Editing St Ives, Cambridgeshire (section)

==Cultural references==
[[File:St Ives Seven Wives PH At Night.jpg|thumb|The Seven Wives pub on a summer's night]] 
The town name is featured in the anonymous nursery rhyme/riddle "[[As I was going to St Ives]]". While sometimes claimed to be [[St Ives, Cornwall]], the man with seven wives, each with seven sacks containing seven cats etc, may have been on his way to (or coming from) the [[fair|Great Fair]] at St Ives.<ref>{{citation |title=St Ives, Slepe by the Ouse |first=Noel |last=Hudson |year=1989 |page=131 |publisher=St Ives Town Council |isbn=978-0-9515298-0-5}}</ref> On Ramsey Road there is a [[public house]] called The Seven Wives, though this is a modern pub with no connection to the ancient rhyme other than the name.

[[Victorian era|Victorian]] philosopher [[Thomas Carlyle]] contrasted the workhouse in St Ives with the ruins of [[Bury St Edmunds Abbey]] in [[Past and Present (book)|''Past and Present'']] (1843).<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Ulrich |first=John M. |date=1995 |title="A Labor of Death and A Labor Against Death": Translating the Corpse of History in Carlyle's "Past and Present" |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/44946087 |journal=Carlyle Studies Annual |issue=15 |pages=33–47 |jstor=44946087 |issn=1074-2670}}</ref>

The famous war poet [[Rupert Brooke]] lived for a time at [[Grantchester]]. In his famous poem "''[[The Old Vicarage, Grantchester]]''" he heaped praise on his own village, but not on the [[shire town]] of [[Cambridge]] itself, or on the other villages around. Of St Ives he wrote:
{{cquote|Strong men have blanched and shot their wives, rather than send them to St Ives<ref>{{cite book|url=http://www.orchard-grantchester.com/poetry.html|title=The Old Vicarage, Grantchester|first=Rupert|last=Brooke|place=Café des Westerns, Berlin|date=May 1912|access-date=21 March 2009|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090302153404/http://www.orchard-grantchester.com/poetry.html|archive-date=2 March 2009|df=dmy-all}}</ref>}}