Ely city is a cathedral town in Cambridgeshire, England, fourteen miles north-north-east of Cambridge and concerning eighty miles by road from London. Etheldreda supported associate abbey at Ely in AD 673; the abbey was destroyed in 870 by Danish invaders and was remodeled by Ethelwold, Bishop of Winchester, in 970. Construction of the cathedral was started in 1083 by the primary Norman bishop, Simeon. Sacrist, Alan of Walsingham's polygon, designed over Ely's area crossing between 1322 and 1328, is that the "greatest individual accomplishment of discipline genius at Ely Cathedral" per discipline scholarly person Nikolaus Pevsner. Building continued till the dissolution of the abbey in 1539 throughout the Reformation. The cathedral was with empathy rebuilt between 1845 and 1870 by the creator St. George Gilbert Scott. because the seat of a bishopric, Ely has long been thought of a city; in 1974, town standing was granted by charter.

Ely city is constructed on a 23-square-mile  Kimmeridge Clay island that, at eighty five feet ,is that the highest land within the fens. Major rivers together with the Witham, Welland, Nene and nice Ouse River, feed into the fens and, till exhausting commenced within the seventeenth century, fashioned fresh marshes and meres inside that humate was ordered down. There ar 2 sites of special scientific interest within the city: a former Kimmeridge Clay quarry, and one in all the United Kingdom's best remaining samples of medieval ridge and furrow agriculture. The economy of the region is principally agricultural although before the fens were drained, the harvest home of osier   and marsh plant (rush) and therefore the extraction of humate were vital activities, as were eel fishing—from that the settlement's name might are derived—and wild fowling. the town had been the centre of native pottery production for over seven hundred years, together with pottery called city ware.

A Roman Road, Akeman Street, passes through the Ely city; the southern finish is at Ermine Street close to Wimpole and its northern finish is at Brancaster. very little evidence of Roman occupation in Ely exists though there ar close Roman settlements like at very little Thetford and Stretham. a tutor route, identified in 1753 between Ely and Cambridge, was improved in 1769 as a turnpike (toll-road). the current day A10 closely follows this route; a south-western bypass of the town was in-built 1986. Ely train station in-built 1845 is on the Fen Line and is currently a serious railway hub: north to King's Lynn, north-west to Peterborough, east to Norwich, south-east to Ipswich and south to Cambridge and London.