Understand
Built on a chalk hill, the city is thought to be named after the eels in the nearby River Ouse.The hill was once an inaccessible island in the middle of the Fens. It was also the last stronghold of Anglo-Saxon resistance, under Hereward the Wake who hid in the original cathedral until the Normans crossed the Fens in 1071.
Despite the transformation of the surrounding lanscape from watery marshland to fertile farmland, and the continuing growth of nearby Cambridge, Ely's character as a tiny, isolated city remains largely untouched, and the "Ship of the Fens" dominates the surrounding landscape in much the same way it has done for most of the past millenium
