Skulking Dudley

Lynch Lane leaves Titchmarsh downhill to the east. It rained a bit last night and the grass on the track is dewy damp even at 9.30 in the morning.  A herby smell reminiscent of marijuana is steaming off the hedges, and that’s quite nice because (sniff) there’s a sewage farm in the immediate vicinity. Of course it’s always possible that once upon a time something nasty happened to someone here at the hands of a mob, but probably not. The American connotations of ‘lynch’ don’t seem right here. On the other hand ‘linch’ is dialect for a man-made or natural terrace in the landscape, so maybe that’s the derivation. As I turn across some fields I pass some large, horned, brown and white sheep. I don’t recall having seen any like them on my travels, and nothing on the web readily identifies them, so here’s a picture. Any ideas?

There’ve been two stories about sheep on the news media this week. The first was about a number of recent cases of sheep rustling in Northamptonshire - if that’s an adequate description, because ‘rustling’ conjures up a sanitised Wild West image - a herd spirited away under cover of darkness. No, this was a gang slaughtering scores of animals right where they stood, leaving the stripped carcasses behind them in the fields, an extraordinarily callous crime with health issues associated, since for one thing the perps couldn’t possibly know how/if the sheep had been recently medicated and with what. So, if anyone makes you a too-good-to-be-true offer of lamb chops, I’d steer well clear, if I were you. The second story concerned the possibility that post-Brexit forty per cent of Britain’s sheep population might be culled. Of course I can’t vouch for the truth of this, but it’s clear that in terms of occupational risk, farmers believe themselves extremely exposed because of the loss of EU subsidy. To further deplete our rural economy seems crazy, but in these days of national self-harm, nothing surprises me anymore.

 

I’ve chosen the nuance of today’s route because I felt compelled to travel past or through what’s marked on the OS as ‘Skulking Dudley Coppice’. The Dudleys were a family who lived in Clopton, where I’m next headed. There are various accounts of how this particular scion came to murder or was himself murdered, but at any rate it’s said that ever since medieval times his unquiet spirit has roamed between the village and the coppice, causing the local population so much anxiety that as late as 1905 the then Bishop of Peterborough, Edward Carr-Glynn, came with a bell, book and candled entourage of twenty-one local priests to exorcise SD’s ghost. The legend of Skulking Dudley is the kind of tall tale usually cooked up to encourage a flagging tourist trade, but you might think, though I couldn’t possibly say, that staycations in Clopton are a niche market. As I stroll the sylvan path along the edge of the coppice I can see evidence of quarrying, so perhaps SD was invented to keep the local kids from harm. How prosaic is that thought! As one who claims to have reintroduced the phrase ‘gilding the lily’ to the US through the agency of a friend,  I encourage my readers to henceforth apply the term ‘Skulking Dudley’ to politicians and others in public life displaying brazen pusillanimity. They are legion. Name them, brothers and sisters, name them!

 

On the border between the two counties, Clopton more resembles a Cambridgeshire village than a Northants one. It straggles untidily along the B road, and St. Peter’s church is actually on the far side outside the village limit, but close to the Manor House. Although it has a saddle-backed tower, the church looks remarkably well-ordered, viewed from a distance. And this turns out to be a well-founded suspicion, because despite some of its genuinely ancient contents the building dates from only 1863. To my eye, the externals are an affectionate attempt at fakery of the medieval, and in a way, none the worse for that: it’s a handsome building, and if it serves to remind us in this confused present that we’re members of a Body of Christ comprised of many past generations, then that’s good.  Nevertheless, I come away a little sad. Inside, the sanctuary is dominated by an ugly portable display detailing aspects of the church’s short history, majoring on First War memorabilia. There are cobwebs over many of the pews. The back of the church has become a secular second hand lending library. One of those recently ubiquitous plastic cut out mannequins designed to remind us of the First War fallen occupies one of the front pews. I can laugh to myself that it’s a memorial to Skulking Dudley, but actually the image strikes an odd note for the midsummer visitor. By the door is a sign inviting parishioners to a cheese and wine ‘do’ – a Eucharistic variation for the well-to-do?

 

I must be careful. As I think I’ve mentioned before, years ago, my father published a history of the Baptist church of which he’d been a member for more than sixty years, man and boy. Most of what he wrote was definitely good, valuable local history. Then he came to more recent events in that place - of which he had a very low opinion. Despite advice to the contrary, he wrote of these developments in a trenchant, caustic spirit, and caused great unhappiness as a result. And I am my father’s son. I know there’s the possibility of hurting good people for whom, for example, St. Peter’s Clopton may be the apple of their eye, their solace in times of fear and sadness, their one safe refuge. Nevertheless, I’d hope for better ministry to the local population and visitors than this. And of course I’m bound to examine my own inadequacy and lack of faith and discipline as I write. Back in Weston Favell we forgot to turn up for our own stint of church cleaning last weekend.

 

The weather today is uncomfortable. It’s muggy, with the clouds gathering and the breeze stiffening as I walk quickly over the little plateau towards Barnwell, wondering if one of the hinted-at ‘isolated thunderstorms’ from this morning’s forecast is going to catch me out. A few monster raindrops spatter my shorts and shirt as I drop down a hundred feet or so between fields of unripened wheat and out of mobile-phone reception, but in the event nothing more dramatic happens. This summer seems to have been sunnier than the previous one, though the wheat seems to be slower developing. Is this a misapprehension on my part, or despite the ever-improving science of agriculture is there still a natural variation in the growing of crops once meteorology is taken into account? (As there might be year to year, say with snowdrops or primroses…?)

 

There are two churches in Barnwell, or rather one and a half. All Saints is the half.  I come to it first, on the southern edge of the village. It’s not much more than a memorial chapel for the Montagu family, but it’s a fascinating space. The rather rough pews are crammed into the chancel (which is all that remains of a formerly much larger church). Some sit on top of the family vault. Where they’ve been prised off the floor for an interment in years past, they bear the scars of crowbars or chisels. The font is shoved into an inaccessible corner, not much used of late. Hymnbooks and a few Evensong booklets are strung out along a covered bier at the back. The chapel is filled with funerary monuments and legends. The most unusual is in the shape of a highly decorated, narrow obelisk attached to the south wall. It commemorates Henry Montagu who died very young in 1625, a victim of drowning. A curious thing. I see that in a round orifice towards the bottom of the memorial, there’s what looks like a vividly painted orange. Goodness! It is an orange! And now, back home, I see that there’s at least one picture of the memorial on the web showing exactly the same thing. So, good people of the virtual world, what theories can you come up with for this? Was the late, poor little Henry fond of exotic oranges? In lieu of larger floral decorations, has this been thoughtfully placed as a single natural feature in a space of otherwise cold, unyielding stone? Or is someone just having an (apparently iterative) laugh?

 

Barnwell is charming, with twin lanes either side of a brook which at the moment is clogged with vegetation. A rap – I mean a recitative - from Mendelssohn’s Elijah pops onto today’s internal playlist: ‘Now Cherith’s brook is dried up…’ A landscape gardener is labouring away on the opposite pavement, hammering into shape the frames for some raised beds. She heaves them energetically over the back garden wall of one of the pretty almshouses founded by local sixteenth century worthy Nicholas Latham. I walk up over the flags to high-steepled St. Andrew’s where there’s a memorial to Latham, and chuckle at the sign there which brings to mind a line from Sue’s least favourite hymn:  ‘But the steep and rugged pathway may I tread rejoicingly’. I’m sorry to find the door locked, and go for a GB at the Montagu Arms. The talk behind the bar is of chips cooked in goose fat. I say that’s not fair: I’m not stopping to eat.

 

                                                      There may be trouble ahead...

Going south on the Nene Way I cross the disused Oundle railway line where the one-time Barnwell station building looks rather forlorn, and trek parallel to it along to Wigsthorpe, now just a farm, before turning right along an exposed length of the B662 to the roundabout, then down to the Nene bridge with Lilford Hall just in sight, and up the other side to the hamlet of Pilton. Across the field is the beautifully situated church of St. Mary’s and All Saints. The Lilfords, once and perhaps still the patrons of the parish, have gone from Lilford Hall now, and it’s in the hands of the Micklewright family, who judging by their enormously comprehensive website love it to bits. I enjoy the woodland walk from there to Thorpe Achurch very much indeed, climbing through the trees on a series of terraces (linches!) until I emerge on the lane by St. John the Baptist’s church. The presence of a church in Achurch (as you might assume!) suggests plenty of possibilities for conversational confusion. The rector here in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries was Robert Browne, who lived his later life in Lilford Hall. Ecclesiastically speaking those were his quiet years, because as a young man he’d taken against the Church of England and founded the ‘Brownist’ movement, which Congregationalism sees as its predecessor. However, he clearly remained of uncertain temper, despite his calling. He was arrested more than thirty times and died in Northampton gaol, where he’d been imprisoned for punching a constable. The Lilford Hall website says that there are plans to restore the literally dilapidated St. Peter’s Lilford in  fitting memorial to him, as the ‘Father of Pilgrims’ (because there are Congregationalist links to the Mayflower). But does this story need a bit of unpacking?

                                                        St. Mary's and All Saints' Pilton

The description of the early Church as recorded in the first chapters of the Book of Acts hangs over all denominational Christians as…what? A challenge? An attractive ideal? A reproach? It was perhaps all those things to the young Robert Browne, and it still attracts and reproaches today. Where, beyond the Holy Spirit, does day to day authority reside in the contemporary Church? With the clergy or with the people or in both together (remembering that the clergy are a sub-division of the people)? Really? And if there’s an imbalance of administrative and spiritual authority between ordained and lay in the Church of England as we experience her today – as I feel there is - what should we do about it? I read Rev. Robert Browne’s life as a troubled sell-out, perhaps because the appeal of country comforts grew ever more irresistible…but it ended badly for him. To be fair the fates of those who made the trip to Virginia were pretty mixed too.

 

Clergy are paid professionally for their Gospel Labours, and they’re overworked, and the pay will rarely if ever reflect the hours put in.  But particularly in this media-saturated day and age, the antennae of The People are quick to spot attitudes which border on the controlling, patronising or contemptuous. All we like sheep have gone astray, but judgment on the matter is God’s not ours. Lovely friends among the clergy who read this, I truly don’t mean you, but don’t tell me you’ve never encountered such attitudes amongst your colleagues. The difficulty is that the fecklessness of God’s people and their redemption is all of our business, and a very perplexing one it is too - as both the Old Testament and current politics make clear. Better together. Laity and clergy, and just occasionally, that way round.

 

What happens next on today’s walk is pretty perplexing too. I walk down the lane to Thorpe Waterville, and by way of a little path around a smallholding where I say hello to two engaging junior pigs, either inquisitive or hungry – I don’t speak pig, so don’t know – emerge onto the main Oundle road. I cross safely enough, but find that the path ahead to Titchmarsh is thirty yards further on behind a metal barrier in the direction of the flow of traffic. I wait for a gap between the evening rush hour cars and decide to make a run for it. But just then a car pulls out from the drive close behind me. I see him or her, hesitate, trip over the kerb, and measure my length in the road right in front of the traffic. Timewarp.  The car which has just pulled out steers around me where I lie and hightails it off to Thrapston with nary a backward look, presumably concerned that I might accuse them of causing the fall. From a position on my back looking up at the traffic which is following on, I judge that I can roll close to relative safety hard against the barrier, and even in that split second give thanks that I’m not concussed and haven’t broken anything. As I limp up the road towards the path, two guys in a white van stop and ask me if I’m OK, effectively stopping the queue of traffic behind them: the story of the good Samaritan rewritten. Perhaps they’d have set me on their donkey and put me up for the night in Thrapston if I’d asked.

 

I hurl myself over a stile into a field of maize where the bloody farmer hasn’t bothered to maintain any semblance or hint of the right of way, inspect my wounded knees, and shout and swear at the skies about the character, antecedents and future prospects of the driver who couldn’t spare thirty seconds of his time to enquire about my health and make sure I wasn’t a traffic stat. It’s not K2 or the Australian outback, but there are always dangers in hiking, even of such a domestic nature, and – note to self - it’s a bad idea to get over-tired. I don’t want to spend an eternity haunting the A605, do I? There are enough Skulking Dudleys already.

 

Hunt’s Book of Hours:  24.5 km. 7.3 hrs. 23 deg. Sunny, then cloudy, then sunny again, with a lively westerly breeze during the middle part of the day. The butterflies today were amazingly beautiful and numerous. Not many people to talk too. The walking easy and flat apart from the last tedious push through crops where the path had been rubbed out.

 

When will you save the people?

O God of mercy, when?
The people, Lord, the people,
But children, women, men.
God save the people, yours we are,
Your children as your angels fair.
From vice, oppression and despair -
God save the people!

Shall crime bring crime for ever,

Strength aiding still the strong?
Is it your will, Creator,
That we shall toil for wrong?
‘No’, say your mountains: ‘No’, your skies.
The clouded sun shall brightly rise

And songs be heard instead of sighs

God save the people!
Amen.

 (Ebenezer Elliott 1781-1849. Altered.)