kevin, "The man had two wives. Theoretically, they came one after another, but practically, they did not!"

The tower, or Lantern, or Gothic dome. It is very rare to have an octagonal dome. I think Kevin said it was unique to Ely actually. In the center in the very top circle is Jesus. "Back in medieval times," eight was the number that represented eternal life. So the common folk would have understood, without the ability to read or write or understand the service that would have been conducted in Latin, that through Jesus you have eternal life. Hundreds of tons of timber were used to construct the tower, and the beams were all hand painted via scaffolding.

I put this picture in specifically for some sorority girls I know. They like to talk with two fingers pointed up like this image of Jesus. I'm not trying to make any sort of sacrilegious comparison between Jesus blessing people and sorority girls making funny gestures when they talk, it was just the first thing I thought of when I saw the sculpture. If you don't know what I'm referring to, it's ok. 'Sorryboutcha.'

I thought this was a nice detail on the stairway to the pulpit thingy.

Stained glass depicting Jesus turning the water into wine at Cana. The windows at Ely Cathedral had particularly vibrant hues compared to some of the others we've seen.

Matt standing outside the door as we were leaving. They were really massive and had cool wrought-iron work on them. You can tell he was really thrilled to have his picture taken.

 So, from the church, we then headed to the home of Oliver Cromwell. If you aren't up on British history, he was a political and military leader who temporarily overthrew the monarchy back in the day. (I didn't know that. That's what Wikipedia said. I had heard of him but couldn't have told you why he was important. Matt and his AP European History background is so ashamed.) On the way to his house, which is all of about 300 yards from the church, we saw this charming place. I'd live there.

Oh sorry, little bit of a back track to the exterior of the church.

And here it is, Oli's house! Just about the kitchiest, most touristy little place you have ever seen, complete with plastic time period people at the door. We went in, but only long enough to grab some free maps. Kind of disappointing, but I guess we can say we have seen it.

And lastly, the medallion marking the home as a historic site.

Hope you have enjoyed your rather extensive tour of Ely. Our trip there took about 4 hours in total, so you have almost traveled through it via blogosphere as long as we did in real life. Tomorrow I will attempt to tell of our brilliant international student tea from this afternoon. In some brief foreshadowing I will tell you, I think some prayers are being answered. I met my substitute grandparents at this tea. Superb ending to a swell weekend. Happy (early) Columbus Day, my fellow Americans!