Bottisham Second Millennium
Page 17 of 69
The Bottisham building was expensive. Stone was
imported to supplement the local clunch and the copious flint-
knapped bricks in the knave walls were uncommonly well
crafted. Only a few stones were used from the previous
Norman building. At Bottisham stone was used from the
Peterborough area (Clipsham, Barnack, Awalton) and Purbeck
marble. It would not be surprising if Elias, acting as patron, had
sent a mason on a study visit which would have been a
customary thing for a patron to do. Financial improvements
came with the easing of the wool trade, when Calais was
captured in 1346 by Edward III and, a few years later,
improvement to the wine trade by the activity of the Black
Prince at Bordeaux in 1355. The building of the new nave had
personal advantages for the worthies in enhancing their
reputations and, of greater importance at that time, to ease the
path of the patron’s soul to heaven. Thus in the early
fourteenth century a substantially different building was
constructed largely, it is said, with the wealth of Elias de
Beckingham. Much of his wealth came from family estates in
Nottingham
. As explained in the previous chapter, the grave-yard
around Holy Trinity church may have been short of space; it
was likely that the open-sided mason’s lodge, where the indoor
work was done, the banker upon which the stone was carved,
the saw-pit where the skilled Saxon carpenters worked, the
plumber’s trays for pouring lead and the lime pits could all
have been accommodated in the Camping Ground adjacent to
the chancel, now the playing field of the Bottisham Primary
school. The master mason was contractor, engineer and
designer of the building: he spent much of the summer lodging
in Bottisham and was likely to have known the master mason at
Ely. Local men may have been involved as freemasons and the
local, unskilled unemployed would have been used as