Stow Longa

Infobox UK place
official_name= Stow Longa
country= England
region= East of England
os_grid_reference= TL110715
latitude= 52.33
longitude= -0.37
post_town=
postcode_area=
postcode_district=
dial_code=
shire_county= Cambridgeshire
shire_district- Huntingdonshire
population=
hide_services= Yes
website= http://www.stowlonga.org.uk

PAGENAME – in Huntingdonshire (now part of Cambridgeshire), England – is a village near Tilbrook west of Huntingdon and two miles north of Kimbolton. Stow Longa's original name was Stow or Long Stow, which comes from the Old English word "stōw" (meaning 'holy place') and the Latin word "longa" or Old English "lang" (meaning 'long'). Altogether, Stow Longa's name may mean 'the long holy place' or 'an extended settlement which is a holy place', though this is only a rough guess.

Mistakenly described as a hamlet, it has the suitable number of houses and businesses to make it a village. Stow Longa is a village that is, at the current time, void of any street lamps, village shops, a school, a pub, and drains. However, Stow Longa does possess several thatched cottages, a village room, a blocked-up well (on the village green), a stone cross (discussed below) and mature elm trees that survived the Dutch Elm disease crisis.

According to a locally-published collection of short stories, 'Ploughing Songs' by Damian Croft [cite web|url=http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ploughing-Songs-Damian-Croft/dp/0954982703|title=Ploughing Songs|accessdate=2007-12-15|author=Croft, Damian] , the reason why the pubs that were in Stow Longa were closed down in the 1950s was because, "returning drovers used it to give a bad name to a few otherwise nameless women."

Stow Longa's church

The Anglican church of Stow Longa is known as St Botolph's, since it is dedicated to St Botolph, which dates to the 13th century, though a stone engraving indicates an earlier date.

Above the priest's door, outside the east side of the church, there is a nationally-famous stone carving named the Mermaid Stone, since the engraving displays a mermaid between two creatures. According to one source, the creature on the right of the mermaid represents the crocodile (a creature of damnation) and the creature on the left of the mermaid, though on our right, represents the lamb, i.e. the Lamb of God (Jesus Christ). An alternative interpretation of the Mermaid Stone could be:

*Sins - the mermaid represents the sin of lust, whilst going in the direction of the beast on her right (representing hell) and turning her back against the beast on her left (representing the Kingdom of God).

*Anti-Paganism - even though this interpretation has no real backup, the Mermaid Stone may represent (based on the fact that a stream passes by the church) the struggle between Goddess worship (who maybe either a river deity or whose attributes are scourned as lustful) - going towards Hell and leaving Christ - and the emerging Christian religion.

The village green cross

The common misinterpretation of the cross is that it was a marker point of where the coffin of Catherine of Aragon rested, after she died at nearby Kimbolton Castle: actually, the cross is Medieval and pre-dates its supposed use.

References