Welcome to the deep dive I am I'm so thrilled
you are joining us today because we have a truly
Incredible one lined up for you. We really do.
It's a fascinating topic Yeah, if you are a lover
of UK travel deep history or honestly just someone
who appreciates Bizarre and surprising facts.
You're gonna love this We are exploring a tiny,
seemingly unassuming English settlement that
is actually a treasure trove of architectural
genius, brutal history, and linguistic quirks.
Which is saying a lot for a place so small. Right.
We are talking about Eli, Cambridgeshire. Yeah.
And we're going to be basing this off a really
comprehensive historical and geographical profile
of the city. Exactly. We're going to dig into
the sources to truly understand how this place
evolved from essentially a muddy hill and a swamp.
into a massive medieval powerhouse. So our mission
for this deep dive is to unpack how a tiny 85
-foot mountain of clay. And I use the word mountain
very loosely here. Very loosely. How this little
bump of clay surrounded entirely by treacherous
swamp managed to shape British history, define
an entire era of architecture, and even invent
a word that you probably use in your everyday
vocabulary. It is a wild ride. It really is.
And to fully grasp Ely's story, you have to start
by setting the scene geographically. You have
to completely erase the modern image of tidy
English farmlands. Which is what it looks like
today. Right. But picture a 23 square mile island
made of solid Kimmeridge clay. This is dense
marine clay laid down millions of years ago during
the Jurassic period. And before the massive draining
of the surrounding fens in the 17th century,
Ely was literally an island. And while, you know,
85 feet above sea level might not sound like
a soaring mountain peak to you. Sounds like a
mild hill. Yeah, exactly. But in the completely
flat, waterlogged fenland, it is the absolute
highest point of land. OK, let's unpack this.
Because the name Ely itself has this fantastic,
slightly gross, but mostly fascinating origin
story. The history books and place name scholars
have debated this for centuries. No, absolutely.
It's a huge point of debate. But the most famous
theory comes from the eighth century scholar
Bede. He wrote the name down as Elge. That's
right. And historians and linguists generally
agree that Elge translates to the district of
Eels or the Isle of Eels. Light of Eels. Which
makes perfect sense when you look at the environment
of the time. Before those fens were drained,
this area was a vast, almost impenetrable network
of freshwater marshes. reed beds, and these shallow
lakes called mirrors. Just totally waterlogged.
Yeah. It was an absolute paradise for eel fishing.
I mean, the eel economy wasn't just a side hustle
for the locals. It was the backbone of their
entire society. The numbers from the historical
records absolutely blew my mind. During the Domes
Day survey. Which was the ultimate 11th century
tax audit. Right. Ordered by William the Conqueror.
The local villages literally paid their annual
rents to the Abbott in eels. Not coins, eels.
It's hard to even picture. The village of Scuntney
was worth 24 ,000 eels. Littleport paid 17 ,000
eels. Can you imagine the sheer logistics of
counting and delivering 24 ,000 slippery, wriggling
fish to your landlord. It's a staggering image.
You just have carts overflowing with them. The
smell must have been unbelievable. Just a nightmare
for the tax collector. Absolutely. Now, it is
worth noting there are a couple of other historical
theories about the name and the sources. Some
scholars point to the old Celtic word helig.
Which means? It means willows, which also grew
abundantly in those marshy conditions. That's
a bit more poetic than eels. It is. And there's
another wonderful, highly romantic theory that
the name comes from the Latin word Elysium, meaning
paradise. Wow. Yeah, a medieval chronicler once
described the island as a place of great spiritual
importance, a veritable paradise surrounded by
dangerous, unnavigable swamps. I love the Elysium
theory, I really do. But I'm sticking with the
eels. It's just too good. But wait, speaking
of things found in the mud around Ely, I was
looking at the geographical data and it threw
in this amazing prehistoric curveball about the
Roswell pits. What exactly were they digging
up there? Yes. So in the 19th and 20th centuries,
locals were quarrying those Jurassic Kimmeridge
clays at the Roswell pits, mostly to make pottery
and to maintain the local riverbanks. This mundane,
everyday stuff. Exactly. But because that clay
is a prehistoric marine deposit, they didn't
just find standard rocks. They dug up massive
fossils of ammonites and incredibly an almost
complete specimen of a pliosaur. A pliosaur,
just a giant apex predator marine reptile from
the time of the dinosaurs just hanging out in
the Cambridger clay. Right under their feet.
And if we connect this to the bigger picture,
it all comes down to the idea that geography
dictates destiny. Because Ely sat on that elevated
solid marine clay, it wasn't waterlogged like
the rest of the fens. And the fens were massive,
right? Yeah, huge. To give you an idea of the
sheer scale of those waters, the fens were the
drainage basin for an area of 6 ,000 square miles.
It took in water from 13 different counts. That
is an unbelievable amount of water. It is. So
Elia was this secure, isolated haven rising out
of a massive, treacherous wetland. And when you
have an isolated, highly secure haven, people
are eventually going to build incredible things
on it. Which brings us to the year 673 AD. Queen
Ethel Dreda, the daughter of an East Anglian
king, founded an abbey right there on the top
of the island. Which had a pretty rough start.
Yeah, it was totally destroyed by Danish invaders
in the year 870. But it bounced back so hard
that by that 1086 doomsday survey we just talked
about with the eels, it was officially the second
richest monastery in all of England. Second richest
in the entire country. And that immense wealth
funded an absolute architectural marvel. In 1083,
the first Norman bishop, a man named Simeon,
started building Ely Cathedral. And it took forever.
Right. Oh, over a century. It officially opened
in 1189. But the most fascinating part of the
cathedral story actually happened out of sheer
disaster. A collapse. Yes. On February 22, 1322,
the original center of the church, the main nave
crossing it, completely collapse. Just a total
catastrophe. Decades of work, hundreds of tons
of stone just crashing to the floor. But the
guy in charge of the repairs, a sacrist named
Alan of Walsingham, he didn't just rebuild a
boring standard square tower to patch the hole.
I want to make sure we really capture how insane
his solution was. He decided to turn this gaping
ruined void into an enormous octagon. It was
a monumental triumph of medieval engineering,
especially when you consider they were working
without any modern machinery. To span that massive
octagonal space, Walsingham couldn't use stone.
Because it would just fall again. Exactly. It
would have been far too heavy for the swampy
foundations and collapsed again. So he used massive
oak trees. Oak trees. Huge ones. They constructed
a breathtaking wooden lantern that essentially
hangs in midair, suspended by a complex web of
timber framing. It supports something like 400
tons of wood. and lead glass above the center
of the church. That is just mind -blowing. 400
tons suspended in the air. The renowned architectural
historian Nicholas Pevsner described this octagon
as a delight for anyone who feels for space as
strongly as for construction. In fact, he called
it the greatest individual achievement of architectural
genius at Eli Cathedral. And because the cathedral
is built on that 85 -foot elevation of solid
clay, its profile is completely unique. It earned
the brilliant nickname the ship of the fins.
Which is such a great image. It really is. For
over 800 years, if you were wandering through
the flat misty marshes or rowing a boat through
the reeds, you would look up and see this massive,
majestic stone ship dominating the skyline for
miles in every direction. It served as a beacon.
But that towering presence also begs the question
of who actually held the power in this isolated,
wealthy fortress. The historical records detail
a unique legal arrangement called the Liberty
of Eli. The Liberty of Eli. Right. Because the
abbey and the island were so strategically and
economically vital, the bishops of Eli were granted
incredible sweeping powers. They operated what's
historically known as a county palatine. Which
basically means they weren't just spiritual leaders
giving sermons on Sunday. They were essentially
ruling monarchs of their own territory. Precisely.
For anyone not deeply steeped in medieval law,
a county palatine means the bishop had the same
absolute legal and judicial power in that specific
territory as the sovereign king or queen of England
did. That is wild. They collected their own taxes,
appointed their own judges, and essentially ran
a kingdom within a kingdom. Bishop kings. And
they held on to those massive powers for centuries.
The royal privilege of the liberty of Eli wasn't
fully extinguished until 1837. That's a very
long run. It is. But having absolute unchecked
power in an isolated swamp, that sounds like
a recipe for some pretty dark chapters. Here's
where it gets really interesting and a little
grim. It certainly does. The historical record
for Ely isn't just soaring architecture and wealthy,
benevolent bishops. It was a deeply turbulent
era of religious upheaval. During the Marian
persecutions in the mid 16th century, when Queen
Mary the First was aggressively enforcing strict
Catholic laws across England, Ely became a site
of severe religious executions. The records note
that in 1555, two Protestant men from Wisbeck,
William Woolsey and Robert Pygett were accused
of harassing regarding the sacrament of mass.
They were condemned by the bishop's chancellor
and burned at the stake. And this likely happened
right on Palace Green. Just a stone throw from
the front doors of that beautiful cathedral.
It is a stark, jarring contrast to the romantic
idea of Ely as an untouched Elysium. And the
intense religious and political tension continued
right into the next century with Ely's most famous
resident. Albert Cromwell. Exactly. He inherited
St. Mary's Vicarage from his uncle and lived
in Ely from 1636 to 1646. Cromwell is obviously
a massive Highly polarizing figure in British
history, leading the parliamentarian armies against
King Charles I. But during his decade in Ely,
he was living a surprisingly bureaucratic life.
He worked as a local tax collector and served
as a governor for a local charity. And amazingly,
that charity still exists today, providing grants
to local applicants. That's so cool. You can
actually still have ended his family home in
Ely, right? Yeah, it's currently the Tourist
Information Center. The irony of a fiercely Puritan
revolutionary's home becoming a place to pick
up postcards isn't lost on historians. Not at
all. But the dark side of Ely's autonomy didn't
stop with Cromwell's era. If we look at the 18th
century, we have the bishop's jail or jail. Oh,
this was horrifying. Because the bishop owned
the prison under those special Palatine powers,
oversight was basically nonexistent. When the
famous prison reformer John Howard visited, he
found conditions that sound like a horror movie.
The jailer didn't receive a regular state funded
salary, so he had to run the prison as cheaply
as humanly possible. To prevent escapes without
hiring guards, he used an incredibly cruel method.
It's awful. He would chain the prisoners down
flat on their backs to the stone floor, lay heavy
iron bars across their bodies and fasten iron
collars with sharp spikes around their necks
so they couldn't even move their heads. Just
absolutely brutal. It really paints a picture
of a city that had fallen incredibly far from
its medieval golden age. In fact, a major turning
point for Ely's downfall. was the dissolution
of the monasteries. When Henry VIII stepped in.
Right. When he decided to break from the Catholic
Church in 1539 and disband the monasteries to
take their immense wealth, Ely went into a massive
economic slump. The abbey's wealth was gutted,
the monks were dispersed, and the city lost its
primary economic engine. And the historical reviews
left by writers and journalists from the centuries
that followed are frankly hilarious in how incredibly
harsh they are. They did not mince words at all.
No, they didn't. In 1607, the surveyor William
Camden visited and just wrote that Ely was unwholesome
because of the fens. Basically calling the whole
city a stinky swamp. Exactly. And then Daniel
Defoe, the famous writer of Robinson Crusoe,
visited in 1722. He took one look at that magnificent
cathedral and joked that it tottered so much
in the wind and looked so close to decaying that
the only surprising thing about it would be that
it hadn't completely fallen down a hundred years
sooner. Such a burn. and William Cobbett in 1830
delivered perhaps the bluntest assessment of
all, calling it a miserable little town, poor
and mean, claiming that everything was in decline
specifically because the clergy were the masters.
Poor and mean. Poor and mean. You have to love
the brutal honesty of 19th century travel writers.
So what does this all mean? How does a miserable,
poor, and mean town bounce back from centuries
of decline? Well, it turns out Ely's is a city
of incredible cultural quirks that echo far beyond
its borders. Yeah, I saw a note in the historical
profile about local markets actually shaping
the English dictionary, specifically the word
tawdry. How does a medieval swamp market give
us a word we still use today? This is one of
my absolute favorite linguistic quirks. It all
ties back to Queen Ethel Dreta, the original
founder of the Abbey we mentioned earlier. She
was also known as St. Audrey. St. Audrey, okay.
Starting way back in 1189, Ely hosted a massive
seven -day annual event called St. Audrey's Fair.
Okay, so people are traveling from all over to
attend this fair. What are they buying? Among
other things, vendors sold these brightly colored,
very cheaply made silk lace necklaces. They called
them St. Audrey's Lace. Over time, as people
spoke quickly and accents shifted, the words
St. Audrey got mashed together. Like they do.
Right. St. Audrey became Sam Tawdry and eventually
just Tawdry, Tawdry Lace. That is amazing. Tawdry
is literally a linguistic corruption of St. Audrey.
And that is exactly where the modern English
dictionary gets the word meaning something cheap.
gaudy and low quality. A word we throw around
today was born from cheap souvenirs in a medieval
Fenland market. What's fascinating here is how
the extreme physical isolation of the island
bred these unique microcultures and highly specific
local trades. Another great example from the
historical profile is Babylon ware. Babylon where?
Yes. Ely was a major center for pottery production
for over 700 years, utilizing that same Kimmeridge
clay that held the Playasaur. But around the
year 1200, the routing of the River Graydouse
was changed, and it physically cut off a specific
group of potters from the main city center. They
were marooned in their own city. The river just
bypassed them. And by the 17th century, this
totally cut off area became known locally as
Babylon, and the distinctive pottery they made
Babylon where? That's brilliant, but their isolation
actually got even worse centuries later, right?
It did. In 1847, a new railway line was built
right through the area, cutting them off so thoroughly
that the residents could only cross into central
Ely by taking a boat. That railway actually highlights
a wonderful modern paradox about Ely. Today,
the parish population is just over 20 ,000 people,
making it one of the absolute smallest official
cities in all of England. And yet, its railway
station, originally built in 1845, turned this
tiny place into a massive, crucial transportation
hub. It punches far above its weight. Five major
railway lines converge at that small station
connecting London, Norwich, Peterborough, and
the North. It became the vital beating heart
of East Anglian transport. It's the little city
that could. And despite its small size, its pop
culture footprint is surprisingly huge. If you've
ever read the classic children's book Tom's Midnight
Garden, parts of it are directly set in Eli,
including those beautiful scenes of ice skating
on the frozen river all the way down to Cambridge.
Right. Or if you visit Palace Green today, you'll
find an actual Russian cannon captured during
the Crimean War in the 1850s, given to the people
of Ely by Queen Victoria herself. And the musical
connections are equally notable. For fans of
classic rock, the iconic album cover for Pink
Floyd's 1994 record, The Division Bell, was photographed
right there in Eli. Really? Yeah. The designer,
Storm Sorgerson, erected two massive facing metal
head sculptures in a waterlogged field with the
majestic ship of the Fens looming clearly in
the background. It perfectly captures that moody,
isolated Fenland atmosphere. Oh, and for sports
fans, the world famous Oxford -Cambrid boat race
is almost exclusively held on the River Thames
in London. But twice in its long history, it
had to be moved. Due to some pretty extreme circumstances.
Exactly. Once in 1944, because it was too dangerous
in London during World War II, and again in 2021
due to the COVID -19 pandemic. Both times. Where
did they go? They raced on the River Great House,
right on the outskirts of E. It is genuinely
incredible how many disparate threads of history,
engineering, and culture run through this one
small 85 foot hill. Which brings us back to you
listening. Why does ELE matter to your understanding
of the world? Ultimately, ELE is a masterclass
in how geography shapes human settlement, endurance,
and innovation. It really is. A simple bump of
dense marine clay rising out of a massive treacherous
swamp became a sanctuary from invaders. That
sanctuary birthed an architectural wonder that
pushed the absolute limits of medieval engineering.
And that wonder created an independent fiefdom
of bishop kings who wielded absolute power. And
the culture of that island anchored new language,
unique art, and eventually highly resilient modern
infrastructure. Ely proves that you do not need
to be a sprawling global metropolis. to leave
a massive permanent footprint on human history.
And that leads to a fascinating inflection point
in Ely's history. During the 17th century, a
wealthy nobleman named Francis Russell, the Earl
of Bedford, decided he wanted to conquer the
swamp. Big ambition. He financed the draining
of the fens, bringing in a brilliant Dutch engineer
named Cornelius Vermijden. Together, they systematically
drained 6 ,000 square miles of water, rerouting
rivers and turning the impenetrable swamps into
incredibly flat, fertile farms. land. Practically
overnight, Ely ceased to be an island. Which
leaves you with a final lingering thought for
the day. That massive Dutch engineering project
transformed the landscape. But it wasn't permanent
magic. It requires constant pumping to keep the
water at bay. It's an ongoing battle. Today,
with global climate change accelerating and sea
level steadily rising, low -lying areas like
the Fens are facing an existential threat. If
the rising tides eventually overwhelm those centuries
-old drainage systems, could the waters return?
Might Ely one day find itself cut off from the
world again, returning to its roots as an isolated
Isle of Eels, with its majestic ship of the Fens
once again accessible only by boat? Something
to mull over. Thanks for diving deep with us
today.