Name: Steeple Chasing
ISBN: 9781472281920

Peter Ross

Around Britain by Church

Steeple Chasing

Laura Dobie

As the years passed, as life scythed its scars,I left Church. But churches never quite left me. For those of us who were brought up with them, as worshipper or visitor, those grey walls and hard pews are in our souls. For those born homesick for the past, old churches offer the consolation of homecoming. And so, as I grew older, I found myself drawn back not to pray or praise necessarily, but to sit for a bit, to poke around, to get in out of the rain. I began to appreciate the wisdom of John Betjeman's words: ‘Church crawling is the richest of pleasures, it leads you to the remotest and quietest country, it introduces you to the history of England in stone and wood and glass which is always truer than what you read in books.’

Whenever I was in Whitby, I would visit the cliff-top church of St Mary the Virgin which, lately, has grown so popular with tourists that a sign has been placed on the door advising visitors to please stop asking for directions to Dracula's grave.

It is one of the quirks of chant that the singing does not reflect the content or mood of the text. Quiet supplication of God and angry calling down of divine vengeance upon your enemies will both sound rather lovely. This, together with the obscurity of the language, explains why chant has come to be associated with relaxation and soft-focus spirituality. It is the music of bubble baths and scented candles. I had wondered what the brothers make of this, whether they feel that their deep religious art is being lost in the shallows. But no. As long as people are hearing it, they are content. 

‘You pray as you can, not as you can't,’ Father Giles had said. ‘It's not up to us to dictate: This Is How You Shall Consume This Product. You can eat your Mars Bar straight or deep-fried.’

This extended metaphor deserves some appreciation.

I met Doorkins on a fine day towards the end of September. Sapphire skies, amber leaves. Summer was catnapping in London, but autumn put forth a marmalade paw and pressed a claim to the territory.

Faith was given a silver medal in recognition of her bravery during the battle for London. She died in the autumn of 1948, a war veteran, on her favourite hearthrug, as Father Ross worked at his desk; alone together, priest and cat.

Also, Southwark, in possession of a substantial population of mice, was in want of a cat. Acquiring one had thus far proved difficult. The rescue centres were reluctant to rehome a cat in a cathedral. Here, though, was an animal that seemed to have no interest in being a pet and appeared drawn to the ancient building.  

“A lot of masons are reflective people, he replied. "They are not bragging. They are unusually modest and humble. Working with stone gives you the gift of reflection, You think slowly and with purpose”

Good limestone like this, he estimates, will erode at the rate of one millimnetre every four generations. A very slow process, yes, but Pascal knows that even his most careful carving can only ever be temporary. On this matter, as in all things, he is philosophical. He takes the long view, though not too long. He thinks in centuries, in oak trees, but not in millennia, in yews.

“I love these places because they are full of traces of the people who used them,” Rachel said. “The greasy timbers, the threadbare hassocks. When you see a worn step, like that one there, you think of the feet that went over it. Some of our churches are on pre-Christian sites; people have found something important about the spot for thousands of years, so I think it's very important that we acknowledge that, and don't demolish them, and don't sell them off as private spaces where no one else can go.”

‘These buildings transcend time,’ she said. They are the spiritual investment and the artistic legacy of generations, and a conmmunity's greatest expression of itself over centuries. There's a concentration of shared human experience within their walls, which means that churches like this are a monument to the lives of thousands of ordinary people who have been completely forgotten about. This is their gift to the future. I think that's really powerful and we need to protect it.’

Abandoned by both the living and the dead, unmoored from its mother church, but not yet sunk, St Peter's drifts onward through a kind of purgatory. ‘Ach, it is a pity,’ Father Rafal said, frowning at the state of the place, ‘that they gave up on this building.’

Martyrs beget martyrs; bloodstains spread and seep.

Not everyone feels that way. The romantic idea of bats in churches is often contradicted by the unromantic reality. Bat shit on the Bible and in the vicar's hair, bat piss on the keys of the organ and in the communion wine; dead bats on pews and in loos; live bats flyingg out of the manger during the nativity play - these are the horror stories you hear.

The droppings, though unsightly, can be swept up, but urine is a real problem. It eats into the fabric of the building, sparing nothing, not even rare and valuable brass. Many a crusader knight has been burned and scarred by the pee of an infidel bat.

The only part of a church that bats don't usually much like, contrary to the popular saying, is the belfry. Far too windy and noisy; bats and bells don't mix.

That they are hard to See and harder to reach saved them from destruction. ‘Such medieval figurative art as remains today in English churches is the minutest tip of a lost iceberg of sculpture, painting and stained glass,’ Rimmner writes. The English Reformation was not just a religious revolution. It was an artistic holocaust. The angels are survivors. They looked on as the glass was smashed, the walls whitewashed, the statues decapitated, the roods torn down. Destruction was nothing new to them, of course; they were born of it. Acorn to oak to angel, these were trees once. They had roots and branches, drank from the earth, knew the thistledown touch of the sky. Birds landed and nested in them, the wings of crows foreshadowing their own coming form. In time, they felt the kiss of the axe, the teeth of the saw, and they began to take shape, to become angelic.

Change-ringing does take physical effort, but it is more of an intellectual challenge, requiring great concentration, dexterity and skill. The ringer, writes Dorothy L. Sayers in Tbe Nine Tailors, seeks 'mathematical completeness and mechanical perfection' and 'the solemn intoxication that comes of intricate ritual faultlessly performed'. Imagine trying to control a two-ton weight with a rope. Imagine that it is seventy feet above your head, that you cannot see it, and that it takes around a second after you pull the rope for the bell to sound. Now imagine doing that for almost four hours, as the elite ringers do, without making a mistake. This is only possible because of an important technological breakthrough in the sixteenth century: the rope was connected to a wheel and the bell could now swing through a full circle, thus allowing for greater control of timing. The top ringers can place bells to about 25,000ths of a second accuracy Simon Meyer told me. "There are very few things in life that are as difficult as bell-ringing. People think that it's dangling on the end of a rope. Well, it’s not.”

Sylvia gave up her piano teaching and gave herself over to looking after Max, keeping him company during his hospital stays for the next fifteen months. In the symphony of their friendship, here was the great final movement.

We are born into circumstances where, if we are lucky, we will be safe and loved, but we may not be so fortunate, or not all the time. Being alive for beauty - the cry of an owl, the song of the seal - means also being alive for the burning city, the capsized boat, the sobbing that soundtracks both.

A fascinating and beautifully-written  exploration of churches, their role past and present, and how they are spaces to find calm, solace and comfort, irrespective of whether you are religious or not.

Steeple Chasing Around Britain by Church