Away from Wilby, I zig-zag through the Wellingborough housing estates to St. Mark's on Queensway. As so often with churches, its hall hosts a pre-school playgroup. Their Lenten meetings have been using a Rowan Williams text as a study focus - tough and intellectual stuff. Mandy Cuthbertson, the vicar, is moving on to be the Diocesan Advisor for the Healing Ministry. In the relevant pages on the Peterborough website Mandy says: '...I believe the Healing Ministry is not a sideline of the Church's ministry and mission, but an integrated part of it, for it was at the heart of Jesus' own ministry and teaching...' The footnote to the page adds 'If you are concerned about any unusual, puzzling or troubling incidents, please contact the Bishop's office'. I very frequently am of course, but I suspect they wouldn't appreciate me phoning up every five minutes about the things which trouble me!
Off the hill and closer to the town centre is St. Barnabas'. It represents a slightly earlier period of church building than St. Mark's sixties' small-scale functionalism. I guess St. Barnabas' to be a creature of the nineteen thirties, massively brick built, like a holy relative of Cambridge's blank-faced, monolithic University Library, though in a much nicer material. It's no surprise to find that both churches are closed to visitors today. How could it be otherwise in this untidy, needy town? The descent into Wellingborough down Oxford Road is bleak, although it's personal memories which colour that. There to my left is Westlands Care Home where lovely Joan, my mother-in-law spent her last months declining into a largely benign dementia, which for all its benignity was immensely distressing for those of us who watched. She'd always been an energetic, kindly soul, known to many in Weston Favell because she believed you ought to be nice to and interested in everyone you met, even if you merely passed them in the street. Her talent for creative play made our Matt the man he is now, capable of deep thought, possessed of an amazing, compassionate work ethic, and a capacity for the best kind of silliness.
I stop by the Tithe Barn, and think of the monks of Croyland Abbey who founded an outpost of their fenland House here by the Swanspool and were rewarded by having a car dealership named after them. Because of them ancient Waendelburgh grew to become today's Wellingborough. The old name survives in the annual Maytime 'Waendel Walk' which beats the bounds of the town.
Open for business?
Behind the Market Square (the medieval regulations permitted a Wednesday-only market here, but commerce got the better of that notion yonks ago) is the oldest extant building: All Hallows church. Behind heavy duty, firmly closed gates across the porch I can just glimpse a sign welcoming visitors. It's the second hostage to fortune I've encountered today. Earlier I'd smiled at a Borough Council notice which shouted across a derelict parade of shops that it was working in partnership with the local community (in vandalism? in bankruptcy?) You can't only blame the clergy, there are all kinds of risks with open churches, and it's too easy to stand from afar and be critical, but isn't it obvious that if Christians want to make a favourable and lasting impression on the public, a church like All Hallows has got to be at the forefront of our presentation during working hours? At the moment it's too easy for people to ignore us.
The Victorian churches in this town are all huge, none more so than the URC: a huge temple of a place just up the hill. There was once a great deal of money sloshing around, and now it's all gone. I go to look for the Kilburn School of Dancing in Rock Street, now resident in a low profile, low rise building. When I left teaching, during the transitional year in which I slowly emerged as a professional musician, I drove once a week to Kilburn's former building in a vain attempt to enthuse the ten or so full-time students about singing. I hadn't a clue what I was doing, and I shouldn't think they benefited one iota from what I said, but I was cheap and I probably ticked a box for Kilburn's prospectus. I remember one of the girls was a junior lion-tamer. The one boy (poor, or lucky?) was called Kriss, though I assume that was a nom de guerre. To cheer myself up I used to play a cassette of Springsteen's 'Hungry Heart' on the way there and back. Quite loudly, drowning out my sorrows and doubts.
I have an appalling pulled pork wrap at the newly re-opened Castle Theatre. It's not the wrap or the pulled pork that's the problem, it's the mayo, the BBQ sauce, the coleslaw, the strange things in the salad they don't tell you about that combine to make it so dreadful. And all for a fiver. It gives a new meaning to the idea of 'take away' food. Please! Just take it away! Boom boom. I'd have paid more for them not to muck the meat about. However, I'm very glad that the funding has been found to give Wellingborough back its cultural heart.
Round the corner is another vast palace of religion, All Saints Church, whose nineteenth century architects probably had in mind a Roman-style basilica. Its geographical proximity to All Hallows means that they function as twin stars in Wellingborough's central ecclesiastical firmament. It's here that young Harrison Cook from our church has recently found a home for his enthusiastic musical talents. And again, within a half-mile or so is St. Mary's. Now I know from Simon Jenkins' 'Thousand Best Churches' to expect something special here: it's one of only three four-star rated churches in the county, which puts it in his UK top one hundred. So rather exceptionally, I knock on the keyholder's door, and ask if I can look inside. Peter Walker slowly and carefully establishes that I'm not going to steal the family silver and opens up. As Jenkins notes, the exterior isn't remarkable, but the interior is truly staggering. The Gothic inspired design is by Sir Ninian Comper, dating from 1908, under the financial patronage of the three Misses Sharman, and there are echoes of Italy all around the worshipper, though the ornate rood screen is British tradition incarnate. The money ran out, of course it did, so what Comper intended as a final decorative result is best seen in the lavish gilt and colouring of the side chapel. But even as eventually finished in the nineteen fifties, the main body of the church invokes in me a great sense of calm, something to do with the size of the space relative to the number of seats. This was a late-flowering part of the dreams which once existed for Wellingborough in the decades after the coming of the railway, when the tree-lined Midland Road would enable elegant folk to walk with their parasols (to provide shade from the sun not the rain - Wellingborough has less precipitation than almost anywhere in the UK) up to the town centre. And to their right as they walked would be the splendour of St. Mary's, which now sits incongruously among the growing urban deprivation of Knox Road.
Peter tells me that the church is full each week. It's a centre of Anglo-Catholic ritual so intense it undoubtedly eclipses the Roman Catholics round the corner, and so people come from far and wide to participate - or perhaps just to be present - amid the grandeur of procession, incense and music. Do they have a choir, I ask? Peter tells me they have a Cantor, who was in the West End in 'Chess' and 'Phantom of the Opera'. It fits somehow. Peter smiles at the thought that the Bishop probably doesn't entirely approve of what goes on within the walls of St. Mary's. I'm unsure that I do either, but then, I'm reminded of Christ being anointed with spikenard, and think to myself that back when there was all that dosh in Wellingborough, this wasn't the worst use of it. But how to go on caring for it now? Ninian Comper wanted to be buried here, but they stuck him in Westminster Abbey, which is what you get for being good at art.
Before I go, Peter and I talk about Wellingborough's future, which is in a dramatically expanded housing stock, most of it to the east of town, where presumably it will become one with Rushden.
And so this is a little local test of the theory that building houses gets you out of the financial doldrums. Will Wellingborough's struggling economy recover and return prosperity to the place? The politicians believe so. I hope as the French say 'ca vaut la peine'. But the police will tell you that the EDL are strong around here, so something must be done.
The last Wellingborough church I visit today is St. Andrew's, up on the estates around the western edge of town, where friend Michelle runs the show. I hum and hah about phoning her beforehand, but decide to leave it to chance. In the event she's in the middle of talking a couple through a forthcoming funeral, but leaves them considering hymn options for a few minutes to show me the compact, friendly, neat space which is the church. Things are on the up. The congregation is increasing in number, and they're working with her to make the parish more effective. Michelle is lovely, so I'm not at all surprised, but it's good to see that she's in good spirits. Here's a parish which in some respects is the polar opposite to St. Mary's. Belief-wise they probably share a catholic perspective, but the manner of expressing what they believe is very different. If Revival is to come to Wellingborough, all hands are needed on deck, financially, culturally, and in terms of faith. Nationally the same is true. Can a Phoenix arise, post-Brexit, post post-modernism?
Stats Man: 19 km. 6 hours. 15 degrees C, and sunny most of the day. A chilly breeze. Six churches: entrance effected into three of them, by invitation or request. One eating experience, regrettable. One fly tip (avoided). No stiles (unsurprising). Nine gates. Sundry bridges across the Swanspool.
Father
These rhythms all around us:
The way the Church ebbs and flows:
In fashion/out of fashion:
Enthusiastic/withdrawn:
Promoted/persecuted:
Processional/Puritan:
Waxing and waning:
It probably seems insignificant to You.
But down here on the ground,
It's so easy to be worried,
Caught up in the preoccupations of today,
Anxious about the way things seem to be going.
Thank You for the faithful people I meet:
Trying to make sense of the Gospel:
Trying to follow You.
Add me to their number
By Your grace.
So may Revival come. Or not.
Whatever You will.
I ask it in Your name,
Amen.
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