Chapter I: Front Matter

THE CAMBRIDGE, ELY, AND
KING'S LYNN ROAD

WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

=The Brighton Road=: Old Times and New on a Classic Highway.

=The Portsmouth Road=, and its Tributaries: To-day and in Days of Old.

=The Dover Road=: Annals of an Ancient Turnpike.

=The Bath Road=: History, Fashion, and Frivolity on an Old Highway.

=The Exeter Road=: The Story of the West of England Highway.

=The Great North Road=: The Old Mail Road to Scotland. Two Vols.

=The Norwich Road=: An East Anglian Highway.

=The Holyhead Road=: The Mail-Coach Road to Dublin. Two Vols.

=Cycle Rides Round London.=

=The Oxford, Gloucester, and Milford Haven Road.= [_In the Press._

[_From a Print after J. Pollard._]]

=THE CAMBRIDGE
ELY AND KING'S
LYNN ROAD= THE
GREAT FENLAND HIGHWAY
BY CHARLES G. HARPER

AUTHOR OF "THE BRIGHTON ROAD" "THE PORTSMOUTH
ROAD" "THE DOVER ROAD" "THE BATH ROAD"
"THE EXETER ROAD" "THE GREAT NORTH ROAD"
"THE NORWICH ROAD" "THE HOLYHEAD ROAD" AND
"CYCLE RIDES ROUND LONDON"

_ILLUSTRATED BY THE AUTHOR, AND FROM OLD-TIME PRINTS
AND PICTURES_

LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL LTD. 1902.

(_All Rights Reserved_)

_IN the course of an eloquent passage in an eulogy of the old posting and coaching days, as opposed to railway times, Ruskin regretfully looks back upon "the happiness of the evening hours when, from the top of the last hill he had surmounted, the traveller beheld the quiet village where he was to rest, scattered among the meadows, beside its valley stream." It is a pretty, backward picture, viewed through the diminishing-glass of time, and possesses a certain specious attractiveness that cloaks much of the very real discomfort attending the old road-faring era. For not always did the traveller behold the quiet village under conditions so ideal. There were such things as tempests, keen frosts, and bitter winds to make his faring highly uncomfortable; to say little of the snowstorms that half smothered him and prevented his reaching his destination until his very vitals were almost frozen. Then there were_ MESSIEURS _the highwaymen, always to be reckoned with, and it cannot too strongly be insisted upon that until the nineteenth century had well dawned they were always to be confidently expected at the next lonely bend of the road. But, assuming good weather and a complete absence of those old pests of society, there can be no doubt that a journey down one of the old coaching highways must have been altogether delightful._

_In the old days of the road, the traveller saw his destination afar off, and--town or city or village--it disclosed itself by degrees to his appreciative or critical eyes. He saw it, seated sheltered in its vale, or, perched on its hilltop, the sport of the elements; and so came, with a continuous panorama of country in his mind's eye, to his inn. By rail the present-day traveller has many comforts denied to his grandfather, but there is no blinking the fact that he is conveyed very much in the manner of a parcel or a bale of goods, and is delivered at his journeys end oppressed with a sense of detachment never felt by one who travelled the road in days of old, or even by the cyclist in the present age. The railway traveller is set down out of the void in a strange place, many leagues from his base; the country between a blank and the place to which he has come an unknown quantity. In so travelling he has missed much._

_The old roads and their romance are the heritage of the modern tourist, by whatever method he likes to explore them. Countless generations of men have built up the highways, the cities, towns, villages and hamlets along their course, and have lived and loved, have laboured, fought and died through the centuries. Will you not halt awhile and listen to their story--fierce, pitiful, lovable, hateful, tender or terrible, just as you may hap upon it; flashing forth as changefully out of the past as do the rays from the facets of a diamond? A battle was fought here, an historic murder wrought there. This way came such an one to seek his fortune and find it; that way went another, to lose life and fortune both. In yon house was born the Man of his Age, for whom that age was ripe; on yonder hillock an olden malefactor, whom modern times would call a reformer, expiated the crime of being born too early--there is no cynic more consistent in his cynicism than Time._

_All these have lived and wrought and thought to this one unpremeditated end--that the tourist travels smoothly and safely along roads once rough and dangerous beyond belief, and that as he goes every place has a story to tell, for him to hear if he will. If he have no ears for such, so much the worse for him, and by so much the poorer his faring._

CHARLES G. HARPER.

PETERSHAM, SURREY,
_October 1902_.

SEPARATE PLATES

PAGE
THE "CAMBRIDGE TELEGRAPH" STARTING FROM THE WHITE
HORSE, FETTER LANE _Frontispiece_
_From a Print after J. Pollard._

THE "STAR OF CAMBRIDGE" STARTING FROM THE BELLE
SAUVAGE YARD, LUDGATE HILL, 1816 17
_From a Print after T. Young._

"KNEE-DEEP": THE "LYNN AND WELLS MAIL" IN A SNOWSTORM 23
_From a Print after C. Cooper Henderson._

A LONDON SUBURB IN 1816: TOTTENHAM 39
_From a Drawing by Rowlandson._

WALTHAM CROSS 61

THE "HULL MAIL" AT WALTHAM CROSS 65
_From a Print after J. Pollard._

CHESHUNT GREAT HOUSE 77

HODDESDON 83

WARE 89

BARLEY 105

FOWLMERE: A TYPICAL CAMBRIDGESHIRE VILLAGE 113

MELBOURN 129

TRUMPINGTON MILL 137

TRUMPINGTON STREET, CAMBRIDGE 145

HOBSON, THE CAMBRIDGE CARRIER 159

A WET DAY IN THE FENS 203

ALDRETH CAUSEWAY 219

A FENLAND ROAD: THE AKEMAN STREET NEAR STRETHAM
BRIDGE 245

STRETHAM BRIDGE 249

ELY CATHEDRAL 271
_After J. M. W. Turner, R.A._

ELY, FROM THE OUSE 277

JOSEPH BEETON IN THE CONDEMNED CELL 311

THE TOWN AND HARBOUR OF LYNN, FROM WEST LYNN 317

"CLIFTON'S HOUSE" 320

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE, LYNN 323

THE FERRY INN, LYNN 327

ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT

PAGE
VIGNETTE: EEL-SPEARING _Title-page_