Note 132 — Chapter VIII

The present parish church has a lofty Perpendicular nave, with fine flowing Decorated windows in the chancel and transept, and a really splendid tower, one hundred feet in height, crowned with a pinnacled parapet of flint-work. Shortly after the Norman Conquest, Soham became the objective of the first causeway to be made for civil purposes between the island of Ely and the mainland.[132] This was due to Bishop Hervey (the first to be Bishop of Ely as well as Abbot), and was felt to be so epoch-making a work that it was ascribed to supernatural influence. St. Edmund, the high-souled King of East Anglia (who, after his martyrdom by the Danes in 870, became the Patron Saint of the Eastern Counties), was said to have appeared in a dream to a man of Exning, bidding him suggest the design to the Bishop. The little island of Stuntney[133] formed a stepping-stone for this causeway, so that only three miles out of the six between Ely and Soham needed an actual embankment.