Ely Cathedral - Cambridgeshire
Posted by: 
Norfolk12
N 52° 23.928 E 000° 15.774
31U E 313788 N 5808920
It is known locally as "the ship of the Fens", because of its prominent shape that towers above the surrounding flat and watery landscape.
Waymark Code: WM6HN1
Location: United Kingdom
Date Posted: 06/07/2009
Views: 6
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 seat of the Bishop of Ely.
History of Previous buildings
See also: List of abbots and abbesses of Ely
The first Christian building on the site was founded by St. Æthelthryth (romanised as "Etheldreda"), daughter of the Anglo-Saxon King Anna of East Anglia, who was born in 630 at Exning near Newmarket. She may have acquired land at Ely from her first husband Tondberht, described by Bede as a "prince" of the South Gyrwas. After the end of her second marriage to Ecgfrith, a prince of Northumbria, she set up and ruled a monastery at Ely in 673, and, when she died, a shrine was built there to her memory. The monastery is traditionally believed to have been destroyed in the Danish invasions of the late 9th century, together with what is now the city. However, while the lay settlement of the time would have been a minor one, it is likely that a church survived there until its refoundation in the 10th century.
A new Benedictine monastery was built and endowed on the site by Athelwold, Bishop of Winchester, in 970, in a wave of monastic refoundations which locally included Peterborough and Ramsey. This became a cathedral in 1109, after a new Diocese of Ely was created out of land taken from the Diocese of Lincoln.
The present building
Inside of the Lantern.The present cathedral was started by Abbot Simeon (1082-1094, brother of Walkelin, the then bishop of Winchester) under William I in 1083. Building continued under Simeon's successor, Abbot Richard (1100-1107). The Anglo-Saxon church was demolished, but some of its relics, such as the remains of its benefactors, were moved to the cathedral. The main transepts were built early on, crossing the nave below a central tower, and are the oldest surviving part of the cathedral. The West Tower was built between 1174 and 1197, and the Romanesque style of the west front overall shows that it was built in the 12th century, with the later addition of the Galilee porch (1198-1215). The west tower is 66m high (215ft). The unique Octagon 'Lantern Tower' was constructed during the 1300s and replaced the old central tower which collapsed. 'The Lantern' is 23m (74ft) wide and is 52m (170ft) high. From the floor to central roof boss 'The Lantern' is 43m (142ft) high.
Floor plan.The cathedral is built from stone quarried from Barnack in Northamptonshire (bought from Peterborough Abbey, whose lands included the quarries, for 8000 eels a year), with decorations in Purbeck Marble and local clunch. The plan of the building is cruciform (cross-shaped), with the altar at the east end. The total length is 537 feet (163.7 m)[6], and with the nave at over 75 m long (250ft), remains the longest in Britain.
Attached to the north transept is the Lady Chapel (built 1321-1349 in the Decorated style) by the sacrist Alan of Walsingham. It was to his plans, too, that the octagonal tower or octagon (1322-1328) was built after Simeon's original crossing tower collapsed in 1322, injuring nobody but destroying the choir. This central octagon rises from the whole breadth of the building and towers up until its roof, a wooden lantern, forms the only Gothic dome in existence. The north-west transept collapsed in the 15th century and was never rebuilt, leaving a scar on the outside of that corner that can still be seen. Dating from the early 16th century, is a set of 44 misericords.
Later history
Nave of Ely Cathedral In 1539, during Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries, the cathedral suffered only minor damage, but St Etheldreda's shrine was destroyed. The cathedral was soon refounded in 1541, although many of the statues in the lady chapel were severely damaged.
The Bishop of Ely in the mid 17th century was Matthew Wren and in connection with this, his nephew Christopher Wren was responsible for a rather splendid Gothic door, dating from the 1650s, on the north face of the cathedral.
The building has been the subject of several major restoration projects:
in the 18th century, under James Essex
in 1839, under George Peacock, with the architect George Gilbert Scott (the architect Basevi died in a fall from the west tower). A painted wooden ceiling was added to the nave in this restoration.
from 1986 to 2000
The building is still in active use, and also houses a collection of stained glass from the 13th century to the present that is of national importance and includes works from notable contemporary artists like Ervin Bossanyi and others.
Music
Ely has a cathedral choir of boys and men, which has recently attracted international attention because of its association with The Choirboys: two of its members, Patrick Aspbury and CJ Porter-Thaw, are choristers at the cathedral. Boys are educated in the junior department of The King's School, Ely.
Recently, the cathedral community has started up an adult voluntary choir, the Octagon Singers, and a children's choir, the Ely Imps.
In a new development breaking thousands of years of tradition, The Ely Cathedral Girls' Choir was also launched in 2006, comprising 18 girl choristers. The ECGC Debut CD, ("Sing reign of fair maid: Music for Christmas and the New Year", under the direction of Sarah MacDonald), has just been released (October 2008), and is available from Regent Records.
Details of the organ from the National Pipe Organ Register
Organists
1453 William Kyng
1535 Thomas Barcroft
1541 Christopher Tye
1562 Robert White
1567 John Farrant
1572 William Fox
1579 George Barcroft
1610 John Amner
1641 Robert Claxton
1662 John Ferrabosco
1681 James Hawkins
1729 Thomas Kempton
1762 John Elbonn
1768 David Wood
1774 James Rogers
1777 Richard Langdon
1778 Highmore Skeats (sen.)
1804 Highmore Skeats (jun.)
1830 Robert Janes
1867 Edmund Thomas Chipp
1887 Basil Harwood
1892 Thomas Tertius Noble
1898 Hugh Allen
1901 Archibald Wilson
1919 Noel Ponsonby
1926 Hubert Middleton
1931 Marmaduke Conway
1949 Sidney Campbell
1953 Michael Howard
1958 Arthur Wills
1990 Paul Trepte
Assistant organists
The pipes of Ely Cathedral's OrganGeorge Legge
William George Price (later organist to the City of Melbourne)
Harold Carpenter Lumb Stocks 1906 - 1909
Edwin Alec Collins 1911 - 1915[7]
Guillaume Ormond 1927 - 1929 (afterwards organist of Truro Cathedral)
Frederick Chubb
William Bean
Russell Missin 1945 - 1949
Arthur Wills 1949 - 1958
Michael Dudman 1961 - 1964
Anthony Greening 1964
Roger Judd
Gerald Gifford 1973 - 1976
Stephen Le Prevost 1977 - 1989
Jeremy Filsell 1989 - 1991
David Price 1991 - 1996
Sean Farrell 1996 - 1998
Scott Farrell 1999 - 2002
Jonathan Lilley 2002 -
Edward Taylor (assistant for the Girls' Choir now Assistant Organist at Carlisle Cathedral)
Oliver Hancock (current assistant for the Girls' Choir)
This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.
See also the List of Organ Scholars at Ely Cathedral.
Honorary Canons
1989 John Beer
1994 Brian Watchorn
1999 Timothy Elbourne
2001 Jonathan Young
2003 Vanessa Herrick
2004 Margaret Guite
2004 Richard Longfoot
2004 Hugh McCurdy
2004 Les Oglesby
2004 Owen Spencer-Thomas
2005 Fiona Brampton
2005 Andrew Greany
2005 Jane Keiller
2005 Stephen Leeke
2005 Shamus Williams
2005 Francis Woolley
2007 Peter Baxendall
2007 John Binns
2007 Stephen Earl
2007 Wim Zwalf
2008 Richard Darmody
2008 Malcolm Griffith
2008 Martin Seeley
2008 Fraser Watts
2008 David Thomson
In popular culture
The cathedral features prominently on the cover of Pink Floyd's 1994 album The Division Bell.
A number of John Rutter's choral albums feature the cathedral, a reference to early recordings of his music being performed and recorded in the Lady Chapel.
Direct references to Ely Cathedral appear in the children's book Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce. A full-length movie with the same title was released in 1999.
A section of the film Elizabeth: The Golden Age was filmed at the Cathedral.
Filming for The Other Boleyn Girl took place at the Cathedral in August 2007.
Parts of the novel Floodland, by Marcus Sedgwick, take place at the Cathedral after the sea has consumed the land around it turning Ely into an island.
details from wikipedia
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