VISITING THOMAS

A smiley man pops out of Church House by the bridge in Wansford, and politely asks me if I’d mind moving the car down a few feet. He’s expecting a delivery of groceries. ‘Of course’ I say. It’s a picturesque place to live. They’re probably plagued with walkers and fisherfolk parking outside their home.

The Nene Way ducks under the old and newer bridges for the A1 (one for each carriageway) and continues to follow the river’s flow towards the North Sea through the clovered Sacrewell fields. I feel sure I’ve walked this part of the long-distance path before, but nothing seems familiar. Perhaps it was just too long ago, or the route’s been altered. Not many folk are using this part of the Nene Way at the moment: the grass has been cleared to a degree, perhaps by wardens, but is fighting back vigorously. Bunnies scuttle across the path (little ones, so not jumping), a huge grey heron takes to the air, and when I eventually emerge onto a wider track near some fractious horses, a guilty fox skulks away. The path angles through a plantation and before I quite realise it, I’m in the hamlet of Sutton beside the little church of St. Michael and All Angels, which was once a chapel of ease for today’s main destination, Castor’s St. Kyneburgha’s. A Wikipedia article tells me that in 2010 St. Michael’s received a £37k grant so that it could become a community hub for the villagers, and that it’s since ‘been improved further with such things as heating systems and carpeting’. Surely not! Honestly - people these days, where’s their backbone?  What does one go to church for except to suffer a bout of good old hypothermia?  Opposite it, at the end of the plantation, there’s a small football pitch and lots of nice apparatus for getting warm again after worship. Sutton is clearly a thoughtful place. (Before anyone shouts at me, yes, absolutely, it’s a struggle for small communities to raise the cash for even modest church improvement, and that’s leaving aside heritage questions which may cause difficulties in getting the necessary faculties). So, joking apart, tick in the box for Sutton.

At the end of Lover’s Lane, a gate opens onto a field where the cattle munch away with fierce concentration. The finger posts offer me two routes to the Nene Valley Railway’s Wansford Station. The slightly longer one requires me to make a too-close-for-comfort transit of the cows, the shorter one lets me leave them undisturbed. I choose the latter. In trainspotting terms, this turns out to be a mistake. The path issues onto an old disused railway embankment which in turn brings me to meadows some way beyond Wansford’s Railway HQ with no visible way back towards it. Bother!  I’m thwarted in my desire to ogle sundry collected delights of heritage transport. More than that, I find the onward route is mostly through armpit high grasses. All kinds of insects lurking therein are overjoyed to find human flesh on the lunch menu. I spend an uncomfortable half hour flapping and scratching. I’m still thoroughly itchy about the arms and face when I get to Normangate Meadows. It’s a sultry day, and the oppressive effect is accentuated by the booming sound of fast jets in the vicinity. A fisherman leaves his rods on the riverbank to climb onto the path where it’s clearer of foliage. He shades his eyes. ‘Can hear ‘em, but can’t see ‘em’, he says, and neither can I. Which is the point of the war games, I suppose – but it’s rather uncanny nonetheless.

With a name like Castor, you’d expect the Romans to have been a major story in the village’s life. Normangate was something of an industrial area for the settlement of Durobrivae whose remains sit under the fields on the Nene’s other, south bank at Water Newton. Ermine Street cuts diagonally across the broad meadow as I look at it, a still discernible raised platform on the sheeped grass. I follow the path to Splash Dike, turn into Splash Lane and find a pub for a ginger ale, before climbing Stocks Hill to St. Kyneburgha’s massively impressive, elegant pile.

There’s so much fascinating history here it’s hard to know where to begin, but let’s start with the church as I find it today, which is open-hearted and generous, with tons of interest in every nook and cranny. The high altar is up three sets of steps, which gives the place the feeling of a tiny cathedral. There’s a beautiful wall painting with Catherine and her baleful wheel of destiny prominent on the lower panel. A wonderfully worked tapestry hangs nearby, the work of the W.I. from 1991, skilfully showing features of the village. A faint whiff of incense is detectable near the altar, or perhaps it’s just the flowers. I think maybe there’s a musical tradition: some modern, movable choir stalls and Herbert Sumsion’s unison setting on the organ. I wonder how they’re doing in this respect through Covid times. I’d assumed such a lovely place would be included in Simon Jenkins ‘1000 best’, but it isn’t. Missed one there, Simon.

 

These holy women of early British Christianity – what do we make of them? We met Etheldreda at Guilsborough a couple of years ago, and then there was Tibba, a kinswoman of Kyneburgha, whose presence is still felt at Ryhall, and now perhaps most important and historical of all, this saint of Castor. She was daughter of Penda, the pagan King of Mercia, and through her probably diplomatic marriage to Alhfrith, son of the Christian King of Northumbria Oswy, she herself converted to the Faith. After Alhfrith’s death, sometime after the Synod of Whitby in 664, she came to Castor and founded a convent.  But why Castor?

Roughly where the church now stands was once a monumental Roman Praetorium, a centre of

government for the Fens. Artists’ reconstructions make this three storied building look like a grand seventeenth century Tuscan palace. Its robbed-out stone provided building materials for the Saxon church, its walls were still standing four metres high in the 18^th century (a couple of chunks still protrude over the roadside at Stocks Hill) and its pavements have caused gravediggers repeated problems. The site has been pored over by archaeologists since the time of William Stukeley, and more recently even Time Team spent a happy weekend digging and speculating at the request of local academics.

So I suppose an attraction for Kyneburgha may have been that there was a conveniently plentiful supply of stone available to be re-used in her new convent-building. But more than that, some of the ‘finds’ from Castor and Durobrivae include the earliest Christian silver plate known in the UK, together with relatively late Roman pottery marked with a chi-ro. So just perhaps in this place there was an unusual continuity of Christian community right across the presumed turbulence of fifth and sixth century Britain. Did Christianity then, as sometimes seems to be the case now, continue to hang on among the middle classes, while working people plumped for something more visceral. Football now, paganism then?

How wonderful it would be if Kyneburgha’s bones had been left to rest in Castor. But the monks translated her remains as well as those of Tibba to Peterborough so that they could be permanently closer to her holiness. We can feel this to be an act of selfishness, or with today’s eyes, an inappropriate annexing of female power, perhaps even an attempt to weaken the influence of women saints, by preventing an individual cult in a nearby potentially rival place.  Castor is still worthy of pilgrimage. We could all start making it a regular thing.

Descending the steps on the south side, I pass the happy normality of the C of E school doing games on their well-appointed outside space, whistles, laughter and encouragement. One thing about Covid, sometimes the ordinary becomes suddenly, inexplicably moving, particularly when one becomes aware of the centuries of history that lie behind us. It caught me that way in the Cathedral a couple of weeks ago, and does so again now.

Back in Wansford, I’m taking off my boots by the Polo’s tailgate when a lady who doesn’t live in Church House is impatient to back her car into the space behind me. She drives within inches of my feet, and then waits huffily to complete her manouevres. I can feel the drumming of her fingers on her steering wheel. She’s probably plagued with walkers and fisherfolk etc…

I drive a mile or two down the Old Great North Road, and turn off to see what’s happening at the Nene Valley Railway. Not much. A couple of seniors hobble out of the ticket office, but apart from that it’s a replay of the Edward Thomas poem ‘Adlestrop’:  The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat/No one left and no one came/on the bare platform…’  But this weekend, no doubt there’ll be kids and their parents queueing for a ride on a ‘Thomas the Tank Engine Special’. It will be exactly fifty years since the Rev. W. Awdry signed Thomas’s cab at Wansford.

I try to put that anniversary together with the history of Kyneburgha, an arc of history across 1400 years, and am totally, completely flummoxed.

Tesserae in the museum:  14.5 km. 4.2 hrs. 20 deg C.  Mostly sunny, but rather oppressively humid.  6 stiles. 18 gates. 5 bridges.  Animal life as described above. One Saxon cross. One diesel-hauled train on the move.  A kindly nod from a couple at the pub (I never know quite what to make of this…friendliness?  ‘thank goodness we can at least all sit outside at a pub and have a drink…’ sympathy? ‘poor old codger, down on his luck…’  empathy? ‘it’s a good day for walking…’) Two churches: one a ‘must-see’.

 Lord God

 Thank you for these people

We have come to know

From the distant Christian past

Kyneburgha and Tibba

Hilda and Etheldreda

Oswy and Aelfred

Augustine and Bede

And countless more:

For their example and action

Through the centuries

Picked up by the saints

From my church childhood

Like:

FHB Smith

Alfie Oman

Harold Neave

Charlie Harris

And my mum and dad

Betty and Don

(Supply your own names, dear readers!)

And then those who have accompanied us

On our latter walk in faith

And are now also with you

Like:

Zoe Cosserat

Ann Goodman

And John White

(Again, you’ll have your own list, my friends!)

Names picked almost at random

From an address book

Because there are so many others

In this great

Extraordinary

Cloud of witnesses.

What an incredible privilege

To be part of this story.

Hopefully one more name in the

Book of Life.

O Lord

Increase our faith.

Amen.