Across the fields from the A1, nine miles from Huntingdon, is the isolated Church of St John the Evangelist, Little Gidding. TS Eliot visited it in 1936 and named the last poem in his Four Quartets after the church.
A tiny place, capable of holding only 30 people, it was where the Anglo-Catholic Nicholas Ferrar and a few family and friends established a small contemplative community in 1626. Ferrar had just been ordained deacon by William Laud, who went on to become Archbishop of Canterbury and a strong supporter of Charles I. The king visited Little Gidding three times, and on the last occasion took refuge there from Cromwell’s men after the Battle of Naseby in 1646.
