A woman riding a pretty
brown mare and leading a pony with her spare hand comes towards the Audi as I
drive the lane to Braunston (Rutland). I slow to walking pace. Then without
warning the mare rears at the car. Thankfully the pony behaves perfectly but
still it’s a ‘moment’ that makes the heart go boom diddy boom.
I’m anticipating another
mudbath out on the paths today, and though at the previous close of play my use
of Belton’s church for the removal of filthy trousers was improvised, today I’m
planning ahead. I park outside All Saints, Braunston and check the church is
open: I’ll need it later…
I walk round outside the
west end to inspect the church’s celebrity stone (see the previous post).
I’m not convinced it’s a true Sheela, but what do I know? The carving’s very
indistinct, and some say has been further damaged in recent decades. I wonder
whether it’s a grotesque interior church feature removed in a restoration,
thought inappropriate because it could be seen as a woman with bare breasts.
How can I put it decorously? The figure lacks some of the other attributes one
might expect in a true fertility symbol. Wikipedia opines it may have had an
‘apotropaic’ purpose – the evil eye and all that.
I take a path that crosses
the little River Gwash to follow its line on the fields above. Where things get
too sticky, I drop down to the roads to walk past the site of Brooke Priory.
Above ground nothing survives. It seems to have been a poor place, providing
for three Augustinian canons who once made themselves useful ministering to the
bodies and souls of local residents. What may have been its only great treasure
can still be seen in Oakham’s museum, a reliquary beautifully decorated in
Limoges champlevé enamel applied to a copper base, discovered in the basement
of the priory’s successor Big(gish) House. Such an artefact must have been
revered and treasured, glowing among the dun colours of fourteenth century
Rutland life, a focus for wonder and faith.
Sweet soul music, Wilson
Pickett, Otis, and the Four Tops issue from the churchyard of St. Peter’s
church. The tower’s being re-pointed, and minor works are in progress on the
timbers. I chat to one of the craftsmen, who’s done a lot of stuff for the Churches
Conservation Trust. St. Peter’s is a little star of a building with a bare
chapel, lean of dry wood and stone. Simon Jenkins likes it too, and there’s
even a photo of it in 1000 Best Churches, showing off the ironstone against a
dramatic stormy sky. He says ‘We enter through the south door, a
Transitional arch of the most ostentatious carving…box pews fill the nave, and
in the chancel are boxed stalls…in the north chapel…is a 1619 alabaster
memorial…despite its age (Charles Noel) is clad in ancient armour, like a
medieval knight…the Norman hinges on the north door are extraordinary, even
sinister. They are shaped like giant fishbones, centipedes or spiders,
according to taste… What a place to work in for a week. Go and see it. If you do and it seems vaguely familiar,
you may be right. St. Peter’s was recruited for the 2005 film of Pride and
Prejudice. Keira Knightly woz ‘ere.
Away from the village I
find myself climbing on what the OS assures me is my old acquaintance the
Macmillan Way, though there are no signs to say so. Near the top of the ridge I
turn left on a track much trafficked by tractors and horses. I squelch along, an
elderly circus act, balancing precariously on its edges with my stick to reach
the metalled lane of Brooke Road aka the Leighfield Way muddy but
unbowed, bowling on down towards Oakham, county town of Rutland.
All Saints’ spire stands
up proudly from the town centre: you can’t miss it. What’s the ‘emotive
meaning’ of such a building for today’s residents? For me of course, it’s about
(lol) inspiration. It tells me I’m in Britain, or at least in northern
Europe. It’s a nudge to faith, a finger pointing to heaven. It associates
immediately to all the lovely things and people I may find adjacent to it. The
word ‘spire’ is possibly nothing to do with the Spirit or ‘breath’. Those who
know link it to ‘spear’, and the pointy bits of flowers, shrubs and trees, but
regardless, I can’t help thinking of a spire as funnelling down the wind
of God’s goodness and channelling up the people’s prayers.
Oakham and Rutland have
recently been newsworthy for an unsuccessful attempt to keep McDonald’s out of
the county. Which makes the sign at the city limit announcing Oakham’s twinning
with Dodgeville, Wisconsin a rib-tickler. You could say that under Trump the
whole of the USA has become Dodgeville.
I walk across the
Peterborough to Leicester railway at a level crossing, and then past Oakham
Cricket Club, reminding me that England fast bowler Stuart Broad spent his
teenage years at the town’s famous public school. Sound the klaxons: here comes
a paragraph about cricket! Broad is still, I think, something of a curiosity for
such a highly successful and effective player. As a schoolboy he was a batsman,
but then he began to gain height (he’s 6’5”) and was turned into a quick
bowler. From the comfort of my armchair he’s always seemed to have an ungainly
action, not using his left arm to any great degree, and his wickets tend to
come in great clumps, which alternate with ‘dry’ patches when his bowling seems
almost benign. There was a time when he seemed destined to be a great
all-rounder, but having been hit in the face by the Indian fast bowler Varun
Aaron, the batting has fallen away. Nevertheless, as they say, he can still hit
a long ball, and he has a scything, ferocious cover drive, on occasion enormously
frustrating to opposition bowlers.
Oakham is the County Town
time forgot. There are genteel ladies’ clothes’ parlours, design emporia,
antiques for sale, posh cake shops, and yes regrettably, if you really, really
want, you can get yourself a tattoo. Admittedly, the stylish Post Office has
closed and relocated to McColls’ newsagents. The smart young people of the
College stroll the streets at lunchtime, looking like the future Home
Secretaries and Captainpersons of Industry they’ll undoubtedly become. There’s
even a nice untrashy, old-fashioned market to sell you fruit, flowers, veg and
linen. Before I investigate the town history, I have an Earl Grey and a clever
sandwich at The Larder in Mill Street, where everything’s tickety-boo under the
control of Alyson, Iain and Kym (this is sounding like a local paper
restaurant review). If they cared to open up a second set of premises in
Northampton, I’d probably be in there every day, and get myself a soubriquet,
perhaps as ‘Vichyssoise Vince’. (From an overheard conversation I gather favourite
and regular customers have been known to acquire pet names - with the
customers’ permission and encouragement!)
So am I in the North now,
or still in the South? Well, yes, technically I’m neither in one or the other:
this is The Midlands. I’m certainly not in the East, where for televisual
purposes Northampton has paradoxically ended up, along with much of the rest of
the diocese.
It’s strange that more
than a hundred and fifty years since Mrs. Gaskell published ‘North and South’,
the UK is still in the throes of debate about the relationship between the two
halves of England. Yet, having walked in my native Kent two days previously, there
seem to be some not-so-subtle differences of attitude even between there and
here (distance 130 miles). And all this despite the internet, and motorways,
and the myriad readjustments to British life that have come about during our
lifetimes. South-east of London there’s more than a small sense of nouveau
riche: a defensiveness too. Everyone seems to want to mark and defend their
property, and establish their wealth credentials in ways that sometimes look rather
tasteless and crass to me. The manufacturers of iron railings, the better to
surround the roadfront of one’s property, are doing a roaring trade. But then,
I’ve been living in the ‘Midlands’ for forty-five years now, so I’ve become
part of the divisiveness that accompanies diversity. These days all of us are
more suspicious of the mildly strange or different. It comes as a shock to
realise I no longer trust many of the people among whom I was born.
Trust, or a lack of it, is
engendered in so many complex and varied ways (and now I’m thinking about the
Church). It’s most obviously nurtured by seeing how someone behaves over a
period of time, and being able to like and predict what they’ll do in any new
situation. Yet language in all its nuances plays a part (how oldies despise the
street talk of the young!) and perhaps body chemicals, and also our past
experiences (our personal ‘baggage’). Then we must factor in ethnicity, and the
customs of other groups/communities/families.
Among all the chatter
about HS2, and the relocation of the BBC or the House of Lords, nobody’s
talking much about building trust between north and south, between
individuals within the Church, between clergy and people, between politicians
and electors.
So back to the emotive
meaning of the spire. You can make a case that there’s always been a vein of
anti-clericalism in British (English?) culture, as evidenced by literary works
from Chaucer to Austen. But the grooming scandals, and the boom in aggressive
secularism, fuelled across the religious divides by anti-Islamic feeling, now
has the middle class making a metaphorical sign of the cross whenever they
encounter faith, except when they want to use the Church for rites of passage.
And the middle classes have always been the drivers of British Christianity,
haven’t they? So when the ‘unchurched’ see a spire, unlike us, perhaps they
shudder, or say ‘not them again!’.
Is this something we’re
prepared to accept submissively, like this weekend’s coming Storm Ciara, or the
coronavirus? There was a chorus in Junior Praise which we used to sing, though
it’s fallen off the hymn roster of late: ‘Be bold, be strong, for the Lord
your God is with you.’ And there I go, preaching again. In Christ there is no East or West/In Him
no North or South – nor Clergy or Laity, nor Catholic or Evangelical etc.
etc.
The Great Hall of Oakham
Castle is a blast, built for feasting, frivolities and much else by the
Normans. These days you can go there to imagine yourself a judge or in the dock
at an Assize, and you can hire it for your own wedding too, though I’m not sure
where the ceilidh band would go. It’s been beautifully re-decorated, and is a
great place for an educational visit. There’s a rack of period costumes to one
side. A moustachio-ed gentleman from Moldova or Belarus under a misapprehension
about my status asks me ‘Plis, is it to put on the clothes?’ I direct
him to the enthusiastic council staff.
There’s something going on
in All Saints church (another Simon Jenkins mention). It’s an Oakham School organ recital. I surreptitiously open the
south door, and rather cartoonishly, every head swivels towards me in
disapproval. I back away as quietly as I can to avoid interrupting the
Buxtehude, and go round to the entrance under the tower for a peek through the
glass. Not only is someone clearing the mice from the pipes of the Ken
Tickell-built organ, but today’s scheduled programme is for ‘organ and
drums’ which carries awful connotations of ‘summer seasons’ at Butlins’ c.
1970. I see a large Sonor kit sitting on
the chancel steps and step away. I was never one for drum solos, although of
course I may be about to miss out on a prog-rock extravaganza.
Out of town I walk across
the Vale of Catmose to Egleton church (Eggle-ton? Eagle-ton? Egg-le-ton?)
which sits prettily at the end of a field path, surrounded by snowdrops. The
paths and fields are oh so slowly drying out, but will get another drenching
this weekend from Storm Ciara. As I sit inside St. Edmund’s, I remember Jean
Eggleton and a drama course at the Baptist church in Erith during the Easter
holiday of 1963, at the end of a winter very different from this one. Then the
snow was still lying in April, as it had been for the previous three months,
even in suburban London. Jean was listening to her tranny, The Beatles were
singing ‘I wanna hold your hand and life started to reveal whole
new possibilities...
Well, I did promise you
some rock n’roll.
Book of Numbers: 16.5 km 5
hrs. plus a 45 min lunch at The Larder. 8 degrees and mostly sunny after the
early mist, although a little more cloud towards dusk. 7 stiles. 18 gates. 6 bridges.
Great Father God
I’m scared.
A coming storm.
Coronavirus.
My own mortality.
Bad politics at home
and abroad.
I know.
Nothing can separate me
from the love of Christ.
But just right now
I don’t feel it.
Sustain me
Lift me up.
Help me to be brave for
others.
Amen.
Well, as a matter of fact
it is very cloudy*, actually misty and dreakh, as I park the car
opposite the church in Belton. A pretty young woman walking her dog greets me
with a cheery hello. This of course gladdens my heart, but the emotional lift
is mitigated by the understanding that what she sees is a daft old codger
inefficiently compiling his stick, hat, boots and pack from the tailgate, and
were I my former youthful and handsome self (I should've been so lucky!)
she’d probably have ignored me. But let’s be sunnier than the weather. Maybe sociability and good manners are just par for the course in Rutland.
There are very lovely
views to both sides on the way over the border to Loddington. I’m in
Leicestershire now, and for a reason. The Dioceses of Leicester and
Peterborough share a retreat house at Launde Abbey, and that’s where I’m headed.
But first, Loddington, to which I descend by a lane on which not a single
vehicle passes me in the couple of miles from Belton. The church of St. Michael
and All Angels isn’t where you’d expect it to be - near the crossroads in the
little village. It’s over a field, through a gate and up a muddy green track
fringed with a carpet of snowdrops. In fact, there are no metalled paths to the
church’s door at all. My exit to a lane which doubles as a stream for thirty
metres is also grassed, with the exception of a few rough stone steps. This was a plague village and when it was rebuilt the new houses were placed at
a distance to all those bad, disturbing memories.
As I write this of course,
the novel coronavirus is big news, and who knows what threat it may yet pose
beyond the Chinese frontiers. I ask myself, if the worst came to the worst,
what should Christian congregations be encouraged to do? I only observe that
our consciences sometimes make us reluctant to stay away from worship and
allied events (choir practices, shared lunches, PCCs etc.) because we feel
we’re letting God down by our absence, and so opportunities are given for
viruses to do what they’re built for, and replicate. We have some means at our
disposal to gather together collectively on line, but inevitably this would
exclude some older and poorer members – exactly the people who need community
and communion the most. We were very good at hand sanitisation during the swine
‘flu epidemic. Will that be enough this time? Please God, yes!
The road climbs again past
an obviously converted one-time school house and ‘School Farm’, both dated to
around 1870, at the beginnings of elementary education for all, although how
many children were ever catered for in this sparsely populated area I don’t
know. At Copthill Farm the ewes are ready to drop, and I think of the lovely
Scottish air ‘Ca the yowes’, and then of my favourite TV ad – for
Specsavers – the one where the short-sighted farmer accidentally shears his
collie. (The music for that is an Irish song called Mo Ghile Mear… which
reminds me a bit of the better known Scottish ballad.)
At the top of the rise,
there’s a splendid view down to Launde, comfortably set down among the low
hills. The ‘Abbey’ looks Victorian now, but inside are remnants of its
former buildings and status, notably in its small chapel. An Augustinian priory
was founded here in 1119, by Richard Basset (long-time visitors to this blog may remember my
visit to Sutton Basset a year or so ago, out on the Diocese’s western
flank). Thomas Cromwell took a shine to Launde and had it earmarked for his
personal enjoyment, but the King removed his head shortly afterwards, and
occupancy was left to Thomas’ son Gregory, who’ll be well known to readers of
Hilary Mantel.
(Reading back the next few paragraphs, I realise I've come over all intellectual, so either skip a few, or sit in for a bit of Radio 3. I know, I know, it's not a way to build readership in 2020. I'll try to remember to be more rock n'roll next time...)
How do you feel about
‘retreats’? They don’t come easily to me, I must admit, but I see their merits
– and maybe some dangers. Sometimes parish life becomes sooo intense. Little
niggles become big issues and people fall out with each other from misunderstanding
rather than real differences. As in families, a little time away, even for just
24 hours, can lend a bit of perspective to events, and help set new and better
priorities, or re-establish energy for existing ones. On the other hand, the
exclusion of key individuals because of cost or other commitments can entrench
distrust…
It seems marvellous to me
that we have a safe space where all Anglican traditions can come together and
find something which speaks to their particular path to God, and as far as I
can judge Launde provides that. As so often I turn to Diarmaid MacCulloch, who
writes as a critical friend to the Christian faith, rather than as a devotional
aid (though perversely, I often find what he says helps me at least in that way
too). In his History of Christianity
he writes (pp. 487 ff.) about the Hesychasts and their opponents within the Eastern
church during the fourteenth century. At its heart this was a debate/controversy
concerning the knowability or not of God, and how one could know him.
It’s a tension between personal revelation and tradition/scripture which plays
out repeatedly, one could say, in the phylogeny of the Church (the ebb
and flow of theory and theology) and in our own particular ontogeny –
which is to say we as individuals may feel either thing to be most important at
some time in our lives, or even to think both things central/crucial at
the same time. (Is such a thing strictly
possible?)
By inclination, and partly
by training, I’m a shades of grey person. I tend to see merit in both
sides of an argument, and generally think that no one has a monopoly on the
right belief or moral attitude. There’s a lot to be said for Hegelian dialectic
as a process where (in its most naïve sense) a synthesis is arrived at
after the propagation or proposal of a thesis and its antithesis.
Even as I write this, I’m thinking of a piano-playing debate I’ve stumbled across about how one should approach Mendelssohn’s Songs
Without Words? Does one take seriously the comparisons some have drawn with
Mozart, and like a youthful Barenboim, play the Lieder lightly and in
a kind of ‘surface meaning’ way, or as might befit a composer living when Mendelssohn
did (Victoria and Albert’s Elton John-alike!), tackle them with fully-blown
Romantic sonority and the largest possible dynamic contrast? Is there a
Hegelian solution here? Not really.
Well, you can take your
pick re: Mendelssohn, and it’s of no great consequence, and as BBC interviewers are apt to do,
opine that it’s a debate which will run and run, though goodness knows some
people will get all het up about anything. But seeing Both Sides Now in
matters of faith (or social policy, or politics) sometimes just leads to incapacity:
we’re rabbits in the intellectual headlights. Which can lead critics to mistake
this for being a paid-up member of the Laodicea (Revelation 3: 14-22). But
there’s nothing lukewarm about aporia. It can be a hot anxiety.
Still with me…? As I say, I like to think Launde and similar places
are safe spaces where all of this can be explored, along with the day to day,
mundane nitty gritty of living the down and dirty Christian life.
Talking of down and dirty,
that just about describes the next three quarters of an hour, having eschewed
the metalled route on towards Withcote, and chosen the hem-hem more direct
approach by a path over the hill. It’s sodden and pitted and ultimately
frustrating because I can’t find a way to what from the pictures looks like a
perfect little Georgian chapel maintained by the Conservation Trust, and which
is now always open, according to the kind ladies on the Abbey reception desk. Then
the path veers uphill again over three more fields of increasingly mucky
pasture until it gains the ridge at about 180 metres, where a farmer has
blocked the right of way with an electric fence. Sigh! At least the views west
over Leicestershire are some compensation.
Then it’s downhill all the
way to Braunston-in-Rutland (to be distinguished from the Northamptonshire
canal village) along a stretch of road known as The Wisp. I’m going to
make a guess that this was where the mist gathered, though the Web tells me
‘wisp’ is also a collective noun for snipe. Who knew?
The clock on All Saints
church in oh so pretty Braunston is bright blue, and large, and stuck on the
tower in most unusual and whimsical fashion. The churchyard is also host to a
Sheela-na-gig which formed the one side of a doorstep, such that the fertility
(?) carving was hidden for centuries and people would have trodden on or across
it on their way into worship, knowingly or not. Both these things suggest a
long-standing vein of good humour in Braunston to me. And no one quite knows
what to make of Sheela-na-gigs.
The day’s drawing in and
the way back to Belton is up hill and down dale by pleasant and straight lanes.
The light level’s very low, and I’m reminded of those wonderful gloomy early
Mondrian paintings where perhaps beguiled by Theosophical thoughts he’s
fascinated by the lack of light across the flat Dutch landscape (or
maybe just trying out a challenge on light-obsessed, value-light
Impressionists). The birds fall silent, except for a solitary screech owl and
the flap and call of a pheasant I disturb as I pass. I relax my brain, and let
the legs take over.
Members of the PCC: 21 km. Nearly
six hours. 11 deg. 6 stiles. 7 gates. 4 bridges. The church of St. Peter,
Belton conveniently open as I return, so that I can divest myself of trousers
that post-Withcote look as if I’ve been caving. Taking one’s trousers off in
church feels particularly transgressive.
Lord
When all’s said and
done
We’re no better than
the ancients.
We stand in awe
At the mystery of the
world you’ve created here
And the greater
mysteries that lie beyond.
We thank you for the
extraordinary beauty
Pervading the natural
world around us
And the people we know
and love.
Our heart fills with
gratitude
That we’ve been granted
the experience of this day.
We pray that our
response to your love
May not be found
unworthy.
We pray it through your
Son
Our Saviour, Jesus
Christ.
Amen.
*Bows and flows of angel
hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere
I’ve looked at clouds that way
But now they only block the sun
They rain and snow on everyone
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way
I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down and still somehow
It’s cloud illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all.
Joni
Mitchell
