AMAZING extract from history kindly sent to me by Chatteris town councillor Chris Howes and shedding new light on the age-old debate of the Capital of the Fens.
Read it and you’ll discover King Charles I, in the 1630s, had a very clear idea of not simply where the Capital of the Fens should be, but where Verymuyden felt should be a palace at the centre of a new “continent of about 4,000 acres to the Commonwealth”.
OK, you’ve guessed... it was Manea but as the article in Portrait of the Fen Country reflected “what the people of Manea would have thought then, or now, of their quiet hamlet becoming a principality is not hard to imagine.
“Certainly it strains the most romantic of minds to see on those muddy acres of sugar beet a picture of ornate palaces and heraldry.
“It is not easy on a cold winter day, when the arctic wind moans down the lengthy power cables, to feel the glow of court ceremony and dress, or to hear at night royal revelries and shouts from the banquet halls.”
Cllr Howes said: “Am I the only person round here not to know that it was only Cromwell that prevented Manea from becoming England’s capital?
“I mentioned it to my son and he said ‘Duh, everyone knows that’.”
You did?
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