St. Ives (Huntingdonshire) 

The St Ives Town Web is a dynamic inter-active site full of local information and photographs. Local businesses, charities and other organisations can apply for membership that allows them to log-on and manage their own information, add meetings, add their own photographs and make entires in the towns Event Diary. Retailers can even upload details of their products or services and restuarants and takeaways can even add their complete menu - see site for further details.

Users of the St Ives Town Web can apply to add events that they are organising and later in the year they will also be able to uplaod images and news stories too.

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Historical notes about the Town of St. Ives (Huntingdonshire)

Every child knows it; it is the most famous town in any English nursery. We have all grown up with the man who, as he was going to St Ives, met a man with seven wives. It may be true or not, it may be this St Ives or the Cornish one, but what is true is that we did meet Oliver Cromwell in spirit and in bronze, and did see his old barn. We could with the old barn had looked a little more healthy with so great a name to honour it; we found it in need of repair and seemed to hear a whispered hope that the National Trust would come this way and look at it. It is said that Cromwell drilled his soldiers in the barn, and, as he mixed up religion with his farming, grew so poor that he had no farm left.

Here he stands in bronze on Market Hill, a country gentleman, a townsman of St Ives, his sword by his side and his Bible under his arm, pointing with his finger as if to say, Trust in God but keep your sword sharp. It is a splendid statue, which should, we understand, have been in Huntingdon but was not wanted by that town in those days. A thousand times he would walk over this wonderful old bridge with six fine arches, an 18^th century red brick parapet, and a chapel in the middle, an odd and charming little place. We get the best peep of St Ives as we stand on the banks of the river, but we may go inside the chapel and walk down the stone steps and come out on the balcony. The chapel itself is but an empty shell.

St Ives is the last town on the River Ouse before it enters the Fens; four wild swans greeted us as we arrived. Its great possession is its impressive church, a noble-looking structure with a soaring spire. We imagine it must be the only spire in England to have been brought down by an aeroplane. During the war a plane crashed into it; the spire fell through the roof of the aisle; the place rested on the pews; the airman was dead.

The church has an arch of the 13^th century, a chancel of the 14^th, and a 15^th century nave. The tower has a beautiful doorway with traceried spandrels and a carved frieze above it, and its vaulted roof has bosses carved with foliage and a pelican. Standing on brackets on the great pillars of the nave is a company of modern painted figures, among them the Madonna with a dragon on a chain and St George killing his dragon. The brackets on which they stand are old and gilded, and they have on them, carved by 15^th century artists, such things as a lion’s face, a dog biting its tail, an eagle, a ram, and an angel. On the wall of the south aisle is a beautiful double piscina about 700 years old, a round arch enclosing two pointed arches springing from detached columns with carved capitals.

The 16^th century oak pulpit rests on a graceful trumpet-like stem probably older still; the pulpit is panelled and enriched with arches and side pillars. The elegant font is 13^th century, with arches running into each other. The reredos, crowned with angels, has four gilded wooden figures of evangelists and bishops with Christ in the centre. There are one or two fragments of 15^th century glass, and two copies of Italian masters. The old chest dates from the beginning of the 18^th century. One of the books kept in it has Cromwell’s signature as churchwarden. One of the bells of St Ives says, Arise and go to your business, and from another ring out two lines:

Sometimes joy and sometimes sorrow,

Marriage today and death tomorrow,

and it is said that they led indeed to the death of their founder, for the people were dissatisfied with his bells and went to law with him. He won his case but the excitement was too much, and he fell dead in mounting his horse to ride home. That was in 1723.

A gravestone tells us that

A crumb of Jacob’s dust lies here below,

Richer than all the mines of Mexico

Who Jacob was we do not know, but St Ives has had more famous men. Here was born Robert Wilde, the shoemaker’s son who became a famous Puritan preacher; Thomas Ibbott, one of the early Quakers, who prophesised the Great Fire in the streets of London; Thomas James, headmaster of Rugby; and Sir Henry Lawrence, a Puritan statesman who was Cromwell’s landlord when he was a farmer at St Ives, and comes with high praise into one of Milton’s poems.

There are many quaint and narrow ways into St Ives, many fine peeps of the river, and an old house at each end of the bridge, a brick house of the 18^th century and a woolstapler’s house 300 years old. But it would be hard in this old town, with all its enchanting places, to find a place surpassing in attractiveness the museum on the river bank. We have seen few museums built so neatly in so fair a place as this presented to his native town by Mr Norris, the successful business man of Cirencester who loved his old town of St Ives and all his life collected treasure for it. Perhaps we may think its best possession is the peep from the window along the river to the spire of the old church, but in truth the new museum is filled with old entrancing things. There are old books bound at Little Gidding by Nicholas Ferrar’s community, little ships made by Napoleon’s prisoners from the bones they saved at their meals, and a domino set made by them in a box they made with straw. There is a leather water-bottle like Cromwell’s bottle at Hinchingbrooke, a letter written by Cromwell, and a portrait of him by a foreign artist who has painted him with a feather in his hat.

St Ive is little known in history, but 900 years ago a monk wrote down and improved local traditions concerning him. It is believed that he may have been a Persian bishop, who with companions made his way to this country by Rome and Gaul. So great was the reverence he inspired that the Gauls sought to keep him among them, but he pressed on to Britain. Here this poorly clad and ill-favoured newcomer began a campaign against idolatry, St Patrick being among his first converts. In those days St Ives was known as Slepe, and it was here that he carried on his missionary work for many years. Here he was buried.

The next we hear of him is 400 years later, when a labourer at the Plough discovered the saint’s grave in a field. That night St Ive appeared to another man in a vision, bidding him go to the Abbot of Ramsey and tell him to lift the body from the ground. The remains were duly removed to Ramsey with much ceremony, and a priory church was built on the spot where the body was found. Thus round this spot was founded the town of St Ives. The saint was popular, for, says the medieval chronicler, “there is not any in England more easy of prayer or more helpful that St Ive.”

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Historic images from around the Town of St. Ives

This small selection of historic images of St. Ives (Huntingdonshire) are from our British National Image Library. You may click on the thumbnail pictures to view larger versions and read what information we have regarding the image.

Cromwell Statue

All Saints Spire

St Ives Bridge 1930

Interior of Cromwell's Barn

The Waits 1910

There may be more historic images of St. Ives (Huntingdonshire) here.

Public Events in and around St. Ives

If you are organising an event in St. Ives (Huntingdonshire) then let us know about it and we will put a link to your event here and what's more we'll do it for FREE. The earlier you do it the better as not only will visitors to this St. Ives (Huntingdonshire) page see details of your event but so will visitors to our Huntingdonshire pages and really big events will be displayed at national level too. Follow the link immediately below

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Hotels, Apartments and B&B's in St. Ives

The visitor accommodation options for St. Ives listed below are supplied by LATE ROOMS and BOOKING.COM from a selection of over 16,000 hotels located throughout the UK.

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 Forty Winks Bed And Breakfast 

 

 Oliver's Lodge Hotel 

 

 Slepe Hall Hotel 

 

 The Golden Lion Hotel 

 

 Woodlands Court Apartment