Church Micro 10060...Cottenham Traditional Geocache
Church Micro 10060...Cottenham
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Church of All Saints, Cottenham
We have driven past this church many times and are always struck by the unusual tower.
Having done a bit of investigation we have found the following information on the church website
"Little is known of any predecessors of the present church. Tradition speaks of a Saxon church standing on the same site which was burnt down at the beginning of the tenth century. If this is true, rebuilding soon followed, for we know from a charter of King Edred (confirming Turketel’s benefaction to Crowland Abbey) that there was a church in Cottenham in 948. There must have been at least one other building between this church and the present one, for embedded in the outside of the south chancel wall may be seen small fragments of Norman masonry, one of them carrying a typical Norman zigzag moulding. The existing church is dedicated to All Saints; the earlier churches are said to have been dedicated to St Peter and St Paul and, though there is no record of the change, there may well be some truth in the tradition for in 1264 the rector was granted the right to hold a three-day fair at the festival of St Peter and St Paul.
The tower, standing about 100 feet high, was rebuilt in 1617-19 replacing a previous steeple destroyed in a gale. (The date may be seen carved on the outside wall of the tower, near the base, together with names and initials of persons connected with the rebuilding). The lower part survived the disaster being early fifteenth century work faced with ashlar masonry. The upper part is of local seventeenth century brick, part yellow and part pink; the brickwork was originally cased in stucco, but this gradually decayed and in 1928 it was removed and the brickwork repointed. Repointing of the brickwork on the tower was again carried out during restoration work in 1980. The pinnacles form a very striking feature of the tower. Pinnacles are, of course, common on towers of this date (for example they were added to the tower of Great St Mary’s in Cambridge in about 1600), but the bulbous, ogee shape of these is very remarkable; Cole, the eighteenth century antiquary, compared them to pineapples and said of the tower that it was "the admiration of all the country thereabout". It has been suggested that they show Dutch influence; Dutchmen were active in the seventeenth century in East Anglia where they played a prominent part in the draining of the fens, but this explanation seems unlikely. They are not unlike the pinnacles on the four corners of King’s College Chapel in Cambridge."
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Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Fznyy gurzrq pbagnvare ba tebhaq, ol oevpx ohggerff naq jbbqra cbfg.