Raw material for the Championships
Apparently a great opportunity awaits you on October
13th, and boy, are we all going to need some cheering up this autumn!
Sign up now. There’s just the chance you could become a World Champion – at
conkers. The hosting of this prestigious event is just one of the many charming
and quirky things about Ashton (near Oundle, as opposed to the one up the road
from Roade!)
Like many of his family Charles Rothschild (b. 1877)
was a banker, but there was much more to the chap than that. He was passionate
about Natural History, and the family story is that he was drawn to the area of
Ashton - where as in many other places the Rothschilds had a house and land - because
of the plethora of butterflies to be found there. He employed the architect
William Huckvale to pull down the old house at Ashton Wold and build a new,
healthier one furnished with all the turn-of-the-century mod cons. He also
built a model village for the estate workers near the Polebrook road in a style
that recalls the more famous Edwin Lutyens, providing an enlightened degree of
comfort for a community of ordinary people too. Charles’ interest in the
natural world passed to his daughter Miriam, who became a world expert on
fleas.
There’s no church in Ashton as such, but there is the
‘Creed Chapel’, which was built in the eighteenth century on a parcel of land
known as ‘Play Close’ near what is now the Chequered
Skipper pub. The ecclesiastical history of this little chapel is odd. Never
consecrated, it was only licensed for ‘divine service’ after many decades. The Creed
family charity provided for a clergyperson to come to Ashton until as late as
the nineteen eighties, at which time it decided to concentrate on its major
function of supporting the education of the village children . The door’s
locked so I can’t get in, and so don’t get to see the family paintings.
I’m replaying my last walk in reverse as far as the
shooting range, which I now know to be for the young men and women of Oundle
School, so should be safe to cross during the summer vacation. I find being in
the presence of guns anxiety-provoking – it causes an unpleasant, visceral,
sympathetic, stomach lurch. There’s been much discussion about firearms in
recent days: two more mass shootings in the US, greeted with the usual faulty
reasoning and hypocrisy by their politicians and lobbyists, and calls in the UK
for the police to be routinely armed after an unprovoked machete attack on an
officer. This is surely not way-to-go. As with Nixon and Reagan, unorthodox
Republican presidents sometimes achieve the unexpected. It’s probably within
his power for Trump to make some limited moves towards gun control in the US,
but whether he’ll deem it an electoral plus or minus is another matter – and I
suppose that’s probably the significant factor.
I hang a left and follow the bridleway across the
fields to Tansor Lodge. Once I’m on the far side of the A605, I find myself in
a field system with a gang of sprightly young calves, who look like they’re up
for a rumble. They sprint along behind a hedge a hundred metres away on a
parallel line, clearly aware of my presence, play peek-a-boo at a water trough,
and then bounce round the field’s short side to huddle challengingly near the
gated exit. ‘Yeah, well, watcha gonna do
about it?’ seems to be the message: a
bunch of teddy boys fingering their flick knives. Maybe they’ve seen West Side
Story. (I’ve certainly been watching Shaun
The Sheep!) I try to look as big as possible, and as
little like a source of food or entertainment as possible, and maintain a firm
path towards the gate. When I’m within a couple of cricket pitches’ distance,
they do an ‘only kidding’ and make like they’re being pursued by a team of rancheros with lassoes back whence they
came. Kids, eh!
Near Tansor, I cross to the road through a field of
near-ripened wheat, and my mind goes to the story which provoked Jesus to his
comment that the Sabbath was made for man, and not the other way round. I think
(because my dad‘s in my mind a lot this week) how childhood Sundays in the
Cross household seemed pretty much like a day of work rather than a day of
rest. I’m still dealing with this sixty years later, still trying to grasp the
fact that worship should be fun, relaxation, mind-expanding, full of colour and
light: something that also seemed to be
eluding Libby Purves in a particularly cranky Times article a week ago, in the course of which she laid about her
to all sides, including condemning Peterborough Cathedral for temporarily installing
the space capsule which took Tim Peake to and from the ISS. Libby, there’s a
great deal to be said about this, but to start with (and I don’t know if you
took the time to visit?) it was pretty discreetly situated in a vast building.
And Christians are often criticised for not being science-friendly, whereas in
truth faith for many of us is only enhanced by our understanding that the
universe is impossibly vast, and we impossibly insignificant by its standards,
and yet God cares for us, just as much as he notices a sparrow’s fall. Etc.
The theme has been picked up in today’s BBC News
website, not mentioning Peterborough, but renewing Libby’s attack on cathedrals:
Norwich, where a helter-skelter has been erected in the nave, and Rochester,
where they’ve set up a nine hole crazy golf course celebrating bridge-building.
Yes OK, a bit weird, but hey, I haven’t been down to play a round, so
provisionality ought to be the order of the day. And after all, thinking high
culture, Caravaggio isn’t exactly to everyone’s taste either. Yet Gavin
Ashenden, a Bishop in the breakaway Christian Episcopal Church offers the
opinion that the clergy at Norwich had been ‘unprofessional’
and were ‘making a mistake about what a
cathedral is good for’. I know it’s the silly season, but I’d hope the BBC
could be clearer that as far as mainstream Anglicanism is concerned Gavin isn’t
one of us, not now. He may indeed have been a chaplain to Her Majesty, but resigned
from all that some while ago. In the way of things schismatic he would of
course maintain that he’s the
mainstream, and it’s all of us C. of E. remainers who are crazy in our
women-ordaining, space-capsule loving apostasy. You’ve heard my refrain before,
but we Anglicans are better together.
And Christians are better together too. There’s nothing wrong in disagreeing
strongly, but we should declare our interests properly. Gavin, and possibly
Libby, please take note. And BBC, please find yourself some editors of greater
competence for your influential website.
St. Mary’s, Tansor is an oasis on a humid sticky
morning. Both south and north doors are open so a cool breeze wafts through,
and birdsong is the music which accompanies my prayer and reading. It’s a
church of nooks and crannies, many of which, as Pevsner has pointed out, are
now beyond resolution or explanation, the accretion of need and fancy through
many centuries. Libby Purves would like Tansor too, I think. Maybe even Gavin
Ashenden. Oh no, sorry, the vicar’s a woman. I forgot.
Onwards along lanes, through Cotterstock where I have
a fight to get into St. Andrew’s churchyard, let alone its high-towered
building (I kick the gate hard to force it open – maybe the churchwarden has a
better knack!) and forward to Glapthorn where low-slung St. Leonard’s backs on
to a working farm. I can imagine Nativity services there might easily be
accompanied by the lowing of real life cattle. Of the two villages, Cotterstock
is the more apparently up-market, offering gracious buildings and a jolly mill.
Glapthorn seems more workaday, stretching out longingly towards Oundle, only a
mile distant across the fields. Not
everything about Cotterstock is classy. At the Manor, amongst a selection of
admonitory notices aimed at the would-be intruder there’s one which reads ‘Smile, your on camera!’ I resist the temptation to ring the bell on
their gate intercom, and begin a conversation: ‘Did you know…?’
St. Andrew's Cotterstock
And so to Oundle, the first of three towns out in the
east of the diocese which are more or less defined by the schools named after
them. If any American friends are reading this, these are our ‘public schools’,
by which of course we mean ‘private schools’, last bastions of the famous
English class system – an opinion which the schools themselves would of course
hotly dispute. Change has come, not least because Oundle school is now co-ed,
but a seven year stint there for a day pupil is going to cost over £125k, and
boarding maybe a cool quarter of a million once everything’s taken into
account. The facilities are marvellous, reminiscent of an Oxbridge college, and
perhaps the contacts they make at their Oundala Mater will set pupils up for
life, but this isn’t working towards an egalitarian society. However when a new Ferrari 812 Superfast is a
snip at £338k from your local South Kensington dealer, Public School education
begins to look cheap. The morality and desirability of both perhaps needs to be
interrogated by each new generation.
The school buildings press in on all sides around the
lofty needle spire and well-proportioned body of St. Peter’s church. In the
context of the foregoing, is the slogan prominently displayed on all sides of
the church as pointy as the spire?
The child in me is really pleased when the automated
church doors swing open for me to enter. Simon Jenkins thinks the interior
‘rather dull’, but I think it’s wonderful. The airy sense of space, and the
soft light suffusing the harmonious decoration makes it a lovely, thoughtful,
worship space. Everything reinforces the message that this is an inclusive
church where all are welcome. Years ago that excellent slide guitarist Bryn
Haworth recorded a Christian song called ‘We’re
all one’. I remember standing in the crowd at Greenbelt and singing along
with 25,000 others…and feeling a little uneasy about the experience. There was
too much of a Hare Krishna chant about it for my taste, but then I’ve always
been wary of the mass reactions of rock n’roll/festival audiences. (I’ve never
felt so alone as amongst the punters at a Fish gig, feet sticking to the
Northampton Roadmender’s beer-swilled floor, while everyone except me was
punching the air and shouting the lyrics of each song. And I like Fish’s
music!)
Thirty years later the swelling cult of the individual
causes one to revisit the possible ideas behind ‘We’re all one’. Leaving aside any unintended Buddhist
interpretation, how do you read it? And who is left outside our cosy psycho-physical unity? Not Gavin Ashenden or Libby
Purves for sure, however much we might disagree with them. But thinking
politically for a moment, are there any ideas which disqualify from entry to
the Christian tent? Or if not from entry ( because only sick people go to
hospital) then from claiming permanent membership status? Our first definition
as Christians is clearly by who we are – positively – and Who we follow. Should
we ever secondarily define ourselves by what we’re not?
As you’ll have gathered, I really like the vibe of
Oundle’s church, and it goes on the list of: ‘I could worship here week by week'.
One small gripe however. In the pews there are copies of St. Peter’s
‘Supplementary Songbook’. Their regular hymnbook is the familiar red-covered Hymns Ancient and Modern. The supplement
gives a customised selection of more modern well-known hymns written and
published after A&M’s issue. This is good, but nowhere in the supplement
can I find any credit for the writers and publishers of the hymns. At best this
is rude, and at worst it’s illegal and (this is going to sound very harsh) a kind of theft – though readers will
appreciate that as a sort-of-meeja person I have a particular bias. The hymns
aren’t the property of any individual or church, and their writers get very
little, if any, reward for their efforts. They deserve this small celebration.
It’s an omission which could easily be put right.
An Oundle scene...
In the sunshine, the Thursday market is winding down.
I pass the Seven Wells butchers’ shop, purveyors of most excellent sausages,
and take a coffee and cake in the café near the lane down to the Co-op. A large
local family gathering occupies half the dining area with their friends, the kids
mildly out of control, the adults invading my personal space as I’m served at
the counter. I have to laugh at myself, so much a campaigner for the common
people at one moment, so annoyed when I actually have to mix with them the very
next. I suspect (though I don't have the carapace to be one) it’s a perennial dilemma for politicians. And the church?
Passes at
GCSE: 15 km. 5 hrs. 24 deg.C. Four
stiles. Thirteen gates. Five bridges. Five churches and chapels. Two open. I
don’t visit Oundle School’s chapel, which I maybe could have done. I look for kingfishers
at the Nene crossing, but sadly there are none in evidence. I saw one there
once. A preening peacock in Ashton. Six tourists in Oundle church.
The Nene at Ashton
Father
I praise you
for
All the
people
Who can do what
I can’t
And never
will.
I sit in
these churches
And am amazed
At the
accumulated skill:
The
exactitude of the stonemason:
The subtlety
of the wood carver:
The delicacy
of the weaver:
The
enterprise of the architect.
I sit in my
house
Surrounded by
The appliance
of science:
The wonder of
electricity:
The reach of
technology:
The
creativity of entertainment:
All of which
I do no better than half understand.
As I thank
you for
Multiform
human ingenuity
And feel its
fragility,
I ask you to
Have mercy, O
Lord,
And in your
loving kindness
To prevent us
from harm.
Help us be
your partners
To make your
Kingdom come
According to
your will.
Amen.
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