Today I begin in church-free (but hopefully not God-free) Charlton, although looking at the crossroads near the top of the village and the walled enclosure to its south, surely the remains of a medieval chapel must lie somewhere underneath? Churches 'take' in a particular location for many reasons, but please don't think the needs of a working population are by any means top of the list in determining their persistence! The wishes and convenience of the rich and powerful usually tend to be paramount. Thus today's faithful have to tread the nicely tarmacked path which runs the half mile from Charlton's small burial ground up between the fields to St. James, Newbottle when they want to worship.
I follow in their footsteps, but only before shaking a fist at the rapidly vanishing rear-end of a bright metallic blue BMW which hurtles into the thirty limit at something more like sixty. As it rounds the bend where I'm standing it confronts an unexpected oncoming car, and the driver nearly loses control. Had he done so, that could have been the end of me.
Paul Hayter's father, Canon Michael, once wrote lovingly about Newbottle:
'The road here goes no further - stop and look
Across its mown-grass verge and dry-stone wall
To see St. James's church. Its square stone tower
Has stood here for eight hundred years or more
The nave and chancel for a hundred less.
All's country made, and unspectacular,
But fully fit to be a house of prayer.
The churchyard, closed a hundred years ago,
Is filled with lichened gravestones, and enclosed
By oak, horse chestnut and a copper beech;
Its gates embowered in an arch of yew;
Its grass kept short by being grazed with sheep.
In spring the snowdrops, then the daffodils
Emblazon either end; return each year,
Their promise of new life again fulfilled.'
Betjeman couldn't have put it better.
From near the church I enjoy the first of a series of broad views far across into Oxfordshire from the vantage points of the ridge which runs north-east to south-west along the edge of Northampton's county. A bridlepath takes me over a stream and up to the high farm at Astrop, passing 'Rosamund's Bower' on its hilltop perch. It would have been a jolly place for a tryst. On further investigation there seem to be lots of bowers with Rosamund's name attached. She was the alleged mistress of Henry II, and there's a vaguely local connection, so I suppose it's not impossible they rode up here for a snog. She was schooled by the nuns of Godstow, near Oxford, to whom she returned when the affair went wrong to die disappointed and rather before her time. Subsequent legends have her dispatched by a vengeful Eleanor in ways various and gory.
From the farm it's pretty much a straight line to the church at Kings Sutton, although some of the route is along a busy road, which involves a lot of stepping onto the verge, and saying thank you to the more polite motorists. It's a lovely, bright spring day, but not withstanding I don my high-vis jacket in self-defence.
Cities are defined by the existence of a cathedral (sometimes!) Maybe a settlement should now be called a town if it has a railway station, which Kings Sutton does, half way between Banbury and Bicester on the line which takes the traveller into Marylebone in a little over the hour. I wander up to the village (town!) green and enjoy the view across to SS. Peter and Paul with its lofty, elegant, buttressed spire. Going forward into the churchyard, I gently push the church door open, but heads turn at me from the chapel on the far side: a Lenten service is taking place, and I've interrupted them mid-sermon. I cross to the pub for a ginger beer. It's warm enough to sit outside and I indulge myself listening to the gossip of two friends who meet too infrequently. 'We must do it again...Yeah soon...It was really good fun, wasn't it?...Thank you...Shall I get the coffees?' The worshippers leave the church, un-noticed by the coffee drinkers.
St. Peter and St. Paul's is in the care of the Bishop of Richborough. If 'Ebbsfleet' has contemporary, transient, jarring resonances, at least Richborough, with its history of invasion and its still-extant gaunt Roman walls says something about the continuation of tradition, which is partly what these Christian colleagues want to underline. I don't agree with them in their concerns or specific beliefs about the role of women, which I think tends to lead them into weird places - 'taint' and all that. And if they want to join the church in Rome, then I'm not sure what would be so bad about that, for them or for we who 'remain'. Richborough was a point of embarkation as well as arrival. But much better still if we can all stay together and rub along as multi-hued comrades on the pilgrimage.
There's a problem, apparently growing with every passing year, about how we can amicably disagree in the twenty-first century, both inside the church and also when we're wearing our non-churchy, political hats. At any rate, St. Peter and St. Paul's are clear that everyone is welcome within their walls, and unlike some, they pay their parish share to Peterborough, as so they should.
But we're all so sensitive to nuance these days, sometimes appropriately, and sometimes maybe to our detriment. The other evening at home we were watching a telly programme about the choristers of Salisbury, where both boys and girls contribute to the cathedral's worship, although with what degree of mutual integration wasn't exactly clear. I started out encouraged and charmed (partly by the appearance of the Dean, June Osborne, long time fan of Bruce Springsteen), but as the programme developed I began to feel uneasy. The further we went the more the emphasis seemed to be on the boys, not the girls, and there was something about the way the director had lit their faces which seemed to be too lingering, to have too much of the 'pin-up' about it. I was put in mind of a 2018 calendar currently on sale in Rome's many ecclesiastical and tourist shops featuring pretty young priests, which made us unsure whether to giggle or shudder. The Church's recent history, both Roman Catholic and Anglican has left us all wounded. And this week it tripped up once more, in the matter of Jeffrey John and Llandaff, although it may be that the Press has been mischief-making again, as it habitually will.
Garage: Kings Sutton.
Eschewing my compass and relying on my faulty sense of direction, I miss my way across unwaymarked fields outside Kings Sutton, and unnecessarily visit a sewage farm and another out-of-town cemetery as I make my way to Aynho, 'the apricot village', via Walton Grounds where there's yet another deserted settlement. The trees are just coming into blossom, and although the village is bisected by a busy 'A' road, I always think this place is the first intimation of the comfortable Cotswolds as the traveller moves west. And nowhere is the architecture more refined and splendid than around the church. Up a short drive I can peek to my right at the dignity of the Big House, and then turn left to be confronted by St. Michael's late medieval tower. Rather extraordinarily it's tacked onto a Georgian nave and chancel of massive, prosperous proportions, like some ginormous stable block. Maybe the interior doesn't quite match the quality of the exterior, but those lavish quantities of honey coloured dressed stone on the outside are hard to beat. I think about whether I have time to call on Simon the Rector and his wife Heather, and decide that I don't and anyway it's Friday, and they may be enjoying a hard-earned day off. The Astwick Vale benefice (stop me if you've heard this one before!) is geographically vast. I think to myself that here we're in the Kuiper Belt of the diocese: this is a place which feels like it belongs to Oxford. It's the downside of having a cathedral at one end of the patch. Even suffragan-led Brixworth is a fair way from here in sentiment and natural allegiance.
A path slopes down beside the stately park between stone walls. I can't help it. I always look at walls like this and think of money: we know too well what it costs to have someone rebuild even a short portion of a collapsed domestic dry-stone wall. After one such occasion, I took a holiday in Cephalonia, and sitting in a roadside café, remember looking at the tiered retaining walls along a Greek hillside and calculating that I was looking at hundreds of thousands of quid in English expenditure. Emerging into the open, a herd of farm deer look at me nervously from behind a secure fence, but even though I mention blackcurrant sauce and 'Wellington', they've learnt enough to ignore me after taking a precautionary, assessing sniff in my direction. Without the fence they'd have been over the hills and far away before I'd said 'caramelisation'.
In due course I come to a road, and crossing it, follow a manicured drive towards a farm that's clearly more than just a farm. Two vaguely corporate types clutching clipboards and charts pass me and say hello, all checked shirts and brown corduroys, a bit like old-school BBC Studio Managers. Soon I reach signs which tell me I'm passing through the property of 'A Day in the Country'. This is another example of country experience as bonding activity, but unlike the paintball outfit encountered on the last walk, this variation is posh and expensive. Visitors can 'bodyzorb' (no, thank you!) or from the sounds emanating from well-maintained sheds, perhaps try their hand at milking a cow or feeding the swine, whilst drawing suitable business lessons from the activity. I can just imagine the post-experience testimonies:
'After a day in the country, I felt somehow so much more grounded, and you know, real...Our business model really benefited from getting down and dirty together...Meeting that yokel on the drive changed my whole perspective on what it is I do...
Sometimes we Crosses have gloomily speculated that the destiny of the English countryside is as 'theme park'. Sorry to repeat myself, but if there's any silver lining at all in Brexit, it's maybe that this trend can be reversed.
All Saints, Croughton is another of Simon Dommett's churches, and it has some wall-paintings. Part of the south side is swathed in plastic, and the church is shut, so I can't get a look. But medieval wall-art isn't really the point about this village. It's hard not to have one's eye drawn to the communications 'golf-balls' which are the visible part of RAF Croughton, now the home of the US Joint Intelligence Analysis Centre. This is big potatoes is terms of European/NATO/Western defence. Gone are the days when one could get up-close-and-personal views of F-111s flying out of Northamptonshire to bomb Libya on the orders of what Don Henley once described as 'this sad old man we elected king' - Ronald Reagan. Now under the leadership of another old man, sad or otherwise, the important stuff is mostly in concrete bunkers. We wait to see whether this new and huge investment on British soil will be retained or relocated under the new regime. Probably we should want to see it retained, even if it means Russian nukes are undoubtedly targeted on this corner of our county, ancient churches, wall-art and all. And that gives a whole new meaning to 'unchurched', don't you think?
Stats man: 22km. 13 degrees C. Sunny throughout, initially undermined by a keen north-easterly breeze. 6 stiles. 19 gates. 9 bridges. 1 nice little tunnel near Aynho (Under a garden. No military significance.) A woodpecker, green. Two deer near Charlton, free-roaming. A number of de-hibernated squirrels, busy. March hares, several and bouncing.
Lord
We are truly a rainbow coalition.
Aren't we?
Or do you see us differently?
We value so much what makes us all individual.
We just love our selfies.
But perhaps you mostly see what we share:
Our sin;
Our poverty of spirit;
Our pride and lack of charity.
Help us to be content that you know us each by name,
And give us grace and creativity
To work together humbly for your greater glory.
Amen.
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