The star exhibit of the Ely Museum is a huge gold torc, weighing one and a half pounds and large enough for a cow to wear.

At today’s prices the gold alone would be worth $30,000. Nobody is quite sure what it was for. It dates back to the bronze age (about 1200 BCE) and literacy did not reach Britain until the Romans turned up twelve hundred years later. I’m going to go with the cow theory, though.

There’s more jewelry. The bracelet is also from the bronze age, about three thousand years ago.

The ring and the pin are from the Saxon period.

You may think the pin looks Celtic, but that’s because the Celts copied Saxon designs. Early Celtic jewelry looks a lot more like art deco.

Other goodies from the museum. The garden.

Heavy metal bondage gear left over from when the building was a prison.

Early 20th century ventriloquist’s dummy.

Model of the cathedral constructed entirely of matchsticks.

And a roman coffin…

… complete with skull.

A couple of blocks away is the house that Oliver Cromwell used to live in before he was a general in the Civil War, or Lord Protector of England.

Inside there are reconstructions of 17th century life and portraits of Cromwell, including this wood carving which was probably done from life.

It turns out that Bilbo was actually a ball-and-cup game and not a hobbit after all.

In a hole in the ground there lived a ball and cup game.

At the end of the tour, you get to vote if Cromwell was a hero or a villain.

I voted one of each because there was no right side in the English Civil War. It’s like modern day Syria, the choices are a vicious dictatorship or a puritanical theocracy. Cromwell put an end to the nonsense of the divine right of kings, but he also tried to settle Ireland with protestants, a move so colossally bigoted and stupid that we are still dealing with the fall out three hundred years later.

The popular vote is currently running about 60% hero, 40% villain, which seems about right. Though maybe we should stop trying to be so simplistic about complex political situations.

The very best thing about Cromwell’s house is probably that there is tree outside with a bench around it that has Mrs Cromwell’s recipe for baked eel in a long spiral.

Not only is Ely named after eels, but remarkably they seem to be proud of the fact.