History of St Mary's Churchyard, Ely

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Bishop Eustace of Ely built St Mary’s in about 1200. There had been a parish church there even before that. For a while the priest in charge was called Baldwin. In those days the people in charge of Ely also used the Chapel of Holy Cross in the Cathedral.

Most of the church was built at this time, although the tower and spire were added a century later. Then came the porch.

The church saw Oliver Cromwell’s stay in Ely from 1636 for about 10 years. He was a tax collector and lived in the building next to the church. This became a pub (The Cromwell Arms) in the last century and then the vicarage (with added black and white stripes) in 1905. Now it is the local Tourist Information Office.

In 1816 the vicar of St Mary’s was the prison chaplain and so took the confessions of the Littleport and Ely Rioters, who were hanged that year. He made sure they were buried in the churchyard, even though that was unusual (there was much local sympathy for them).

In the late 1870’s the inside of the church was renovated, the woodwork replaced (including pews and pulpit) and the gallery removed.

A new six-sided parish room was added in 1985. The graveyard was redesigned and the gravestones moved to the back of the churchyard. The pulpit was moved in the 1870’s and its base still stands opposite. The lectern is nearby and the font not near the porch but at the West end. The organ would have once been pumped up with air with a handle during the singing of the hymns. It was originally in Holy Trinity Church in Paddington, London. The stained-glass windows commemorate Saints George and Michael, Saints Etheldreda and Edmund and King Bryhtnoth of East Anglia, who was killed by the Vikings at the Battle of Maldon in 991 AD and who was rowed, headless, by monks up to Ely to be buried there.

Inside the church are lists of people including the vicars since the time of Oliver Cromwell and those people from Ely who were killed in the two World Wars.

There is a tablet on the South West buttress on the outside of the tower, warning others of the fate of the 1816 rioters.

Here lye Interred in one grave 

                            the bodies of

                             William Beamiss

                             George Crow

                              John Dennis

                              Isaac Harley

                             and

Thomas South

Who were all executed in Ely on the 28^th

Day of June 1816, having been convicted

at the Special Assizes holden there of

divers Robberies during the Riots at Ely

and Littleport in the month of May in that year

May their awful Fate

Be a warning to others