Ely Cathedral and its Octagon

Ely Cathedral, in Cambridgeshire, is nicknamed "the Ship of the Fens": it stands on a small rise in the middle of the flat plain of the drained marshes of eastern England, and its silhouette can be seen for miles like a ship at sea. It is one of the most beautiful cathedrals in England, famous above all for the Octagon, an extraordinary lantern of wood and glass above the crossing, a masterpiece of medieval engineering.

History

In 673 the Anglo-Saxon princess Etheldreda, daughter of the king of East Anglia, founded a double monastery at Ely. Ely was then an island surrounded by marshes, reachable only by boat, and its name probably comes from the eels that abounded in the waters. The monastery was destroyed by the Danes in 870 and refounded by the Benedictines a century later. After the Norman Conquest, Ely was the last refuge of the English resistance led by Hereward the Wake. In 1083 Abbot Simeon began the great Norman church, which became a cathedral in 1109.

In 1322 the Norman central tower collapsed. The sacrist Alan of Walsingham, instead of rebuilding it as it was, devised a stone octagon topped by a wooden lantern, built by the royal carpenter William Hurley with enormous oak trunks. The work took about twenty years. In the Reformation the statues were beheaded and the stained glass destroyed. In the 17th century Oliver Cromwell lived in Ely, and during the Commonwealth the cathedral remained closed for many years.

What to see

The nave and the Octagon

The very long Norman nave, with its tiers of arches, is covered by a wooden ceiling painted in the 19th century with scenes from Genesis to the life of Christ. In the centre of the church, looking up, you discover the Octagon, with its lantern that seems suspended in space and lets light in from above. On a guided tour you can climb up inside the lantern, among the medieval oak beams, and open the painted panels to look down into the church.

The Lady Chapel

The Lady Chapel, built at the same time as the Octagon, is the largest chapel dedicated to the Virgin attached to an English cathedral. The hundreds of small statues that decorated it were almost all beheaded during the Reformation, but the bright hall, with a modern statue of the Virgin, is very beautiful.

The West Tower and the Stained Glass Museum

A second guided tour climbs the West Tower, 66 metres high, with an immense view over the Fens as far as Cambridge. In the gallery above the nave is the Stained Glass Museum, the only national museum of stained glass, with works from the Middle Ages to the present day.

The town

Around the cathedral stand the buildings of the old monastery, now a school, and the small city of Ely, with its market and riverside. You can visit Oliver Cromwell's House, where the future Lord Protector lived with his family for ten years. The cathedral has also been used as a film and television set, including for The Crown.

Practical information

The cathedral is open every day; there is an admission charge, and tower tours must be booked, with set times and age limits. During services some areas are closed. Opening times are on the official website.

Getting there

• By train: from Cambridge in about 15 minutes, from London King's Cross in just over an hour; 10 minutes' walk from the station.
• By car: from the A10, about 30 minutes from Cambridge.
• By air: London Stansted Airport is about 50 minutes away; see London's airports.

Nearby

• Cambridge, with its colleges.
• The Wicken Fen nature reserve, which preserves the landscape of the ancient fens.
• Peterborough and Norwich, with their cathedrals.

Tips

• How long: two hours, half a day with a tower tour.
• When to go: all year round; late-afternoon Choral Evensong is unforgettable.
• A tip: arrive in Ely by train from Cambridge and look out of the window: the cathedral suddenly appears, alone above the plain.

Ely Cathedral on the map

Nearby