The Joy of the Snow: Week 2

Goudge's Home in Ely & the Drama of Dartmoor

The back of Goudge’s home near Ely Cathedral, which now holds the King’s Ely.

“No wonder we loved Ely so intensely; even my father gradually put down some roots in fen-land earth and began to forget about the heart left behind in Somerset.

And for me Ely was the home of all homes…”

💙 Elizabeth Goudge, The Joy of the Snow

Goudge at home

In 1911, Henry Goudge moved his family to the far away from Wells to the eastern country of Cambridgeshire. This watery county is in to the middle of the southern fen, and one of its highest point is Ely. It was known as the “Isle of Ely” until the 17th century, as it was truly an island surrounded by a large area of swampy fenland.¹

Goudge gives credit to her first “cities of bells” for her imagination: “For a writer imagination is certainly a blessing, and in addition to my Channel Island heritage I have not far to look for the cause of it. My first two homes were enough to stimulate any child's imagination.”

Elizabeth Goudge seemed to love Ely, in spite of some of its challenges, such as “dower” people, active ghosts, and freezing cold winters. She lived with her parents in Ely until 1923 when they all moved to Oxford.

The Goudge family lived in this older building beside the cathedral in Ely, which has be renamed many times through the centuries. Photo from Google.

Join us for some photos today of Ely, the cathedral, the fen, and my own photos of Dartmoor, to illustrate all of the places which Goudge mentions in chapters 5-7 of The Joy of the Snow…

Goudge’s home in Ely

“…How can one describe the place? Wells was fairyland, in my memory a diaphanous cathedral and a city so hidden from the world that it seemed to have dropped out of the world, but Ely had the hard strength of reality…”