Quinton churchyard is looking very Iris Murdoch this Monday morning: not a piece of rhyming slang - it's just wet, green, lush and mournful in the Scotch mist - an atmosphere which makes me think of her novels. I retrace my steps ( see post: Tuesday 19th July ) through the lovely Old Rectory garden past the pond and down the road opposite until I pass under the motorway before turning left towards Courteenhall up a narrower lane, which apart from indicating it's a dead end, also injuncts against 'grain lorries' and 'wedding traffic'. I've been to the tiny estate-dominated village just once previously and some decades ago when a young colleague of Sue's rented a house here. It's as I recall: a collection of workers' cottages in two rows, with a view of the big house through a tastefully arranged gap in the hedge, and the church of St. Peter and St. Paul on a little rise. One of the two churchwardens is Julia Wake. Julia is the lady of the house: her husband is Sir Hereward, and their family claim to be descendants of Hereward the Wake. You remember him: he stoutly resisted the Norman conquest up Peterborough way - how very fashionable! - and so has become the stuff of legend often retold. He even gets a mention in songs by Pink Floyd and Van der Graaf Generator. In the twentieth century, Joan Wake was a doughty and important local historian, to whom we owe the preservation of Delapre Abbey in Northampton. I'm thinking tweed skirts and brogues.
If one's wedding is to be 'exclusive' (strange phrase, if you think about it), it seems one can hire bits of the great house and stroll across to the church for the religious stuff at strict C. of E. rates, unless the humanist option is preferred in which case one could get spliced in one of a number of aristocratic bowers minus the energising walk, with the additional benefit of not sullying the bride's wedding train on the way over the dung-free field.
I mustn't be sour, however much fun it is. People should get married, and of course they should have a lovely time, and of course it's valuable income for the upkeep of an undoubtedly expensive estate, but hasn't the wedding business got a trifle out of hand, and over-indulgent, and all rather fin-de-siècle? The answer you're reaching for is...yes!
How distant tranquil (and dare I say it, slightly feudal) Courteenhall is from some other far reaches of the C. of E.. On a recent 'Pointless' appeared Fr. Robb and his wife. He's vicar at Holy Nativity church in Mixenden, Yorkshire, where once a month there's a Rock Mass. Fr. Robb carries a fair old amount of steel embroidery around his face and has long hair reminiscent of Hawkwind c. 1970. I quote from the HN website: 'The Rock Mass is a monthly service for people who love it loud...At a typical service you can expect to be singing songs you're more likely to hear on the Kerrang channel or Planet Rock Radio. As we come together around God's table to meet Him in bread and wine, there are smoke and lights, processions, incense - everything you need to give the authenticity of stadium rock...'
We the church are truly all things: we are all people everywhere.
A bridle way (not a bridal way!) curves up from the village to a flat and open plain. To my left is the wind farm which is now so visible from the M1, and to my right is the large and growing settlement of Roade. The railway bisects the village, trains whistling through to Manchester, Liverpool and Scotland in a deep nineteenth-century cutting which is also a SSSI. I spot that it's 'drop-in' morning at St. Mary's church, so I do. Karen and Pauline serve me coffee and lemon cake, and I chat to various jolly people. Peter is a sprightly chap in his early seventies who explains what's going on. To each 'drop-in' are invited friendly agencies who may be of help to villagers. The CAB have been recently: advice has been dispensed regarding switching fuel bills to lower tariffs from different suppliers and the completion of tax returns. Today Vivienne is representing the local surgery and making sure health support is available and understood to/by those who need it. Another Karen is talking about the 'School of Life' which brings young and old together around the county to swap skills and encourage each other. What good initiatives! Well done, St. Mary's!
Inside the nicely furnished church, one looks down a tunnel through the mid-placed bell tower to a distant high altar: it's a mini-cathedral but with the bells where the 'crossing' might be. The parish style seems to be thoughtfully evangelical. I notice the name of Will Adams cropping up among the clergy, and remember that he was one-time head at Roade comprehensive school, now re-named 'The Elizabeth Woodville School' after the wife of Edward IV. The two of them memorably courted beside an oak tree not far away in the Tove valley.
I stride away across the fields to meet the line of the canal mid-way between Blisworth and Stoke Bruerne. It's underneath me in its famous tunnel right now: a triumph of industrial-age engineering. I pick up 'Boathorse Road' and walk down through the woodland to where the waterway emerges by Bob Nightingale's smithy, a few hundred metres from the village of Stoke Bruerne. Bob is walking up the towpath in his leathers and I say hello. This is tourist Northamptonshire, with celebrated pubs and gardens, a tea-room (much improved!) and lots of information about canal-building. The trick the village has managed is to retain its dignity: there's not a hint of 'kiss-me-quick'. This coming weekend is 'Stoke Bruerne at War' - not internecine disputes in the Parish Council - but a remembrance of the village in WW2/1. The moorings have been allocated in advance, there's a campsite in a field with the first Union flags appearing above VW hippie-vans. I imagine a good time will be had by all, only slightly incommoded by troublesome roadworks on the A508 to put in new drains. I walk up the hill to another St. Mary's, and marvel at the sheer number of dedications to her in this part of the world: I'd never thought of Northamptonshire as a Virgin-cult centre, but maybe it was...or maybe the whole of England was, and I'm just becoming aware of it.
In theory the village of Ashton is very close by, but I miss my path, and it takes me longer to finally arrive by the Mens Own rugby club on the village limits than I'd hoped. I've been to Stoke Bruerne many times, but Ashton only rarely and never stopping to look, although it crops up in my Civil War story about Grafton Regis. It's the first day of the autumn term, and in the church school the kids are having a great time playing catch with their P.E. teacher. (Now don't be silly: they're throwing a ball, not her!) Beside the playground is the little church of St. Michael's, which I regret I can't visit more fully - it's closed of course. I understand how it is. As I passed I saw that someone had pinched the village sign so that the metal surrounds were left standing high like a Barbara Hepworth sculpture, as it were, drawing attention to the space beyond. As the government has recently pointed out, the security of our churches is an issue in so many ways. How do the evangelical and catholic wings of the church think about the spaces in which we worship? Do they feel differently about the sense of the numinous to be found there? Do they also feel differently about 'community'? How can these things be brought together?
Onwards and slightly upwards to Hartwell across fields which have been ploughed. The drizzle has relented, and the soil is still friable and unclaggy, so it's not too much of a nuisance. I always confuse Hartwell and Hanslope. Hanslope has a marvellous spire with flying buttresses and is visible for miles. I shan't be visiting it because it's out-of-diocese. Hartwell's St. John the Baptist is nineteenth century and low-slung, of no great architectural merit but sitting right in the centre of the village. I take the weight off my feet in the churchyard while Hartwell sprawls around me. It stands on the southern edge of Salcey Forest and like Piddington somehow feels like a woodman's town: I suppose the name helps the suggestion along.
The pocket park is having its annual big mow. I pass it and walk on up the bridleway with the wind farm now dominating the skyline to my right. There's a slight whine from the turbines if you're downwind, but otherwise they wheel away silently. Underneath them are sausage rolls of hay, newly harvested, so old farming and new have been successfully combined. Given the density at which they appear in the local countryside round here i.e. there aren't too many of them, personally I don't mind the new generation of windmills. I worry more about the solar farms, from the point of view that some sneaky government may one day deem them to be 'brown-field sites' and slacken planning regulations to allow building on land which otherwise would never have been thought appropriate.
Nevertheless, the windmills evoke for me images which aren't entirely comfortable. When I was small, a young and beautiful Susan Hampshire acted the humanoid face of aliens in the TV series 'Andromeda'. The reality behind the aliens was eventually revealed to be a far less benign and blankly-staring set of massive proto-computer pods. And in Bill Bryden and Tony Harrison's game-changing National Theatre trilogy of Mystery Plays, the final 'Judgement' play had as its startling centrepiece a steely-lit whirligig, portraying perhaps the circularity of all things, or an alternative perspective of time, or a giddying crucifix. All of this I sense in the powerful machines turning above my head, a rival narrative to the towers and spires of our lovely churches.
Stats man: 24 km (seems to be my distance!). 7.5 hours. Max 22 degrees. Drizzle and cloud. One postman (not knocking twice, but seen twice in two different villages). Two pieces of cake. One yaffle. Three mini-goats, charming. One parrot in a house in Ashton, whistling loudly.
Lord,
I thank you for the variety of your church.
For Drop Ins
And complines
For the Mothers Union
And breakfast clubs
For church choirs
And Rides and Strides
For village shows
And heavy metal bishops
For fetes and carnivals
And worker priests
For eucharists
And Pentecostal hands
For all the countless creative ways
Your people serve and worship you
And try to explain
What faith and community mean.
Sometimes I feel bathed
In the warmth of loving welcome
And the next moment I am
Alienated,
Paranoid,
Even within the walls of the sanctuary.
O Lord, bless us all
As we lead your people in worship.
Grant that what we say and what we sing
With our lips
We may believe in our hearts
And that what we believe in our hearts
May show in our lives.
Amen.
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