St
Andrews House was the previous vicarage for St Andrews Church the
present day vicarage is now located on Cross Green. St Andrews House is
situated on the South side of the Church in the High Street. The house
has had various alterations the most extensive undertaken in 1834 by
the then Vicar of Soham the Reverend H Tasker, who enlarged it quite
considerably.
These two views show St Andrews House, the Ariel
view clearly shows the different stages of the alterations ,the largest
being Reverend Taskers. The other is a view of the house taken from the
Church Alley which runs to the right of the building.
A Tour Under Ground
The following photographs will take you on a Tour beneath St Andrews
House.
The first observation made as you descend down the steps from the older
part of the house, is
that the steps have been resurfaced in past times, the original steps
underneath being very worn, from the many feet that have
walked
down them. The next thing that you see at the bottom of the steps is an
ancient simply carved doorway, whose origins possibly come from the
Norman Period it being very short and narrow, the top
of the doorway is wider at the top than the bottom. The wood
is oak timber.
From this doorway you enter into a small brick vaulted
room as shown in the picture on the left, containing in one corner a
bricked area the size of a single bed, raised of the floor, to low for
a work surface, most likely
used to store items above the floor level, this room has a brick floor.
On
leaving the small room mentioned above and looking to your right, you
can see another doorway. On entering this room which is also small and
brick vaulted, you notice that the layout is different. There
is bricked shelving with
slightly curved slabbed dividers, as shown in these three photos.
This
shelving runs along both sides of the room from floor to ceiling, the
floor again being laid of brick, the walls look as though they have
been white washed.
When
we entered the underneath of the buildings of the older part
of
St Andrews House, we were in complete darkness, having just one torch
and the flash from the camera to guide us. This part of the underground
complex is obviously the oldest.
On
leaving the room mentioned above and turning to your right, you enter
into yet another room. also vaulted and brick floored. This room has a
shelf that resembles a work area in one corner, as shown in the photo
on the right . In the photo on the left you can see a floor grate
leaning up against the wall, this is identical to the grates in St
Andrews Church. Where it is vaulted in this room there appears to be a
bricked column supporting the roof. The column is slightly curved
disappearing into the wall and unique to this room, there was also
noticed a small hole in this wall, just big enough to get your arm
into, but even then you could not feel the other side, the
wall
here is very thick, that might suggest that it supported a much earlier
and larger building than that now above.
The
photo on the left shows a view of another room that you enter from the
doorway shown to the right in the photo above right.
This
room is also shelved both sides very similar to the first room
described earlier. The only difference being instead of having slab
bases these ones are arched brick and each segregation is numbered. The
photo's you have been looking at seem to suggest that this is
the
oldest part of the house.
We will now enter towards the middle
part of the St Andrews House complex,. to enter this section you walk
up a step and you see a dark passageway in front of you, immediately to
your right you will notice a bricked up
entrances to why it is bricked up or to where it leads we do not know,
but there is a step at the bottom of the bricked up wall .The two slabs
that makes the ceiling appear to be beneath the court yard not the
house, this is possibly one of the entrances to the old tunnels that
lead from this area to other parts of the Town, these tunnels have been
disputed by some people, but stories told to us by locals, who know of
people who have been through these tunnels in the past, with one party
saying that they ended up in a cript, possibly beneath or very near the
Church, and when renovation work began a couple of years later the
builders did find the top of what was thought to be a brick tunnel in
the court yard above spoken of, so this would suggest that they are
still in existence, although the various
entrances, like the one at The Fountian public house have thought to
have been blocked
up, if anyone has any knowledge of these entrances or tunnels
we would love
to hear from you, or if you yourself have been through them years ago.
Opposite
this entrance spoken of above, is another doorway leading to a square
room. This room has slabs at seating level all the way around the room,
supported by brick columns, as shown in the photo on the left.
The
photo on the right shows an arched niche in the same room on the left
hand side as you enter.
The floor is again laid of brick but the ceiling has been plastered.
The room also contains what appears to be a bricked up window on the
outside wall of the room, if this was a window it 
would
have been below the ground level outside. In the room immediately next
door, can be seen of what remains of the old Victorian
boiler, as
shown in the photo on the left. On leaving this room, immediately
opposite is a shaft approx 4ft sq and approx 10ft high, at the top can
be seen another door which leads outside into the court yard, possibly
used as a coal shoot for the boiler. This appears to be a later
addition probably added when the boiler was installed. Going further
along the passage, on your right can be seen a hole in the wall just
enough to be able to stick your head through, looking up there is a
small shaft leading upwards.
You are now going to
enter underneath the 18th century additions to the house. Photo one
below
shows a view looking back towards the older parts as described before,
photo two you can see the top of an arch partially uncovered at some
point in time where someone has been digging, this arch disappears
below the ground level of the
basement. The next three photo's are general views. Photo's six
& seven show
the outer wall and what appears to be upside down brick arches built
into it. This part has a dirt floor and the floorboards of the above
rooms make the ceiling.
The layout of this area is different to the older part in the respect
that it has been divided up into different equal sized areas or cells,
oblong in
shape and each area is accessed by small arched openings that you need
to crawl through as they are not tall enough to walk through. There is
also in this part a lot of brick rubble and piles of dirt, perhaps
thrown down when the later extension was built or in later times, the
holes in the walls as seen in photo two are probably for ventilation.
