18 Facts About Ely Cathedral

Ely Cathedral, formally the Cathedral Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, is an Anglican cathedral in the city of Ely, Cambridgeshire, England.

Ely Cathedral is a major tourist destination, receiving around 250,000 visitors per year, and sustains a daily pattern of morning and evening services.

Ely Cathedral Abbey was founded in 672, by Æthelthryth, daughter of the East Anglian King Anna.

The obscure Ermenilda of Ely Cathedral became an abbess sometime after her husband, Wulfhere of Mercia, died in 675.

Ely Cathedral is built from stone quarried from Barnack in Northamptonshire, with decorative elements carved from Purbeck Marble and local clunch.

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All this was exacerbated when, in 1071, Ely Cathedral became a focus of English resistance, through such people as Hereward the Wake, culminating in the Siege of Ely Cathedral, for which the abbey suffered substantial fines.

Ely Cathedral was the brother of Walkelin, the then Bishop of Winchester, and had himself been the prior at Winchester Cathedral when the rebuilding began there in 1079.

The years since the conquest had been turbulent for the Abbey, but the unlikely person of an aged Norman outsider effectively took sides with the Ely Cathedral monks, reversed the decline in the abbey's fortunes, and found the resources, administrative capacity, identity and purpose to begin a mighty new building.

Ely Cathedral illegally kept various posts unfilled, including that of Abbot of Ely, so he could appropriate the income.

Ely Cathedral was certainly among the people with whom the dean discussed the proposed works during a visit to London.

Ely Cathedral sought out original documents to provide definitive biographical lists of abbots, priors, deans and bishops, alongside a history of the abbey and cathedral, and was able to set out the architectural development of the building with detailed engravings and plans.

Ely Cathedral was then able to move on to re-roof the entire eastern arm and restore the eastern gable which had been pushed outwards some 2 feet.

Ely Cathedral was brought in, as a professional architect to bolster the enthusiastic amateur partnership of Peacock and Willis, initially in the re-working of the fourteenth-century choir stalls.

Ely Cathedral went on to work on a new carved wooden screen and brass gates, moved the high altar two bays westwards, and installed a lavishly carved and ornamented alabaster reredos carved by Rattee and Kett, a new font for the south-west transept, a new Organ case and later a new pulpit, replacing the neo-Norman pulpit designed by John Groves in 1803.

Ely Cathedral has been an important centre of Christian worship since the seventh century AD.

Ely Cathedral became one of the leading Benedictine houses in late Anglo-Saxon England.

In 1109 Ely attained cathedral status with the appointment of Hervey le Breton as bishop of the new diocese which was taken out of the very large diocese of Lincoln.

Octagon Singers and Ely Cathedral Imps are voluntary choirs of local adults and children respectively.