KING’S Ely Acremont pupils took a step back in time – fourteen hundred years to be precise – to learn more about the history of Ely.

The event on June 6th saw Year 1 pupils starting off in the Chapel of St Etheldreda, behind Ely Cathedral’s altar, where they acted out the story of the Saxon princess, who lived an exciting and sometimes dangerous life before founding the first monastery on the site of the cathedral. Dr Lane also joined the children and showed them St Etheldreda’s shrine.

After that, the children climbed the stone spiral staircase up to Prior Crauden’s Chapel to look at the colourful stained glass window and the medieval tiled floor. The children discovered that that the Porta used to be a prison, and that there had been a castle on the top of Cherry Hill!

After a drink and a snack in the Monastic Barn, the children walked through the Old Palace gardens to see the oldest London plane tree in England. They had a look at the canon given by Queen Victoria to Ely in the 1860s, and Oliver Cromwell House. They then sat on Palace Green and sketched the cathedral and the Old Palace!

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