he Bishop] does not see it better ordered
and y buildings and streetes put in a better Condition. They are a slothful
people and for little but y takeing Care of their Grounds and Cattle w is of
vast advantage". Daniel Defoe, when writing in the Eastern Counties section
of
A tour thro' the whole island of
Great Britain (1722), went "to Ely, whose cathedral, standing in a
level flat country, is seen far and wide ... that some of it is so
antient, totters so much with every gust of wind, looks so like a decay, and
seems so near it, that when ever it does fall, all that 'tis likely will be
thought strange in it, will be, that it did not fall a hundred years
sooner". On his way to a Midlands tour, John Byng visited Ely on
5 July 1790 staying at the Lamb Inn. In his diary he writes that "the
town [Ely] is mean, to the extreme ... those withdrawn, their dependancies
must decay". Recording in his
Rural
Rides on 25 March 1830, William Cobbett reports that "Ely is
what one may call a miserable little town: very prettily situated, but poor and
mean. Everything seems to be on the decline, as, indeed, is the case
everywhere, where the clergy are the masters".
The Ely and Littleport riots occurred between 22 and 24 May 1816.
At the Special Commission assizes, held at Ely between 17 and 22 June
1816, twenty-four rioters were condemned. Nineteen had their sentences
variously commuted from penal transportation for life to twelve-months
imprisonment; the remaining five were executed on 28 June 1816.
Victorian and twentieth-century
regeneration
Ely Cathedral was "the first great cathedral to be thoroughly
restored". Work commenced in 1845 and was completed nearly
thirty years later; most of the work
