Little Gidding Cambridgeshire

 

Little Gidding has history running through its environs, it sits nestled down sleepy lanes in Huntingdonshire were an effort has to be made to seek out its secrets.

In 1625 Nicolas Ferrars, his mother and family moved from London to Little Gidding to live a more simpler life setting up a community of religious observance. They set too and restored the manor house and chapel on the site.

 

Charles I visited Little Gidding a number of times the last was in 2nd May 1646 when he sought refuge from Cromwell’s men after the battle of Naseby.

The Ferrars family lived on at Little Gidding until the mid-eighteen century but the practice of the religious community ended with the death of John, Nicolas Ferrars brother and his wife in 1657.

William Hopkinson a Stamford Solicitor bought the property in 1848 becoming Lord of the manor, he built the house (Ferrars House) which stands today and restored the chapel after years of neglect.

There has been a few prominent poets associated with Little Gidding, George Herbert who was a close friend of Nicolas Ferrars, Richard Crashaw styled “the divine″, was part of the Seventeenth-century Metaphysical School of poets and visited Little Gidding often and one of the greatest twentieth century poets T. S. Eliot who visited on the 25th May 1936 inspiring the final poem in the Four Quartets, Little Gidding.

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

T S Eliot. Four Quartets

from Little Gidding.

 


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