Walsingham

 The Full Stained Glass

A roundel of medieval glass in the north window
of St Mary's and All Saints, Walsingham

There was a time, I will admit, when my glass may occasionally have been half empty.  It happens.....

But today I have been blessed with the other half.  There's nothing to regret - nothing to forget - I have been here before, and my last visit to Walsingham was with my dear, lost Amanda, and we walked here and there and enjoyed the countryside and all that:

Amanda at Walsingham on July 24th, 2021

Amanda loved her god, and walking, and  I know she would be happy for me to back here, and in good company.

Courtesy of The Norfolk Churches Trust I am here for A Day out in Walsingham - Seen Through Stained Glass and 4 Churches, led by Scilla Landale, a knowledgeable and enthusiastic guide.

The day starts in the Orangery of the Anglican Shrine, where Scilla gives an illustrated talk about the history of Walsingham, using images from the various glass artists (who include Trena Cox, John Hayward, Paul San Casciani, Geoffrey Webb, and Michael Coles)  who have contributed to the phoenix-like revitalisation of the town, following the post-reformation doldrums. 

Noah's Ark
Glass in the Pilgrims Shelter of the Modern Shrine

In my book, Starting from Snettisham, that I published last year (for charity), I had a page on Walsingham, and wrote this:

In 1061 [Richeldis de Faverches] the widow of the lord of the manor of Walsingham Parva had three visions of the Virgin Mary who spiritually transported her to the place of the Annunciation in Nazareth and asked her to construct a copy of the holy house. 

The original shrine, by Michael Coles
In the Milner Wing Tower

Since then, Walsingham became venerated as one of the holiest places in England, and it was the duty, in late Medieval times, for every Englishman to visit Walsingham at least once in his life.

In the 12th century an Augustinian Priory was founded here, and later a Franciscan Friary was established. 

The Franciscan Friary

Walsingham was one of the four great shrines of medieval christianity, along with Jerusalem, Rome and Santiago de Compostela. Royalty came here, including Henry III (twelve times) and Henry VIII (twice), which is perhaps ironic since it was his dissolution of the monasteries and the Reformation that left the Priory in ruins and ended the lucrative pilgrimage trade, following the repression of the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1537.

However, much of the past remains, and there are many half-timbered Tudor buildings here

The pump house in Common Place

 

as well as the beautiful Arch in the Abbey [actually only called an abbey long after its dissolution] grounds. 

Practically all that is left of the Priory
(the stone was used for other buildings)

In the late Victorian period pilgrims returned to the Slipper Chapel a mile south of the village, where you will now find the Roman Catholic National Shrine of Our Lady. 

The Slipper Chapel
The first modern pilgrimage came here on August 20th, 1897

Then in the 1930s the Anglican vicar of Walsingham [Father Alfred Hope Patten] built a new shrine containing a modern holy house. 

The modern Anglican shrine
Set up by Fr Alfred Hope Patten in the 1930s

Nowadays over a quarter of a million pilgrims visit Walsingham every year, and it is also a popular holiday destination, with good bus links as well as the Wells to Walsingham Light Railway which runs every day during the summer months. In February the grounds here are carpeted with Snowdrops.

Sorry, no snowdrops just now, so woodbine will have to do.....

After the talk, we have a brief lunch break, and the Black Lion Hotel does us proud.  Another feature of pilgrimage.....  

Then, with a light sprinkling of rain, Scilla takes us on a walking tour of the Georgian market town and  its various religious buildings. 

In the Pilgrims Shelter, in the Anglican Shrine, we see the story of Noah's Ark: 

Next stop is St Mary and All Saints, the parish church of Little Walsingham, 

which has been reconstructed after a devastating fire in 1961, with clear glass for the most part, except for the East window, a bravura feature by John Hayward, which incorporates surviving pieces of stained glass from before the fire, and depicts, among others, Our Lady of Walsingham, various other saints, and the story of the church.

We then visit the Roman Catholic Church of the Annunciation, also a complete reconstruction:

This church has a dramatic stained glass north window by Paul San Casciani:

The window is the background to a life-size crucifix, behind the altar, over which hangs a vast crown of thorns.

The design incorporates the outline of a fish pointing heavenwards, implying the resurrection.  I am informed that the white and yellow colours are achieved by using a background textured white glass spread with golden rays, the tints created since medieval times by the application of silver oxide to the back of the glass before firing.  The red that is seen through the aperture below Christ's feet is painted with a pattern of the shapes of greatly magnified blood corpuscles.  The effect of the whole is very moving, even to philistines like me.....

Our last stop is at the old railway station, sacrificed to the motor vehicle by Marples and Beeching in 1966. 

Apart from the small onion dome on the roof, this building is unremarkable from the outside.  However, inside, the ticket office and gentleman's waiting room were converted in 1967 into a pan-orthodox chapel, dedicated to St Seraphim.  This is one of three orthodox chapels in Walsingham (pilgrimages to Marian centres are not restricted to any denomination) and is a gem.  The traditional icons were painted by members of the brotherhood of St Seraphim, who came to Walsingham from London in the sixties.

Though there is more to see in Walsingham, our guided tour is over.  It has been a most interesting day.  Thank you, Scilla Landale and The Norfolk Churches Trust.  I almost feel I have earned a scallop shell:

And I certainly appreciate the concept of pilgrimage a little more now, though, having been familiar with Chaucer for many years, it isn't completely new to me.  Regrettably I have no faith, but I understand the point of taking a break from the routines of daily life to travel to a significant place.  Not only may it lead to some kind of transformation, it has social and health benefits.  People mix and learn from each other, and share experience and entertainment.  Just think of the Knight listening to The Miller's Tale, or the Clerk of Oxenford enjoying The Wife of Bath's Tale....

The practice of pilgrimage (peregrination) goes back way beyond the life of Jesus, but is also common to many different cultures and religions.  Today (June 6th, 2025) for example is the third day of the Hajj, which will end on June 9th in Mecca.

I guess it is just a shame that while the theory of each pilgrimage is essentially peaceful, would it not be something of an improvement if these things were not sectarian?

Just a thought...... 

Peace on earth

and goodwill to all.

*******

If you would be interested in a guided tour of Walsingham, please contact Scilla Landale (Blue Badge Guide) by email (Scilla.landale@afiweb.net) or on her mobile (07747 693235) or look up www.walsinghamvillage.org/see-do/guided-tours-of-walsingham

And, separately, if you would like a copy of my book, Starting from Snettisham, which is a 72 page full colour introduction to some of the attractions of North-west Norfolk, please contact me directly.  It is sold (at £12 plus p&p) in support of The Friends of St Mary's, Snettisham, and the National Brain Appeal.

richardpgibbs@aol.com

Some passing waves

Byron in Italy

 

I wrote this article in 1983, and it was published (in English and Italian) in the second number of the first volume of the Sheraton Italia Magazine, with the following (slightly fanciful) by-line:

English-born Richard Gibbs has been living and working for the past seven years in Rome. He is a professor of English Literature, a free-lance journalist and one of the owners of a new English pub, located on Via della Madonna dei Monti (near Via Cavour) in the historical centre of Rome.

 

I had a particular interest in Noel, George Gordon, 6^th Baron Byron of Rochdale, as in 1980 I had named one of four new Houses at St George’s English School (where I taught) after him.  The then Headmaster, Hendrik Deelman, decreed that, among other criteria, the names (of the houses) should preferably be of people, probably historical figures, with whom pupils will be proud to be associated and about whom much of interest can be said......

 

When I proposed Byron for mine (the others were Drake, Livingstone and Newton) the Headmaster objected and attempted to block my choice.  I insisted, however, on the grounds that despite a physical handicap (he was born with a short Achilles’ tendon which made running difficult) Byron achieved great physical feats in swimming and riding in particular, and not only supported Italian liberty but died assisting the Greeks in their struggle for freedom.  You want a hero?  Find me a better example.....  Hendrik, to his grumpy credit, acquiesced.

 

Here is the article:

Byron in Italy

Portrait of Lord Byron by G Sanders (1807)
Courtesy of Sir Joseph Cheyne
The Keats-Shelley Memorial House, Rome

The literary links between Britain and Italy are many and various and deep-rooted.  Perhaps the earliest connection was Julius Caesar’s account of his invasion, which depicted the Britons in their true-blue glory.  However, it was not until the Middle Ages that the traffic of impressions and influence really began. Whether or not Chaucer met Boccaccio in Florence will never be known.  But the Italian influence on Chaucer was marked.  As ‘Pilgrimage’ became more popular – and safer – and as printing made literature more exchangeable the dissemination of ideas grew.

 

Italy has always been an attractive place of northerners.  The stabilisation of Europe under the Caesars and the popularisation of Greek drama in Latin form must have played many a part as did the immensely important role of Rome in the Christian Church, but not all pilgrims are saints, and many with pious hopes also had pedestrian appetites, and so the dissolution of cultures continued.

 

Civilisation, climate, Christianity and curiosity all played major parts in bringing artists and writers, ladies and gentlemen, to Italy.  From the seventeenth century on, with a snowballing increase in more recent years, the tourist trade has developed, and everyone with his sketch-pad or her note-book, or nowadays with the video-camera [smart-phone? Ed] tries to capture a little of the country for the folks back home.

 

Among the millions of visitors Italy has had have been some of the greatest figures of literature, as well as myriads of their acolytes. Certain of their books are still well-known and a few are still quite readable.  Dickens’ Pictures from Italy ranks high as a subjective piece of journalism, determinedly anti-Catholic and yet refreshingly enthusiastic (his appreciation of the effect of the Trevi Fountain contrasts markedly with his denigration of St Peter’s), while Henry James’ Italian Hours is pompously unapproachable, a weak moment in self-appreciation.

 

Direct responses to the country are less available than the influences to be found in novels and poetry, and drama, however.  Many of Shakespeare’s plays are set in  Italy for example, and the Petrarchan sonnet is a major form in English verse.  The Duchess of Malfi, Keats’s Isabella, Forster’s A Room with a View are three examples of works with obvious connections with Italy, but there are many more.

 

One of the most striking relationships between a British literary figure and the people and literature of Italy is that of Lord Byron.  It is now [November 1983, Ed]. Nearly two hundred years since his birth and short, stormy life, and countless books have been written about him, but there is still a great deal of prejudice in circulation against him and at least as much myth.

 

His great strength was activity: he was not content to stay at home and mop his brow in aesthetic ecstasy.  Byron did things like swim the Hellespont, the Tagus at Lisbon and the Lagoon at Venice.  He travelled extensively in Greece and Albania as a young man, helped the cause of Italian liberation in his maturity, and died at Missolonghi from a fever (doctors reported) contracted during the Greek campaign against the Turks [which he partly financed from his own purse, Ed].

 

A few years ago, in Genova, I was trying to locate the villa in which the Dickens family had lodged for almost a year in the mid-19^th century. I knew roughly where it was and thought I might have found it, though I also knew that it might have disappeared long ago.  Dickens had composed The Chimes, one of his popular Christmas Books, whilst living there, and years later, when he died, the bells of Genova had tolled for him, and the local newspapers had announced that Nostro Caro Carlo Dickens è Morto! I asked in an old, Dickensian haberdasher’s shoop whether the two old ladies (undoubtedly residents of the area since the mid-19^th century!) knew anything about this famous scrittore inglese?  They turned the name over a few times, shaking their wise old heads.  Eventually I got an answer: Charles Dickens – no....  But Byron, yes!  He lived over there.... And indeed, he had lived in that street briefly in 1823, prior to his fatal departure for Greece.

 

Byron holds people’s imaginations because he was generous and vigorous, outspoken and brave.  His life was distressing to himself and to some others but it was presided over by an energetic and essentially truth-loving spirit.  As Peter Quennell (a literary historian famous for his work on Bryon) has said, Three-quarters of Byron’s verse is, at any rate from the modern point of view, quite remarkably bad, yet, as a significant literary figure and as an exceptionally interesting and unusually ill-fated human being, Byron can never cease to command our attention, exhorting our sympathy even at moments when we are inclined to like him least.

 

Although he did not write much about Italy, apart from the famous lines in Childe Harold’s Pilgimage that describe Venice, Florence and:

 

Oh, Rome! My Country!  City of the Soul!

The orphans of the heart must turn to thee,

Lone mother of dead empires! And control

In their shut breasts their petty misery.

 

much of what he wrote was inspired by what he saw or read here.  Don Juan has precious little to do with Italy (and nothing to do with Mozart’s Don Giovanni) but it is written in a romping ottava rima that he had learnt from reading Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, and it was nearly all written while living in Italy.

 

The prejudice that marks Byron as a licentious libertine, and which brands all romantic poetry as unreadable gush, is one of the main objects of Byron’s satire, and it is most often found in the mouths of those who have never read a line of his.  In fact his work is often witty, readable, and (even) moral, and often contains entertaining thoughts as well as amusing stories, though he never tried to overdo it, as he wrote at the end of the first Canto of Don Juan:

 

But for the present, gentle reader! And

Still gentler purchaser!  The Bard – that’s I –

Must, with permission, shake you by the hand,

And so – ‘your humble servant, and Good-bye!

We meet again, if we should understand

Each other; and if not, I shall not try

Your patience further than this short sample –

‘T’were well if others followed my example.’

 

*****

 

In case you are not persuaded, may I call on Kenneth Clark’s support?  On page 307 of Civilisation, he wrote: appearing when he did, the tide of disillusion carried him along, so that he became, after Napoleon, the most famous name in Europe.  From great poets like Goethe and Pushkin, or great men of action like Bismarck, down to the most brainless schoolgirl [careful, Ken!  ED] his works were read with an almost hysterical enthusiasm.....  Byron, who was very much a man of his time, wrote a poem about the opening of a prison – the dungeon of the Castle of Chillon. He begins with a sonnet in the old revolutionary vein – Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind! Brightest in dungeon’s, Liberty!  But when, after many horrors, the prisoner of Chillon is released, a new note is heard:

 

At last men come to set me free;

I ask’d not why, and reck’d not where;

It was at length the same to me,

Fetter’d or fetterless to be,

I learn’d to love despair.

 

Since that line was written how many intellectuals down to Beckett and Sartre have echoed its sentiment.....  [However] this negative conclusion was not the whole of Byron.  The prisoner of Chillon had looked from his castle wall onto the mountains and the lake, and felt himself to be a part of them.  This was the positive side of Byron’s genius, a self-identification with the great forces of nature: not Wordsworth’s daisies and daffodils, but crags, cataracts and colossal storms: in short, with the sublime.....

*****

 

I rest my case.  A final quote from Don Juan, Canto XV, stanza 99 [which, for the record, I read whilst wild camping on Corsica some 45 years ago]:

 

Between two worlds life hovers like a star

‘Twixt night and morn upon the horizon’s verge.

How little do we know that which we are!

How less what we may be! The eternal surge

Of time and tide rolls on and bears afar

Our bubbles. As the old burst, new emerge,

Lashed from the foam of ages; while the graves

Of empires heave but like some passing waves.

 

 

Byron House, 1994

 

London 14 - Richmond upon Thames

A Royal Bend in the River

Goo now thy wey, this penaunce ys but lyte,

And whan this book ys maad, yive it the quene,

On my byhalf, at Eltham or at Sheene.....

So says Alceste, the queen of love (modelled on Anne of Bohemia) to the poet, Geoffrey Chaucer, in the Prologue to The Legend of Good Women, in 1386, referring to two preferred royal retreats.  

In the year 1500, King Henry VII, Earl of Richmond (in Yorkshire) renamed the quiet royal manor of Sheen as Richmond - Richmond upon Thames.

Not for nothing are there pubs here named The Duke of York, and The Prince's Head.  It wasn't far away, in Richmond Park, in 1536, that Henry VIII stood on what is now known as King Henry's Mound to spy the smoke signal announcing the beheading of Anne Boleyn at Tower Green.  The following day he remarried.  From this viewpoint today it is possible to see the dome of St Paul's, ten miles away across the city haze (telescope provided by my uncle's firm).

In the town itself, at the end of King Street (or Duke Street, or Old Palace Row), lies Richmond Green, where jousts were held in the 15th and 16th centuries - though nowadays any game involving more than ten players needs special permission.  

The Gate House, Wardrobe and Old Palace Yard of the Tudor Palace (originally founded in 1299 but rebuilt by Henry VII after its destruction by fire in 1497) still remain (as do the 18th century houses of the Maids of Honour of Queen Caroline).  Both Edward III (1377) and Elizabeth I (1603) died in the palace here.

At least one other royal connection can be traced around this bend of the river.  Ham House, just beyond the village of Petersham, owned by the National Trust since 1948, is 17th century baroque and was gifted by Charles I to his whipping boy, William Murray, later 1st Earl of Dysart. Apparently, the house was also where King Charles II secretly met with his Cabal (his policy-making committee, named after the initials of its five members).  

The river flows.....  Central to England and its history.  The bridge here, 91 metres long, opened in 1780, is the eighth bridge to span the Thames in Greater London, and the oldest surviving, and it connects the two parts of the Borough of Richmond, the only London Borough to exist on both sides of the river.

The river flows.....  For centuries the Thames was the preferred means of transport from west to east, and vice versa.  The railway arrived in Richmond in 1840, but the river is still busy with craft of many kinds, though these days more for pleasure than for business.

And as it flows, it floods too, with spring tides still causing difficulties for local residents and patrons of certain hostelries.....

And as it floods it washes the pastures, with Petersham meadows being the nearest true farmland to London.....

And rising above the meadows, with the only view in London protected by Act of Parliament, is the Grade II listed Royal Star and Garter Home, built by Sir Edwin Cooper, based on a 1915 plan by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (of the St Pancras Hotel and Bankside Power Station - Tate Modern -  amongst other things).  This great building, which occupies the site of the popular Star and Garter Hotel on Richmond Hill, was built to care for servicemen who had been severely disabled during the First World War. Queen Mary, with George V at her side, inaugurated the home in 1924.

The Royal Star and Garter Home, Richmond Hill; sold for £50m in 2014

The Royal Star & Garter Homes is a charity that provides nursing and therapeutic care to the ex-Service community. Having sold their property on Richmond Hill, they now have two homes, one in Solihull and the other in Surbiton, though they plan to open one more in High Wycombe.

The London Square Company (founded in 2010, the company has already created a development pipeline worth over £1 billion) is now working closely with the Borough of Richmond upon Thames, English Heritage and the local community to create a residential scheme which respects and complements the wonderful heritage of this Grade II listed building. 

It is a relief to know this: some people might have worried that the edifice would just be converted into flats.....

For house hunters who are not into makeovers, Richmond has a range of properties, from this five bedroom Terraced house (valued at about £3m) ....

Or for a similar price, but with one less bedroom, there is Wick House, built in 1772 for the painter Joshua Reynolds, who died here twenty years later....

Though for a two bedroom cottage in Old Palace Lane the price would be a much more affordable one million....

Richmond attracts. Clearly the royals of yesteryear found it healthy and restful, and so apparently do the nouveau riche of today (Sir Michael Jagger being but one householder in the area).  Others from the stage and screen have retired here:

And almost exactly one hundred years ago an earnest, slightly stressy couple moved, initially, into a flat above the delivery entrance to Boots, escaping the intensity of Bloomsbury.  

Virginia Woolf had attempted suicide in 1913, and her husband Leonard fancied that Richmond would be more relaxing.  The lady soon settled in and was often to be seen walking her dog, Grizzle, near the river, which she referred to as my river.....

Unfortunately her recovery was short lived, and just as the couple was about to move into Hogarth House in March 1915 she had a breakdown and was admitted to a nursing home.  Leonard moved in himself, and then Virginia joined him in April, attended by four nurses.

 

They founded the Hogarth Press in March 1917, using a small, hand-operated press, and began by publishing some of their own short stories.  

Then, in November 1918 they were visited by an American who had just turned thirty-one. Within a couple of years, with a little help from Ezra Pound, Thomas Stearns Eliot produced The Waste Land, first published in magazines on both sides of the Atlantic. Virginia had noted that this was a very strange young man.  On June 18th, 1922, he recited the poem to the Woolfs (Woolves?) in their home. Mrs Woolf noted in her diary that He sang it and chanted it, rhymed it. It has a great beauty and force.....  What connects it together, I'm not so sure. 

In September 1923 the Hogarth press published 450 copies of the first UK book edition of the 434 line poem.  The type was set by Virginia herself.

Trams and dusty trees.

Highbury bore me.  Richmond and Kew

Undid me.  By Richmond I raised my knees

Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.

My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart

Under my feet.  After the event

He wept.  He promised a ‘new start.’

I made no comment.  What should I resent?

The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.

A Bend in the River

V S Naipaul

(NB: Naipaul's river was an unspecified African one, probably the Congo, but through gossamer threads I linked his bend and his river to Conrad, and Eliot, colonialism and nothingness - though I realise I am probably stretching all this beyond acceptable limits!)

St Mary Magdalene, Richmond Town Ministry

Elizabeth and Leicester 

Beating oars 

The stern was formed 

A gilded shell 

Red and gold 

The brisk swell 

Rippled both shores 

Southwest wind 

Carried down stream 

The peal of bells 

White towers 

Weialala leia 

Wallala leialala