Regions of Britain: The Fens (1977)

Made in 1977 but feeling somehow older, this pleasant little film takes us round various Fenland locations and discusses the history of the region.

It's good to see Crowland Abbey included among the better-known locations.

Crowland Abbey in 2009

As Susan Hibbins once put it in Lincolnshire Life:

Drive to Crowland Abbey along the lonely fen roads on a misty December afternoon as the dusk is falling and you feel as though you are driving into the past, when the world seemed to consist only of water and sky; where small, isolated communities clung to muddy islands that raised themselves a few feet out of the undrained fens. 

This was the world to which the former soldier Guthlac came in 699 AD, to one of the little islands – Crowland – where he would live and die, and where a great abbey would be built in his memory.

The abbey is now largely ruinous, but part of it serves as Crowland's parish church.

A drone flight over Crowland Abbey

A drone flight over this little-known Lincolnshire parish church and monastic ruin.

I visited Crowland Abbey and the town's unique bridge back in 2009 - note the comment on Lincolnshire history from Simon Titley on the first post.

And the tune accompanying the video puts me in mind of a comedy sketch I shall share with you presently.

Six of the Best 527

Adam Ludlow analyses Labour's pensioner problem.

"In the 1930s many British aristos found themselves unable to keep their right arm vertical. Like their fellow nobs in France, Prussia and Spain, they clung to fascism as an antidote to democracy and in the hope of keeping their loot." Glen Newey puts that photo of a young Princess Elizabeth giving a Nazi salute into historical context.

Jenny Uglow goes round the Eric Ravilious exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery and finds the artist modern, English and strange.

Mrs Slocombe in space? Surely nothing could go wrong. Well, to judge by Come Back Mrs Noah’s repeat appearances on ‘worst sitcom’ lists, plenty did. This late-seventies comedy was one dud note in the otherwise much-admired comedy careers of writer producers David Croft and Jeremy Lloyd." Louisa Mellor surveys 11 science fiction situation comedies you may well have forgotten.

East of Elveden visits Crowland and John Clare's Helpston.

The remains of terracing in back gardens; grassy banks that reveal the extent of an earlier, much larger stadium; a forgotten East End stadium that could accommodate 120,000... Derelict London takes us around some of the city's long lost sports grounds.

Oxford, Cambridge... and Stamford

News that A.C. Grayling and Co. wish to found a new elite university bring to mind the legend that the Lincolnshire town of Stamford was once home to a great university.

As James John Hissey put it in his Over Fen and Wold (1898):

For Stamford was erst a university town of renown whose splendid colleges rivalled both those of Oxford and Cambridge and even at one period threatened to supersede them, and probably would have done so but for powerful and interested political intrigues.

And in Memorials of Stamford (1867) Mackenzie Walcott commented on the town's resemblance to Oxford:

The likeness must have been most striking when the halls of the Monastic Houses of Peterborough, Crowland, Sempringham, and Vaudey, and Brazenose College, were thronged with students, and an academical look was given to the streets by the flowing gowns various hoods.

Sadly, this story has grown greatly in the telling over the centuries. The truth, as explained by Martin Smith in Stamford Myths and Legends (where the quotations above can be found) is that a group of Pelagians broke away from Oxford between 1333 and 1335, establishing themselves first in Northampton and then in Stamford.

Smith writes:

the group of teachers and students was never sufficiently large, or established,  to be considered a proper university. Many students returned to Oxford prior to 1335, and only seventeen masters, six parish priests and fourteen students were found in the last inquisition.

I suspect the legend has grown because Stamford looks so much as though it ought to be a university town. There were hopes that one could be established there in the expansion of the 1960s and again more recently when a university was planned for the county, but that went to Lincoln instead. There is even an earlier and less well founded legend that there was a university in Stamford long before the birth of Christ.

Still, Oxford University, at least, took the possible challenge from Stamford seriously. Following the 14th century succession students were made to swear an oath not to "lecture or attend lectures at Stamford".

I offer this to them as a possible way of dealing with A.C. Grayling and Co.

Crowland Abbey

Another photograph from my recent travels. The Crowland Abbey (originally Croyland Abbey) website explains its unfortunate early history:

Croyland Abbey was a monastery of the Benedictine Order in Lincolnshire, sixteen miles from Stamford and thirteen from Peterborough. It was founded in memory of St. Guthlac, early in the eighth century, by Ethelbald, King of Mercia, but was entirely destroyed and the community slaughtered by the Danes in 866.

Refounded in the reign of King Edred, it was again destroyed by fire in 1091, but rebuilt about twenty years later by Abbot Joffrid. In 1170 the greater part of the abbey and church was once more burnt down and once more rebuilt, under Abbot Edward.

Things went much better after that - until the Dissolution came along.

Trinity Bridge, Crowland

The other day I showed you the ruins of Crowland Abbey in the background of one photograph - more of that another time.

But Crowland has another remarkable feature: the Trinity Bridge. It was built in the 14th century to cross the rivers that then flowed through the town. Today the Welland runs a mile to the west.

There is an interesting article by R. A. Waters on the repair and stabilisation of the bridge carried out in 2002 (pdf).

Holland County Council

This photograph, taken near the River Welland just outside Crowland yesterday, shows a signpost still bearing the name Holland County Council. You may have to click on it and enlarge it to see this clearly.

As Wikipedia explains, the Parts of Holland was one of the three medieval subdivisions of Lincolnshire (the other two were Lindsey and Kesteven). Under the Local Government Act 1888 it obtained a county council, which it retained until 1974. At that point the three county councils were abolished and Lincolnshire (minus the northern part of Lindsey which became part of Humberside) had a single county council for the first time.

Places where I blogged this week

The first photograph shows an internet cafe in King's Lynn. I went there so often they were giving me free coffee by the end.

The second shows the library at Crowland, where I was earlier today. It has free internet access and the Abbey ruins in the background as a bonus.