Cambourne
Cambourne is a new settlement and civil parish in Cambridgeshire, England, in the district of South Cambridgeshire. It lies on the A428 road between Cambridge, 9 miles to the east, St Neots and Bedford to the west, it comprises the three villages of Lower Cambourne and Upper Cambourne. The area is close to Bourn Airfield. Cambourne has been used by government departments and in school geography lessons, as it provides a useful case study of designing and building a settlement from scratch. Cambourne is the largest settlement in South Cambridgeshire, with a population of 8,186 in the 2011 UK census. Continued housebuilding and a high birthrate contribute to continued population increase, estimated at 10,076 in 2017; as part of plans to build thousands of new homes in the south-east of England, a new settlement on 400 hectares of former agricultural land, nine miles west of Cambridge, was considered in the late 1980s. In 1994, the S106 agreement from the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 was completed by the developers, the local authority, Cambridgeshire County Council and the developers together with the landholders.
The new settlement was to be constructed by three of Britain's leading housebuilders, Bovis Homes, Bryant Homes and Taylor Wimpey. Planning permission for the development at Monkfield Park was given in November 1996, construction began in June 1998, on what was farmland. In 2008, work began on building Upper Cambourne, with an original estimated completion date of 2012; the existing planning permission allowed 3,300 homes in the development. On 3 October 2011, planning permission was granted for a further 950 homes; this was set to take building work up to 2016, complete Upper Cambourne. In January 2017 outline planning consent was granted for a further 2,350 homes to the west of Lower Cambourne. Cambourne was going to be named Monkfield after the name of the original farm, commemorated by a Monkfield Lane in Great Cambourne and the village pub, The Monkfield Arms. However, the name of the community was created from the names of Cambridge, the nearest city, Bourn, a nearby village; the South Cambridgeshire Order 2004 created the new civil parish of Cambourne from 1 April 2004 and changed the boundaries of the Bourn parish.
Some facilities were built in Cambourne as part of the initial development. These included a Morrisons supermarket and petrol station, a medical practice, a dentist, a veterinary practice, allotments, a pub, The Monkfield Arms, owned by Pathfinder Pubs and a hotel, The Cambridge Belfry, run by QHotels; the High Street in Cambourne has been developed further with a fish and chip shop, Domino's pizza shop, several estate agents, a Ladbrokes bookmaker, a Cambridge Building Society branch, a dry cleaner, a coffee shop, a Chinese takeaway, an Indian restaurant and a Lloyds Pharmacy. An initial summary of future plans for the High Street development was presented by Newcrest Developments at a Parish Council planning meeting on 24 January 2012; this suggested that a three-stage process could begin at the end of 2014, with a couple of larger retail units being built beside the Morrisons roundabout. Stage 2 could see a row of smaller shops and a larger convenience store located on land opposite The Monkfield Arms.
The final stage could see a couple of medium-sized stores positioned on the barren land beside the medical practice. In April 2014, a planning application was submitted for a new 60-bedroom hotel and small shop unit on open land at the entrance to Great Cambourne. In 2008, the local Police force Cambridgeshire Constabulary announced the building of a new police station in the village, complementing the two other rural stations in Histon and Sawston, two outposts at Melbourn and Linton, in South Cambridgeshire, it was planned to be ready by December 2009 but, due to various delays, it opened in July 2010. Cambourne Police Station opened in September 2010. In May 2011, Cambourne Fire Station was completed on Back Lane, adjacent to the police station. There will however be no serving firefighters or fire engine until the Papworth Everard fire station is deemed no longer necessary. In June 2011, Cambridgeshire Fire and Rescue Service district staff for Cambridge City and South Cambridgeshire moved into Cambourne Fire Station while the Parkside Fire Station in Cambridge is being redeveloped.
In March 2012, Cambridgeshire Fire and Rescue Service relocated their High Volume Pump and Hose Layer Unit from Huntingdon to the Cambourne Fire Station. Retained firefighters from the nearby Papworth and Gamlingay stations are trained to use these vehicles as part of the UK's New Dimension programme. Cambourne Business Park is located to the north east of Great Cambourne and is the home of South Cambridgeshire District Council, which relocated there in 2004. Environmental facilities include an educational eco park, home to a variety of plant and mammal life, a Country Park covering 80 acres opened in 2001, situated between Lower Cambourne and Great Cambourne. Various sports clubs are located in the villages, including football, tennis and cricket clubs with their own pitches. Cambourne Cricket Club was formed in 2003 by Jason Clatworthy and Paul Cooke, but did not begin playing competitive cricket until 2006 due to delays to the delivery and maturity of playing facilities; the club has enjoyed a sustained period of growth since its inception, culminating in the award of ECB Clubmark status in 2008, which demonstrates proven higher levels of organisation, management and safety.
The club has three adult teams playing in the Saturday CCA leagues and three Colts teams playing in the CY
Royston, Hertfordshire
Royston is a town and civil parish in the District of North Hertfordshire and county of Hertfordshire in England. It is situated on the Greenwich Meridian, which brushes the town's eastern boundary, at the northernmost apex of the county on the same latitude as towns such as Milton Keynes and Ipswich, it is about 43 miles north of central London in a rural area. Before the boundary changes of the 1890s, the boundary between Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire ran east–west through the centre of town along the middle of Melbourn Street; the town has a population of 15,781. The town grew at the crossing of Ermine Street and the Icknield Way; the roads are sometimes called military roads as they were prepared or improved by Roman soldiers to facilitate access to the hinterland of Roman Britain. The modern equivalent to Icknield Way is the A505; the A10 follows the alignment of Ermine Street south of the town, but diverts before it reaches the crossroads. The A1198, known as the Old North Road follows the alignment of Ermine Street northwards.
Barrows on Goffers Knoll and Therfield Heath are evidence of prehistoric settlement. A cross, variously known as Royse's, Rohesia's, or Roisia's Cross, was erected by the crossroads at an unknown date, it gave the settlement its earliest name of Roisia's Cross. By the 14th century this had become Roiston or Royston. A large boulder of red millstone grit, bearing a square socket, supposed to be the base of the cross, has been placed by the cross roads at the northern end of High Street; until 1540 Royston was divided between five parishes: Barkway and Therfield in Hertfordshire and Melbourn and Kneesworth in Cambridgeshire. In that year it became a separate ecclesiastical parish in each county. Ralph de Rochester founded the Augustinian priory which originated as a chapel for three canons and was expanded to seven or more regular canons. Royston had free chapels, as well as the monastery; the hospital of St John and St Thomas was founded for lepers in 1224 by Richard Argentine, Sheriff of Cambridgeshire on the south side of Baldock Street.
The hospital of St Nicholas was situated in the Cambridgeshire side of Royston. It was founded in about 1200 by Amphelise, a daughter of Richard the Chamberlain. In 1213 King John granted a fair to celebrate the feast of St Nicholas; the patronage of the hospital descended to Sir Giles Argentine, lord of the manor of Melbourn, who held the patronage of the other hospital. In the 14th century, St Nicholas' Hospital was put under the same jurisdiction as that of St John and St Thomas; the whole was suppressed in 1547. The town having lost its monastic charter, the priory site was obtained by Robert Chester, a gentleman of the bedchamber to Henry VIII, who set up a market. Much of the town was given over to inns catering for travellers travelling between London and York. On 29 April 1603 James VI of Scotland travelling to London to be crowned King James I of England, paused overnight at the Chester residence, his grandmother, Mary of Guise, had stayed there in 1551. Attracted by the suitability of the area for hunting, James hired the house for a year.
In 1604 he decided to create a hunting lodge in the town by demolishing the "Cock" and "Greyhound" inns. The king's lodgings were completed in 1607, were described in 1652 as "all of brick well-tiled double-built, in length 78 ft. breadth 43 ft. height from eaves to ground 24 ft. thickness of walls 24 inches." The buildings were never extensive enough to cater for a full court, but provided a suitable spot for hunting, near enough to London for convenience and sufficiently far away to deter intrusion. The king created a strict prohibition on anyone from taking game from within 16 miles of Royston, an elaborate infrastructure was established to support him in the pursuit of his sport, he returned every year to hunt and shoot. Queen Anne and Prince Henry visited the town once, in 1611–1612. Next year the queen opposed the marriage of her daughter, Princess Elizabeth to Frederick V, Elector Palatine, but the king came to Royston with the Earl of Rochester to negotiate the dowry, signed there. Following the marriage, celebrated on St Valentine's Day 1613, the king, Prince Charles and Frederick came to stay at Royston.
James' successor, Charles I visited Royston less than his father. In June 1647 he was brought through the town as a prisoner of the Parliamentary army. After Charles's death the royal buildings fell into disrepair; the Crown sold its last interests in the town in 1866. William Cobbett mentions the town in his Rural Rides: After you quit Ware...the land grows by degrees poorer. It is a common market town. Not mean, but having nothing of beauty about it... Royston had a bank from about 1806 to 1896, it was founded by Edward King Fordham and others, the business was run by the influential local Fordham family. Royston has three tiers of local government at parish and county level. Royston Town Council was formed in 1974 as the successor to Royston Urban District Council; the council consists of fifteen councillors headed by a town mayor The councillors are elected for three wards named Heath and Palace. Among the town council's responsibilities are allotmen
Arm Holdings
Arm Holdings is a British multinational semiconductor and software design company, owned by SoftBank Group and its Vision Fund. With its headquarters in Cambridgeshire, within the United Kingdom, its primary business is in the design of ARM processors, although it designs software development tools under the DS-5, RealView and Keil brands, as well as systems and platforms, system-on-a-chip infrastructure and software; as a "Holding" company, it holds shares of other companies. It is considered to be market dominant for processors in mobile phones and tablet computers; the company is one of the best-known "Silicon Fen" companies. Processors based on designs licensed from Arm, or designed by licensees of one of the Arm instruction set architectures, are used in all classes of computing devices. Examples of those processors range from the world's smallest computer to the processors in some supercomputers on the TOP500 list. Processors designed by Arm or by Arm licensees are used as microcontrollers in embedded systems, including real-time safety systems, biometrics systems, smart TVs, all modern smartwatches, are used as general-purpose processors in smartphones, laptops, desktops and supercomputers/HPC, e.g. a CPU "option" in Cray's supercomputers.
Arm's Mali line of graphics processing units are used in laptops, in over 50% of Android tablets by market share, some versions of Samsung's smartphones and smartwatches. It is the third most popular GPU in mobile devices. Systems, including iPhone smartphones include many chips, from many different providers, that include one or more licensed Arm cores, in addition to those in the main Arm-based processor. Arm's core designs are used in chips that support many common network related technologies in smartphones: Bluetooth, WiFi and broadband, in addition to corresponding equipment such as Bluetooth headsets, 802.11ac routers, network providers' cellular LTE. Arm's main CPU competitors in servers include Intel and AMD. In mobile applications, Intel's x86 Atom is a competitor. AMD sells Arm-based chips as well as x86. Arm's main GPU competitors include mobile GPUs from Imagination Technologies and Nvidia and Intel. Despite competing within GPUs, Qualcomm and Nvidia have combined their GPUs with an Arm licensed CPU.
Arm was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. It had a secondary listing on NASDAQ; however Japanese telecommunications company SoftBank Group made an agreed offer for Arm on 18 July 2016, subject to approval by Arm's shareholders, valuing the company at £23.4 billion. The transaction was completed on 5 September 2016; the acronym ARM was first used in 1983 and stood for "Acorn RISC Machine". Acorn Computers' first RISC processor was used in the original Acorn Archimedes and was one of the first RISC processors used in small computers. However, when the company was incorporated in 1990, the acronym was changed to "Advanced RISC Machines", in light of the company's name "Advanced RISC Machines Ltd." - and according to an interview with Steve Furber the name change was at the behest of Apple who did not wish to have the name of a former competitor - namely Acorn - in the name of the company. At the time of the IPO in 1998, the company name was changed to "ARM Holdings" just called ARM like the processors.
On 1 August 2017, the logo were changed. The logo is now all lowercase and other uses of'ARM' are in sentence case except where the whole sentence is upper case, so, for instance, it is now'Arm Holdings'; the company was founded in November 1990 as Advanced RISC Machines Ltd and structured as a joint venture between Acorn Computers, Apple Computer and VLSI Technology. The new company intended to further the development of the Acorn RISC Machine processor, used in the Acorn Archimedes and had been selected by Apple for their Newton project, its first profitable year was 1993. The company's Silicon Valley and Tokyo offices were opened in 1994. Arm invested in Palmchip Corporation in 1997 to provide system on chip platforms and to enter into the disk drive market. In 1998, the company changed its name from Advanced RISC Machines Ltd to ARM Ltd; the company was first listed on the London Stock Exchange and NASDAQ in 1998 and by February 1999, Apple's shareholding had fallen to 14.8%. In 2010, Arm joined with IBM, Texas Instruments, Samsung, ST-Ericsson and Freescale Semiconductor in forming a non-profit open source engineering company, Linaro.
Micrologic Solutions, a software consulting company based in Cambridge Allant Software, a developer of debugging software Infinite Designs, a design company based in Sheffield EuroMIPS a smart card design house in Sophia Antipolis, France The engineering team of Noral Micrologics, a debug hardware and software company based in Blackburn, England Adelante Technologies of Belgium, creating its OptimoDE data engines business, a form of lightweight DSP engine Axys Design Automation, a developer of ESL design tools and Artisan Components, a designer of Physical IP, the building blocks of integrated circuits KEIL Software, a leading developer of software development tools for the microcontroller market, including 8051 and C16x platforms. Arm acquired the engineering team of PowerEscape. Falanx, a developer of 3D graphics accelerators a
Telephone
A telephone, or phone, is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be heard directly. A telephone converts sound and most efficiently the human voice, into electronic signals that are transmitted via cables and other communication channels to another telephone which reproduces the sound to the receiving user. In 1876, Scottish emigrant Alexander Graham Bell was the first to be granted a United States patent for a device that produced intelligible replication of the human voice; this instrument was further developed by many others. The telephone was the first device in history that enabled people to talk directly with each other across large distances. Telephones became indispensable to businesses and households and are today some of the most used small appliances; the essential elements of a telephone are a microphone to speak into and an earphone which reproduces the voice in a distant location. In addition, most telephones contain a ringer to announce an incoming telephone call, a dial or keypad to enter a telephone number when initiating a call to another telephone.
The receiver and transmitter are built into a handset, held up to the ear and mouth during conversation. The dial may be located either on a base unit to which the handset is connected; the transmitter converts the sound waves to electrical signals which are sent through a telephone network to the receiving telephone, which converts the signals into audible sound in the receiver or sometimes a loudspeaker. Telephones are duplex devices; the first telephones were directly connected to each other from one customer's office or residence to another customer's location. Being impractical beyond just a few customers, these systems were replaced by manually operated centrally located switchboards; these exchanges were soon connected together forming an automated, worldwide public switched telephone network. For greater mobility, various radio systems were developed for transmission between mobile stations on ships and automobiles in the mid-20th century. Hand-held mobile phones were introduced for personal service starting in 1973.
In decades their analog cellular system evolved into digital networks with greater capability and lower cost. Convergence has given most modern cell phones capabilities far beyond simple voice conversation, they may be able to record spoken messages and receive text messages and display photographs or video, play music or games, surf the Internet, do road navigation or immerse the user in virtual reality. Since 1999, the trend for mobile phones is smartphones that integrate all mobile communication and computing needs. A traditional landline telephone system known as plain old telephone service carries both control and audio signals on the same twisted pair of insulated wires, the telephone line; the control and signaling equipment consists of three components, the ringer, the hookswitch, a dial. The ringer, or beeper, light or other device, alerts the user to incoming calls; the hookswitch signals to the central office that the user has picked up the handset to either answer a call or initiate a call.
A dial, if present, is used by the subscriber to transmit a telephone number to the central office when initiating a call. Until the 1960s dials used exclusively the rotary technology, replaced by dual-tone multi-frequency signaling with pushbutton telephones. A major expense of wire-line telephone service is the outside wire plant. Telephones transmit both the outgoing speech signals on a single pair of wires. A twisted pair line rejects electromagnetic interference and crosstalk better than a single wire or an untwisted pair; the strong outgoing speech signal from the microphone does not overpower the weaker incoming speaker signal with sidetone because a hybrid coil and other components compensate the imbalance. The junction box arrests lightning and adjusts the line's resistance to maximize the signal power for the line length. Telephones have similar adjustments for inside line lengths; the line voltages are negative compared to earth. Negative voltage attracts positive metal ions toward the wires.
The landline telephone contains a switchhook and an alerting device a ringer, that remains connected to the phone line whenever the phone is "on hook", other components which are connected when the phone is "off hook". The off-hook components include a transmitter, a receiver, other circuits for dialing and amplification. A calling party wishing to speak to another party will pick up the telephone's handset, thereby operating a lever which closes the switchhook, which powers the telephone by connecting the transmitter and related audio components to the line; the off-hook circuitry has a low resistance which causes a direct current, which comes down the line from the telephone exchange. The exchange detects this current, attaches a digit receiver circuit to the line, sends a dial tone to indicate readiness. On a modern push-button telephone, the caller presses the number keys to send the telephone number of the called party; the keys control a tone generator circuit. A rotary-dial telephone uses pulse
Gordon Brown
James Gordon Brown is a British politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party from 2007 to 2010. He served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1997 to 2007. Brown was a Member of Parliament from 1983 to 2015, first for Dunfermline East and for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath. A doctoral graduate of the University of Edinburgh, Brown spent his early career working as both a lecturer at a further education college and a television journalist, he entered Parliament in 1983 as the MP for Dunfermline East. He joined the Shadow Cabinet in 1989 as Shadow Secretary of State for Trade, was promoted to become Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1992. After Labour's victory in 1997, he was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, becoming the longest-serving holder of that office in modern history. Brown's time as Chancellor was marked by major reform of Britain's monetary and fiscal policy architecture, transferring interest rate setting powers to the Bank of England, by a wide extension of the powers of the Treasury to cover much domestic policy and by transferring responsibility for banking supervision to the Financial Services Authority.
Controversial moves included the abolition of advance corporation tax relief in his first budget, the removal in his final budget of the 10% "starting rate" of personal income tax which he had introduced in 1999. In 2007, Tony Blair resigned as Prime Minister and Labour Leader and Brown was chosen to replace him in an uncontested election. After initial rises in opinion polls following Brown becoming Prime Minister, Labour's popularity declined with the onset of a recession in 2008, leading to poor results in the local and European elections in 2009. A year Labour lost 91 seats in the House of Commons at the 2010 general election, the party's biggest loss of seats in a single general election since 1931, making the Conservatives the largest party in a hung parliament. Brown remained in office as Labour negotiated to form a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats. On 10 May 2010, Brown announced he would stand down as leader of the Labour Party, instructed the party to put into motion the processes to elect a new leader.
Labour's attempts to retain power failed and on 11 May, he resigned as Prime Minister and Leader of the Labour Party. He was succeeded as Prime Minister by David Cameron, as Leader of the Labour Party by Ed Miliband. Brown played a prominent role in the campaign surrounding the Scottish independence referendum of 2014, galvanising support behind maintaining the union. Brown was born at the Orchard Maternity Nursing Home in Giffnock, Scotland, his father was John Ebenezer Brown, a minister of the Church of Scotland and a strong influence on Brown. His mother was Jessie Elizabeth "Bunty" Brown, she was the daughter of a timber merchant. The family moved to Kirkcaldy – the largest town in Fife, across the Firth of Forth from Edinburgh – when Gordon was three. Brown was brought up there with younger brother Andrew Brown in a manse. Brown was educated first at Kirkcaldy West Primary School where he was selected for an experimental fast stream education programme, which took him two years early to Kirkcaldy High School for an academic hothouse education taught in separate classes.
At age sixteen he wrote that he resented this "ludicrous" experiment on young lives. He was accepted by the University of Edinburgh to study history at the same early age of sixteen. During an end-of-term rugby union match at his old school, he received a kick to the head and suffered a retinal detachment; this left him blind in his left eye, despite treatment including several operations and weeks spent lying in a darkened room. At Edinburgh, while playing tennis, he noticed the same symptoms in his right eye. Brown underwent experimental surgery at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and his right eye was saved by a young eye surgeon, Hector Chawla. Brown graduated from Edinburgh with a First-Class Honours MA degree in history in 1972, stayed on to obtain his PhD in history, titled The Labour Party and Political Change in Scotland 1918–29. In his youth at the University of Edinburgh, Brown was involved in a romantic relationship with Margarita, Crown Princess of Romania. Margarita said about it: "It was a solid and romantic story.
I never stopped loving him but one day it didn't seem right any more, it was politics, politics, I needed nurturing." An unnamed friend of those years is quoted by Paul Routledge in his biography of Brown as recalling: "She was sweet and gentle and cut out to make somebody a good wife. She was bright, though not like him, but they seemed made for each other."In 1972, while still a student, Brown was elected Rector of the University of Edinburgh, the convener of the University Court. He served as Rector until 1975, edited the document The Red Paper on Scotland. From 1976 to 1980 Brown was employed as a lecturer in politics at Glasgow College of Technology, he worked as a tutor for the Open University. In the 1979 general election, Brown stood for the Edinburgh South constituency, losing to the Conservative candidate, Michael Ancram. From 1980, he worked as a journalist at Scottish Television serving as current affairs editor until his election to Parliament in 1983. Brown was elected to Parliament on his second attempt as a Labour MP for Dunfermline East in the 1983 general election.
His first Westminster office mate was a newly elected MP from the Sedgefield constituency, Tony Blair. Brown became an opposition spokesman on Trade and Industry in 1985. In
CSR (company)
CSR plc was a multinational fabless semiconductor company headquartered in Cambridge, United Kingdom. Its main products were connectivity, audio and location chips. CSR was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index until it was acquired by Qualcomm in August 2015. Under Qualcomm's ownership, the company was renamed Ltd.. The company was founded in 1998 and split away from Cambridge Consultants as Cambridge Silicon Radio or CSR in 1999; the founding directors, who were all at Cambridge Consultants at the time were Phil O'Donovan, James Collier and Glenn Collinson. It was first listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2004. In 2005 the company acquired Clarity Technologies, a leading clear voice capture business and UbiNetics, a 3G wireless technology company. In 2007, CSR acquired Nordnav, a Swedish-based GPS software company, CPS, a Cambridge-based GPS software company producing Enhanced GPS in partnership with Motorola. In February 2009, CSR announced it was merging with SiRF, the biggest global supplier of GPS chips, in a share deal worth $136 million.
In May 2012, CSR acquired Direct Digital Feedback Amplifier technology, a proprietary scalable digital Class-D audio amplifier technology. As part of the deal Samsung acquired a stake of 4.9% in CSR. In June 2014, CSR acquired the people and technology of Reciva, a networked audio streaming platform, for US$5 million and in October 2014, the acquisition of CSR by Qualcomm for $2.5 billion was agreed. The transaction was completed in August 2015. CSR’s products included platform solutions for Bluetooth, GPS, FM broadcasting, Wi-Fi, imaging, ARM processors. After the Zoran merger, CSR made digital imaging products based on the MIPS architecture. CSR had 27 offices in 13 countries: Churchill House, Cambridge Business Park, Cambridge, UK Trinity House, Cambridge Business Park, Cambridge, UK Selwyn House, Cambridge Business Park, Cambridge, UK Unit 400, Cambridge Science Park, Cambridge, UK Part of St. John's House, St. John's Innovation Park, Cambridge, UK Quay West, England, UK Bristol and Bath Science Park, England, UK Legacy Building, Catalyst Inc, Northern Ireland, UK Ingolstadt, Germany Freiburg, Germany Haifa, Israel Auburn Hills, United States Phoenix, United States Sunnyvale, United States Santa Ana, United States Burlington, United States Plano, United States Beijing, China Shanghai, China Shenzhen, China Prestige Technology Park II, India Noida, India Tokyo, Japan Seongnam, Gyunggi-Do, Korea Gumi, Korea United Square, Singapore Taipei, Taiwan Zhongli, Taiwan Lund, Ideon Science Park, Sweden Official website
Ely, Cambridgeshire
Ely is a cathedral city in Cambridgeshire, about 14 miles north-northeast of Cambridge and about 80 miles by road from London. Æthelthryth founded an abbey at Ely in 673. Construction of the cathedral was started in 1083 by Simeon. Alan of Walsingham's octagon, built over Ely's nave crossing between 1322 and 1328, is the "greatest individual achievement of architectural genius at Ely Cathedral", according to architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner. Building continued until the dissolution of the abbey in 1539 during the Reformation; the cathedral was sympathetically restored between 1845 and 1870 by the architect George Gilbert Scott. As the seat of a diocese, Ely has long been considered a city. Ely is built on a 23-square-mile Kimmeridge Clay island which, at 85 feet, is the highest land in the Fens. Major rivers including the Witham, Welland and Great Ouse feed into the Fens and, until draining commenced in the 17th century, formed freshwater marshes and meres within which peat was laid down.
There are two Sites of Special Scientific Interest in the city: a former Kimmeridge Clay quarry, one of the United Kingdom's best remaining examples of medieval ridge and furrow agriculture. The economy of the region is agricultural. Before the Fens were drained, the harvesting of osier and sedge and the extraction of peat were important activities, as were eel fishing—from which the settlement's name may have been derived—and wildfowling; the city had been the centre of local pottery production for more than 700 years, including pottery known as Babylon ware. A Roman road, Akeman Street, passes through the city. Little direct evidence of Roman occupation in Ely exists, although there are nearby Roman settlements such as those at Little Thetford and Stretham. A coach route, known to have existed in 1753 between Ely and Cambridge, was improved in 1769 as a turnpike; the present-day A10 follows this route. Ely railway station, built in 1845, is on the Fen Line and is now a railway hub, with lines north to King's Lynn, northwest to Peterborough, east to Norwich, southeast to Ipswich and south to Cambridge and London.
The King's School is a coeducational boarding school, granted a royal charter in 1541 by Henry VIII. Henry I granted the first annual Fair, Saint Audrey's seven-day event, to the abbot and convent on 10 October 1189. Present-day annual events include the Eel Festival in May, established in 2004, a fireworks display in Ely Park, first staged in 1974; the city of Ely has been twinned with Denmark's oldest town, since 1956. Ely City Football Club was formed in 1885. Roswell Pits are a palaeontologically significant Site of Special Scientific Interest one mile northeast of the city; the Jurassic Kimmeridge Clays were quarried in the 19th and 20th centuries for the production of pottery and for maintenance of river embankments. Many specimens of ammonites and bivalves were found during quarrying, in addition to an complete specimen of a pliosaur. There is some scattered evidence of Late Mesolithic to Bronze Age activity in Ely such as Neolithic flint tools, a Bronze Age axe and spearhead. There is denser Iron Age and Roman activity with some evidence of at least seasonal occupation.
For example, a possible farmstead, of the late Iron Age to early Roman period, was discovered at West Fen Road and some Roman pottery was found close to the east end of the cathedral on The Paddock. There was a Roman settlement, including a tile kiln built over an earlier Iron Age settlement, in Little Thetford, three miles to the south; the origin and meaning of Ely's name have always been regarded as obscure by place-name scholars, are still disputed. The earliest record of the name is in the Latin text of Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, where Bede wrote Elge; this is not a Latin name, subsequent Latin texts nearly all used the forms Elia, Eli, or Heli with inorganic H-. In Old English charters, in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the spelling is Elig. Skeat derived the name Ely from what he called "O Northumbrian" ēlġē, meaning "district of eels"; this uses a hypothetical word *ġē, not recorded in isolation but thought by some to be related to the modern German word Gau, meaning "district".
The theory is that the name developed a vowel to become ēliġē, was afterwards re-interpreted to mean "eel island". This is the explanation accepted by Reaney Ekwall and Watts, but difficulties remain. Bailey, in his discussion of ġē names, has pointed out that Ely would be anomalous if from ēlġē "eel district", being remote from the areas where possible examples of ġē names occur, moreover, there is no parallel for the use of a fish-name in compounds with ġē. More the usual English spelling remains Elig in the dative case used after many prepositions, where Elige would be expected if the second element were īġ "island"; this is in conflict with all the other island names. The city's origins lay in the foundation of an abbey in 673, one mile to the north of the village of Cratendune on the Isle of Ely, under the protection of Saint Etheldreda, daughter of King Anna; this first abbey was destroyed in 870 by Danish invaders and rededicated to Etheldr
