An afternoon of choral music from Cambridge in Saint Mary’s Cathedral

Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick, in advance of yesterday’s concert by Saint John’s Voices from Saint John’s College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

One of the joys of being the canon precentor of a cathedral is the responsibility of taking an interest in the cathedral liturgy, music and choral music.

At lunchtime on Friday, I was in Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick, for a visit by Saint John’s Voices, the mixed-voice choir from Saint John’s College, Cambridge. About 30 members of the choir are on a tour of Ireland, directed by Graham Walker, and with Shanna Hart and Hugh Crook on the organ and piano.

The concert opened with three pieces from 16th and 17th century composers: ‘Cantate Domino’ by Claudio Monteverdi, ‘Ave Maria’ by Robert Parsons and ‘Alleluia, Ascendit Deus – Dominus in Sina’ by William Byrd.

We then moved to the 18th century and heard JS Bach’s ‘Lobet den Herm.’

We were then invited to imagine ourselves in a great French Gothic cathedral, filled with incense and light streaming in through stained-glass windows as we listened to the ‘Kyrie’ and ‘Gloria in Excelsis’ from the ‘Messe Solennelle’ by the blind French composer and organist Jean Langlais.

A colleague sitting beside me – a rector from the Diocese of Killaloe – whispered quietly, ‘Wow, could we have that in my church on Sunday.’

It was so appropriate then for a Cambridge choir visiting Ireland to then sing Three Latin Motets by Charles V Stanford, ‘Justorum Animae,’ ‘Coelos Ascendit Hodie,’ and ‘Beati Quorum Via.’ The Irish composer Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924) was born in Dublin, was organist of Trinity College Cambridge and was Professor of Music at Cambridge. His students included Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams.

The afternoon concluded with ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,’ arranged by Dale Adelmann. This spiritual has become the anthem of English rugby fans, but perhaps it was also appropriate given the present success of the English cricket team – albeit under an Irish captain, Eoin Morgan.

Saint John’s College, Cambridge, was founded in 1511 by Lady Margaret Beaufort, the mother of Henry VII (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Saint John’s College, Cambridge, was founded in 1511 by Lady Margaret Beaufort, the mother of Henry VII. The college choir began singing in the chapel in the 1670s, and since the 1950s it has developed into one of the world’s most distinguished choirs.

Music of all kinds plays an important role in college life, from ‘Jazz at John’s’ to the new Saint John’s Festivals. Musical alumni of Saint John’s include the singers Iestyn Davies and Simon Keenlyside and the composers Robin Orr and Jonathan Harvey.

Saint John’s Voices was founded in 2013, and is already developing an enviable reputation for its high-quality an emotionally charged performance.

The Voices was formed at first to sing Evensong weekly in the college chapel, and has gone on to become a quickly-evolving and ambitious choir in Cambridge. After only two years in existence, they undertook their first foreign tour in December 2015.

The Voices performed Messiah to sell-out halls in Hong Kong and Singapore in 2016, and plans are developing for tours to the US, Canada and Colombia.

My colleague’s whispered wish that he could hear the Voices sing ‘Gloria in Excelsis’ in his parish church tomorrow is not going to be realised. But their tour of Ireland, which began in Galway Cathedral on Thursday evening, continued this afternoon in Saint Fin Barre’s Cathedral, Cork.

They are in Saint Fin Barre’s again on Sunday morning singing the Choral Eucharist at 11.15 a.m. (Langlais, Messe Solennelle, and Stanford, Beati Quorum Via) and Choral Evensong at 3.30 p.m. (Howells Gloucester Service and Bach Lobet den Herm).

Their Irish tour continues in Saint Mary’s Pro-Cathedral, Dublin, at 1.15 p.m. on Monday 15 July and in Saint Iberius’ Church, Wexford, at 1.05 p.m. on Wednesday 17 July.

Saint John’s Voices is embarking on an exciting programme of concerts, recordings and videos, and recently recorded its first commercial album of music by William Mathias, for release on the Naxos label next year [2020].

From the programme for Saint John’s Voices in Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

A Dean of Lichfield who played a key role in Cambridge and who restored Bath Abbey

The alabaster effigy and monument in Bath Abbey of Bishop James Montagu, former Dean of Lichfield and the first Master of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

During my visit to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, the week before last, I was reminded that the first Master of Sidney Sussex was at the same time – albeit briefly – also Dean of Lichfield.

James Montagu was Master of Sidney Sussex, Dean of Lichfield, one of the translators of the Authorised Version or King James Version of the Bible, later became Bishop of Bath and Wells and Bishop of Winchester and was singularly responsible for the restoration of Bath Abbey in the early 17th century.

James Montagu (1568-1618) was the fifth son of Sir Edward Montagu of Boughton, Northamptonshire and a grandson of Edward Montagu. His eldest brother, Edward Montagu, would become Lord Montagu of Boughton in 1621, and another brother, Henry Montagu, became Earl of Manchester.

As a student, he was a fellow-commoner of Christ’s College, Cambridge. He became the first Master of Sidney Sussex when it was founded, and he laid the foundation stone on 20 May 1596.

Lady Frances Sidney (1531-1589), Countess of Sussex, the founder of the college, was his great-aunt and a sister of his maternal grandmother Lucy Sidney. Lady Sussex left £5,000 in her will and some plate for a new college ‘to be called the Lady Frances Sidney Sussex College.’

Although there is no record of Montagu graduating with a degree, he was admitted to the degree of Doctor of Divinity (DD) by ‘special grace’ in 1598.

At Sidney Sussex College, Montagu beautified the interior of his college chapel, and also spent £100 of his own money in purifying the King’s Ditch in Cambridge.

Montagu was appointed Dean of Lichfield on 12 July 1603, in succession to George Boleyn, who had died earlier that year in January. At the same time, he became Dean of the Chapel Royal. It was a powerful position in the Church that gave Montagu immediate access to the monarch. It was said that he was closer to the king than the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Abbot, who had previously been Bishop of Lichfield.

Montagu was also one of three key Church leaders with connections with Lichfield who played important roles in the translation of the Authorised Version of the Bible, the two others being George Abbot and Bishop John Overall.

John Overall (1559-1619) was a member of the First Westminster Company, directed by Lancelot Andrewes, which translated the Books Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, I Samuel, II Samuel, I Kings and II Kings.

Overall was Bishop of Lichfield from 1614-1618. He ended his days as Bishop of Norwich (1618-1619), but had also been Dean of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London (1601-1614), Master of Saint Catharine’s College, Cambridge (from 1598), and Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge (1596-1607).

At Cambridge, Overall was also a tutor to the future Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, who had a life interest in the Manor of Lichfield. In 1614, Overall was appointed Bishop of Lichfield. He was translated to Norwich in 1618, and died the following year.

George Abbot (1562-1633) was Bishop of Lichfield for only a month in 1609 before being moved to the Diocese of London, and he later became Archbishop of Canterbury. But his appointment to Lichfield was an immediate reward from King James I for his work on restoring the episcopacy to the Church of Scotland. In 1611, Abbot became Archbishop of Canterbury.

James Montagu was a member of the Second Oxford Company, involved in translating the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Book of Revelation. But, despite being a member of this Oxford company, Montagu was intimately associated with Cambridge.

The Montagu coat-of-arms arms above Costa coffee shop in Montagu House on the corner of Sidney Street and Sussex Street, Cambridge … part of Sidney Sussex College (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Although Montagu became Dean of Lichfield on 12 July 1603, he remained at Lichfield for just 17 months, and continued as Master of Sidney Sussex College. He left Lichfield to become Dean of Worcester on 20 December 1604.

While he was Dean of Worcester, Montagu worked with King James on An Apologie for the Oath of Allegiance in 1607, at Royston and Newmarket, reading to the king the four volumes of the works of Cardinal Bellarmine.

Throughout these years, Montagu remained Master of Sidney Sussex College. After little more than three years at Worcester, he was appointed Bishop of Bath and Wells on 29 March 1608. He was consecrated bishop on 17 April and was enthroned and installed at Wells Cathedral on 14 May 1608. On becoming Bishop of Bath and Wells, he resigned as Master of Sidney Sussex College.

He repaired the episcopal palace at Wells and the manor-house at Banwell, and vigorously took in hand the restoration of the nave of Bath Abbey, spending £1,000 of his own personal fortune on the restoration work, which was completed in 1617.

There is a story that Sir John Harington of Kelston, walking with him one day in the rain, took him into the abbey, then roofless, under pretence of seeking shelter. There he impressed on Montagu the neglected state of the building and inspired him to restore it.

He moved from Bath and Wells when he became Bishop of Winchester in 1616. Montagu also edited and translated the collected works of James I, published in 1616.

He died of jaundice and dropsy at Greenwich on 20 July 1618, at the age of 50. He was buried in Bath Abbey, where an alabaster tomb on the north side of the nave displays his effigy.

Throughout all that time, he had continued to hold the office of Dean of the Chapel Royal, and when he died he was succeeded by Lancelot Andrewes, one of the great Caroline Divines.

Montagu House on the corner of Sidney Street and Sussex Street, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

A missing sandwich at Lough Gur and a glass of wine in Cambridge

A glass of white wine on a summer afternoon on King’s Parade, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

Last week, I spent a little quiet time on King’s Parade in Cambridge, enjoying the summer sunshine, the view of King’s College Chapel, the passing pleasures of families celebrating graduations, and lingering over a welcome glass of white wine.

The wine list at the Cambridge Chop House is quite unique in Cambridge as it focuses on the Languedoc-Roussillon region of France. They have visited the region many times and have met most of the wine makers on their list.

But this restaurant had another unique feature: in the men’s rooms downstairs, they were playing soundtracks of Blackadder.

In ‘Ink and Incapability,’ the second episode of the third series (1987), Blackadder and Baldrick are supposed to be rewriting a lost manuscript of Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary.

I walked in to hear this exchange:

Blackadder: Now, Baldrick, go to the kitchen and make me something quick and simple to eat, would you? Two slices of bread with something in between.

Baldrick: What, like Gerald, Lord Sandwich had the other day?

Blackadder: Yes, a few rounds of geralds.

Playing recordings of Blackadder on a loop in any restaurant or bar is one way to leave a long queue outside the men’s rooms. But I still had that glass of summer wine on King’s Parade to pay attention to.

Of course, there was no Gerald, Lord Sandwich, and the Cambridge Chop House is not the sort of place to include sandwiches on its menu.

But the sandwich owes its name to John Montagu (1718-1792), 4th Earl of Sandwich, who inherited large estates on the shores of Lough Gur, Co Limerick, including Bourchier’s Castle.

Bourchier’s Castle is a ruined five-storey tower house on the shores of Lough Gur, Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

I had spent the previous Saturday afternoon visiting Lough Gur, 10 km south of Limerick. Admittedly, we had brought no sandwiches with us, but Lough Gur has a visitors’ centre, with a car park and picnic area, though no café or restaurant.

Beside the picnic area on the lake shore, Bourchier’s Castle is a ruined five-storey tower house. It was also known as Castle Doon and guarded the northern approach to Knockadoon on Lough Gur.

Bourchier’s Castle was built in the 16th century by Sir George Bourchier (1535-1605), a son of John Bourchier (1499-1561), 2nd Earl of Bath. The family benefitted from royal patronage, and John Bourchier was a cousin of Anne Seymour, Duchess of Somerset and sister-in-law of two queens, Jane Seymour and Catherine Parr.

Sir George Bourchier acquired 18,000 acres in Co Limerick from the estates of the Earls of Desmond by Elizabeth I in 1583. He was MP for King’s County (Offaly) in 1585-1586, and he built his castle at Lough Gur in 1586.

George Bourchier had a large family, including two sons buried in Saint Canice’s Cathedral, Kilkenny. His vast estates in Co Armagh and Co Limerick were inherited eventually by his fifth son, Henry Bourchier (1587-1654).

Henry Bourchier was educated at Trinity College Dublin (BA 1605, MA 1610), and was elected a fellow of the college in 1606. Although a distant heir, he became the 5th Earl of Bath in 1636 at the death of his first cousin once removed, Edward Bourchier (1590-1636), 4th Earl of Bath. During the English Civil War in the 1640s, Henry was a royalist and was jailed for his support for Charles I.

Henry died in 1654, and was buried in Tavistock, Devon. He had no male heirs, and his large estates in Ireland and England passed to his wife, Lady Rachael Fane (1613-1680), a daughter of Francis Fane, 1st Earl of Westmorland. The Co Limerick estate alone, which spilled over into Co Tipperary, covered 12,800 acres (52 sq km) and included the manors of Lough Gur and Glenogra.

As Dowager Countess of Bath, Rachael Fane was a formidable woman. One writer says, ‘She was a great lady and a busybody, and her cloud of kinsfolk held her in fear as their patroness and suzerain … a masterful woman, she lived feared and respected by her numerous kindred whom she advanced by her interest at court.’

She secured her husband’s Irish estates for her nephew, Sir Henry Fane (1650-1706), as his guardian. His son, Charles Fane (1676-1744), was MP for Killybegs (1715-1719). On the strength of his large estates in Co Limerick and Co Armagh, including Lough Gur, he was given the titles of Viscount Fane and Baron Loughguyre [sic] in 1719.

The estates and titles, including Lough Gur, passed to Charles Fane’s son, Charles Fane (1708-1766), 2nd Viscount Fane, a Whig MP and British ambassador in Florence. But this Charles Fane had no male heirs either, and when he died his Irish estates were divided between two sisters: Mary Fane who married Jerome de Salis (1709-1794), 2nd Count de Salis; and Dorothy Fane who married John Montagu (1718-1792), 4th Earl of Sandwich.

John Montagu was a direct descendant of Sir Sidney Montagu, whose brother James Montagu (1568-1618), was the first Master of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and later Dean of Lichfield and Bishop of Bath and Well.

But John Montagu was known as one of the most corrupt and immoral politicians of his age. It was he – and not Blackadder’s Gerald – who gave his name to the humble sandwich and to the Sandwich Islands. But part of the Blackadder joke is that the word sandwich is not included in Johnson’s Dictionary, which was published in 1755.

There is no public access to Bourchier’s Castle on the shores of Lough Gur, Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

At the time of Griffith’s Valuation, the Earl of Sandwich held lands in the parishes of Ballinlough, Glenogra and Tullabracky, Co Limerick. The Limerick estates of the Earl of Sandwich amounted to 3,844 acres in the 1870s, while the Count de Salis owned over 4,000 acres in Co Limerick and 3,663 acres in Co Armagh.

Other branches of the Bourchier family lived nearby at Kilcullane, Baggotstown and Maidenhall, Co Limerick. James David Bourchier (1850-1920) from Baggotstown, Co Limerick, was a journalist and political activist. He was active in the cause of Bulgarian independence and the unification of Crete with the modern Greek state. He has given his name to a street and a metro station in Sofia, and to other landmarks throughout Bulgaria.

The Sandwich Islands have since been renamed Hawaii, but the humble sandwich remains. Even if it’s not on the menu at the Cambridge Chop House, I must take a sandwich with me to Lough Gur on another weekend, and spend more time exploring the archaeological sites around the lake and close to Bourchier’s Castle.

A summer afternoon on the shores of Lough Gur, Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019; click on image for full-screen view)

Finding the Seventy on a street on the way to Jerusalem

In search of the 70 on the way to Jerusalem … on Bridge Street, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

I was in search of a photograph last week that would illustrate the story of the 70 in next Sunday’s Gospel reading (Luke 10: 1-11, 16-20), sent out in mission by Christ ahead of his journey on the road to Jerusalem.

I could find no speed signs for 70 kph on roads in Ireland or 70 mph in England – perhaps there are none, although they might have been suitable for a story about setting out on the road.

Perhaps then, I thought, I might find a number 70 on a house or a shop on the streets of Cambridge on Monday morning or on Wednesday morning, before and after this year’s conference of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel) at High Leigh in Hoddesdon.

It was hard to figure out where No 70 Sidney Street was in Victorian Cambridge. The older houses and shops have gone, and they have been replaced with an arcade of shops that includes Boots.

It would have suited my purpose if the former No 70 stood at the place where two plaques mark Charles Darwin’s lodgings on Sidney Street for his first year as an undergraduate at Christ’s College. But nothing was clear about the numbering on this part of Sidney Street, and I had to press on.

But then, as I made my from Saint John’s College and the Round Church along Bridge Street towards the corner of Jesus Lane and Sidney Street and Sidney Sussex College, I came across Lindum House on 70 Bridge Street … a single doorway that I might have missed if I did not have this purpose in mind.

Discreetly located on the south-west side of Bridge Street, between 69 and 71 Bridge Street, the entrance archway to No 70 has with a good early 19th century Gothic door. In the yard behind, No 70 was once he Flying Stag, a former public house, built in 1842 of brick, but incorporating a timber framed 17th century cell and 18th century fragments.

The door was firmly closed, and had the look of not being opened for years. But I understand this is a three-storey and three-storey building with and attic ranges, sashes with glazing bars, and a tiled roof on an early lower build.

The architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner notes that this is an 18th century building. In 1959, the Survey of Cambridge by the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments described this as a mainly early 19th century building incorporating part of an 18th century structure.

The house was formerly the ‘Freemasons’ Tavern. Until recent decades, the name and ‘Livery Baiting Stables’ was painted on the passage to it from Bridge Street.

George Edmund Lister (69), the master of the choir school at Saint John’s College, was living there in 1911 with his wife Susanna Elizabeth (71). Two years later, Sam Senior, the choir schoolmaster at Saint John’s College, was living there in 1911.

Lilac Rose at No 71 Bridge Street has been part of the Cambridge shopping scene since 2010 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Next door, and an integral part of this range, Lilac Rose is part of the group formed by Numbers 71 to 73. This is a shop that has been part of the Cambridge shopping landscape since 2010.

But No 71 has gone through many different functions. Charles Frederick Searle (28), a Cambridge-born medical practitioner, was here in 1911. Two years later, in 1913, he shared the premises with Moore’s Athletic Stores and Sports Depot, and a hairdresser’s and perfumer’s shop. By 1962, the shopfront was the premises of Coulson Horace and Sons, opticians.

Bridge Street runs between Magdalene Street at the junction with Thompson’s Lane at the north-west and Sidney Street at the junction with Jesus Lane at the south-east. Bridge Street once continued over the Great Bridge on the River Cam, which explains its name. But that part is now known as Magdalene Street after Magdalene College, which fronts onto the street.

The Holy Sepulchre, commonly known as the Round Church, is on the corner of Bridge Street and Round Church Street, opposite Saint John's Street College. It was built around 1130, inspired by the original church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.


So, perhaps, in my own strange way, I had found the number 70 on the way to Jerusalem.

The early 19th century Gothic door at No 70 Bridge Street, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

The whole law is summed up in … ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’

‘The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control’ (Galatians 5: 22-23) … lemons ripening on a tree in a garden in Córdoba (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

Sunday, 30 June 2019

The Second Sunday after Trinity

11 a.m.: United Group Eucharist,

The Rectory, Askeaton, Co Limerick.

Readings: II Kings 2: 1-2, 6-14; Psalm 77: 1-2, 11-20; Galatians 5: 1, 13-25; Luke 9: 51-62.

May I speak to you in the name of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

I was walking through Cambridge late on Wednesday afternoon, after the annual conference of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel).

I had visited some colleges, and had spent some time – a lot of time – browsing and rummaging in some of my favourite bookshops.

So, you can imagine, in the warm afternoon sunshine, I was feeling relaxed, and easy-going.

And there, in front of Holy Trinity Church, Cambridge, I saw a large crowd had gathered in a circle in the open space on the corner of Market Street and Sidney Street.

Some of them were visibly amused, some were angry, some were heckling. They were watching and listening to a group of street preachers of the old-fashioned sort, the sort I thought had gone out of fashion many years ago, many decades ago.

And I can quote some of their posters and placards:

‘Cursed is the nation whose God is not the Lord’ ... ‘Woe to them who call evil good and good evil’ … ‘Hate crime: to let sinners go to hell with no warning’ …

When people in the crowd asked questions, they were belittled and derided. Within a short time, I had lost count of the number of times people were told they were being disrespectful of God and God’s word, the number of times people were told they and their souls were going to burn in Hell for eternity.

Not once did I see the speakers smile, not once did I hear them speak words of compassion, let alone love.

Is it any wonder that people turn away when they hear people like this claiming to represent Christ, Christianity, the Christian message and the Church?

There was a much more inviting message in the vision or slogan of the church behind them: ‘Come to Christ, Learn to Love and Love to Learn, in Cambridge and beyond.’

When people respond to preachers like this by saying ‘I don’t believe in God,’ I want to respond by saying, ‘I don’t believe in the God you don’t believe in either.’ Think about what the disciples want to do when they get a whiff of difference, an inkling of rejection.

A whiff of difference creates a whiff of sulphur. They want to burn the Samaritan village to the ground.

What have they been learning from Jesus so far about basic, fundamental Christian beliefs and values being expressed in how we love God and love one another?

What had the disciples learned from Jesus about compassion, tolerance and forbearance in the immediate weeks and months before they arrived in this Samaritan village?

How embarrassed they must have been if this was the same Samaritan village that Christ visits in Saint John’s Gospel (see John 3: 4-42), where it is a Samaritan woman, and not the disciples, who realise who Jesus really is. She is a Samaritan woman of questionable sexual moral values. But it is she, and not the disciples, who brings a whole village to faith in Christ; it is she who asks for the water of life; it is she who first suggests that indeed he may be, that he is, the Messiah.

How embarrassed they must be a little while later when Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan (see Luke 10: 29-37). The one person I want to meet on the road, on the pilgrimage in life, is not a priest or a Temple official, but the sort of man who lives in the very sort of village I have suggested, because of my religious bigotry and narrow-mindedness, should be consumed with fire, burned to the ground, all its people gobbled up.

In the Epistle reading (Galatians 5: 1, 13-25), Saint Paul tells his readers, ‘For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself”.’ (Galatian 5: 14)

The command to love, to love God and to love our neighbour, is at the heart of the Gospel. It is summarised in the two great commandments in Matthew 22: 36-40 and Luke 10: 27 (see Leviticus 19: 18).

But Saint Paul, on more than one occasion, reduces it all down to this one great commandment:

‘Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments … are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbour as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law’ (Romans 13: 8-10).

And again, in the Epistle reading this morning:

‘For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself”.’ (Galatians 5: 14).

In a sentence edited out of this reading, he writes:

‘The only thing that counts is faith working through love’ (Galatians 5: 6).

In other places, he writes:

Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in harmony (Colossians 3: 14).

And:

If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, and compassion and sympathy. Make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind (Philippians 2: 1-2).

In a non-Pauline passage, Saint John writes in his first letter:

God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them … Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also. (I John 4: 16, 20-21).

And, as Saint Paul reminds us this morning in our epistle reading, committed discipleship is costly and demanding, but rewarding. It finds its true expression in ‘love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things’ (Galatians 5: 22-25).

Love one another. After that, everything else falls into place, including the love of God.

And so, may all we think, say and do be to the praise, honour and glory of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

‘The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control’ (Galatians 5: 22-23) … fruit on a market stall in Tangier (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 9: 51-62:

51 When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. 52 And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; 53 but they did not receive him, because his face was set towards Jerusalem. 54 When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, ‘Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?’ 55 But he turned and rebuked them. 56 Then they went on to another village.

57 As they were going along the road, someone said to him, ‘I will follow you wherever you go.’ 58 And Jesus said to him, ‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’ 59 To another he said, ‘Follow me.’ But he said, ‘Lord, first let me go and bury my father.’ 60 But Jesus said to him, ‘Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.’ 61 Another said, ‘I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.’ 62 Jesus said to him, ‘No one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.’

‘The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control’ (Galatians 5: 22-23) … fruit on a market stall in Rome (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Liturgical Colour: Green.

The Collect:

Lord, you have taught us
that all our doings without love are nothing worth:
Send your Holy Spirit
and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of love,
the true bond of peace and of all virtues,
without which whoever lives is counted dead before you.
Grant this for your only Son Jesus Christ’s sake.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Loving Father,
we thank you for feeding us at the supper of your Son.
Sustain us with your Spirit,
that we may serve you here on earth
until our joy is complete in heaven,
and we share in the eternal banquet
with Jesus Christ our Lord.

Hymns:

421, I come with joy, a child of God (CD 25)
652, Lord us, heavenly Father, lead us (CD 37)
643: Be thou my vision (CD 37)

‘The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control’ (Galatians 5: 22-23) … fruit at breakfast-time in Rethymnon, Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

The hymns suggestions are provided in Sing to the Word (2000), edited by Bishop Edward Darling. The hymn numbers refer to the Church of Ireland’s Church Hymnal (5th edition, Oxford: OUP, 2000)

Material from the Book of Common Prayer is copyright © 2004, Representative Body of the Church of Ireland.

Reminders in Cambridge of the mixture of fiction and family intrigues

Saint John’s College, Cambridge, on Trinity Street, with part of the chapel to the right (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

During my visits to Cambridge this week, I could not help but think of the writer Rose Macaulay, and some 16th century family connections with Saint John’s College. Her best-known novel, The Towers of Trebizond, is known even to people who have never read it for its opening line:

“Take my camel, dear,” said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass.

The High Mass, of course, is an Anglican High Mass, in the Anglo-Catholic tradition of the Church of England.

The book is heavy on irony, and is delightfully funny about Anglo-Catholics, Roman Catholics and Evangelicals. Yet it shows a deep respect for faith and a poignant longing for grace. The narrator is in a state of mortal sin, and as the child of a very old Anglo-Catholic family, knows himself or herself to be in a state of mortal sin.

One of the enduring mysteries of the book is whether the narrator is a man or a woman. It is a device that helps to place the reader, whether male or female, inside the mind of the narrator.

In the book, travel serves as a metaphor for the soul’s progress towards or away from God. Trebizond, now an impoverished Turkish town whose Byzantine history is of no interest to the local people, represents for the narrator the glories of the past and the wealth and riches of the Byzantine court. But it also represents heaven, and grace, from which the narrator is barred.

With this serious discussion of sin and forgiveness, The Towers of Trebizond is also a brittle comedy of English manners.

Although Rose Macaulay studied at Oxford rather than Cambridge, reading history at Somerville College, Oxford, Cambridge plays a large part in The Towers of Trebizond and an earlier book, They Were Defeated.

This is historical novel, published in 1932, is set in Cambridge just before the English Civil War. The characters include the poets Robert Herrick and John Cleveland, and there are appearances by John Milton, Sir Kenelm Digby, Sir John Suckling, and a host of Metaphysical poets and other historical figures, including Abraham Cowley, Andrew Marvel, Henry More and Richard Crashaw.

Religion is at the heart of this story too, as it begins in a Church where the divisions of Church Papists, Puritans and Anglicans are all too obvious because of the display of harvest bounty in Robert Herrick’s church.

One of the characters becomes a Roman Catholic and narrowly avoids arrest while attending Mass in Cambridge, along with two priests who are arrested and taken away, probably to be sent into exile.

Tensions over religion are increasing in Charles I’s reign and the dangers of being Roman Catholic are evident, even in the relatively positive atmosphere during the reign of Charles I. Even prominent people at Cambridge University who have demonstrated their animus toward Catholicism are considered Papist if they follow Archbishop Laud’s example in using the Book of Common Prayer in high liturgical style, such as John Cosins, the Vice Chancellor of Cambridge and Master of Peterhouse.

The first part of They Were Defeated is set in Devon, while the second part takes place mainly in Cambridge. When the Vice-Chancellor of the University, Dr John Cosin, is threatened with the loss of his position because of his supposed Catholic leanings in early 1641, the authorities begin to crack down on recusants. Three priests are arrested at Mass and several students present are reported to their colleges.

In an epilogue, set in 1647, Herrick is about to be turned out of his church to make way for a Puritan incumbent.

The great gatehouse of Saint John’s College facing Trinity Street, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

But, to return to The Towers of Trebizond, the Cambridge of Cosin, the role of John Cosin, and the Anglican approaches of Archbishop Laud make important contributions too.

As I passed by Saint John’s College on Wednesday afternoon, I recalled one lengthy passage in The Towers of Trebizond that reads like a stream of consciousness but captures a snobbery about Cambridge once found among some Anglo-Catholic families:

Perhaps I had better explain why we are so firmly Church, since part of this story stems from our somewhat unusual attitude, or rather from my aunt Dot’s. We belong to an old Anglican family, which suffered under the penal laws of Henry VIII, Mary I, and Oliver P. Under Henry VIII we did indeed acquire and domesticate a dissolved abbey in Sussex, but were burned, some of us, for refusing to accept the Six Points; under Mary we were again burned, naturally, for heresy; under Elizabeth we dug ourselves firmly into Anglican life, compelling our Puritan tenants to dance round maypoles and revel at Christmas, and informing the magistrates that Jesuit priests had concealed themselves in the chimney-pieces of our Popish neighbours. Under Charles I we looked with disapprobation on the damned crop-eared Puritans whom Archbishop Laud so rightly stood in the pillory, and, until the great Interregnum, approved of the Laudian embellishments of churches and services, the altar crosses, candles and pictures, the improvements in the chapel of St. John’s Cambridge under Dr. Beale and in Peterhouse under Dr. Cosin (Cambridge was our university). During the suppression, we privately kept ousted vicars as chaplains and attended secret Anglican services, at which we were interrupted each Christmas Day by the military, who, speaking very spitefully of Our Lord’s Nativity, dragged us before the Major-Generals. After the Glorious Revolution, we got back our impoverished estates, and, until the Glorious Revolution, there followed palmier days, when we persecuted Papists, conventiclers and Quakers with great impartiality, and, as clerical status rose, began placing our younger sons in fat livings, of which, in 1690, they were deprived as Non-Jurors, and for the next half century or so carried on an independent ecclesiastical existence, very devout, high-flying, schismatic, and eccentrically ordained, directing the devotions and hearing the confessions of pious ladies and gentlemen, and advising them as to the furnishing of the private oratories, conducting services with ritualistic ceremony and schismatic prayer-books, absorbing the teachings of William Law on the sacramental devotional life, and forming part of the stream of High Church piety that has flowed through the centuries down the broad Anglican river, quietly preparing the way for the vociferous Tractarians. These clergymen ancestors of ours were watched with dubious impatience by their relations in the manor houses, who soon discreetly came to terms with the detestable Hanoverians, and did not waste their fortunes and lives chasing after royal pretenders who were not, after all, Anglican.

Change Sussex for Staffordshire and it could be a description of the Comberford family of Comberford Hall and the Moat House in Tamworth, and the description of their downfall in the plaque in the Comberford Chapel in Saint Editha’s Church, Tamworth, as I recalled in my lecture in Tamworth last month [9 May 2019]:

‘Under Charles I we looked with disapprobation on the damned crop-eared Puritans whom Archbishop Laud so rightly stood in the pillory, and, until the great Interregnum, approved of the Laudian embellishments of churches and services, the altar crosses, candles and pictures, the improvements in the chapel of St. John’s Cambridge … Cambridge was our university.’

Many members of the Comberford family were associated with Saint John’s College.

Humphrey Comberford (ca 1496/1498-1555) of Comberford Hall and the Moat House was educated at Cambridge (BA 1525, MA 1528). Humphrey and two of his brothers – Henry and Richard Comberford – seem to have benefited under the terms of a bequest from John Bayley, and his brother who had funded a fellowship at Saint John’s College, stipulating that preference be given to men from Tamworth.

His brother, Henry Comberford (ca 1499-1586), later Precentor of Lichfield Cathedral, was admitted to Saint John’s College on 31 March 1533. He graduated BA (1533), MA (1536) and BD (1545). He went on to become a Fellow of Saint John’s College and a Proctor of Cambridge University.

When he was the ‘parson of Polstead’, near Colchester, in 1539, Henry was still associated with the college, and he was still a Fellow of Saint John’s when he was involved in a bishop’s visitation to Saint John’s in April 1542.

Their brother, Richard Comberford (ca 1512-post 1547),was born at Comberford and was admitted to Saint John’s on 8 April 1534. He was a Fellow of Saint John’s in 1538, and later was the Senior Bursar in 1542-1544.

Richard Comberford and his brother John Comberford both leased lands at Much Bradley in Staffordshire from Saint John’s College.

Richard Comberford has often been confused by 18th century genealogists with Richard Comerford of Ballybur, Co Kilkenny, and so in a confused way, the family trees became entangled … another intrigue that could so easily provide material for a novel set in Cambridge in the 16th and 17th centuries.

‘Cambridge was our university’ … the Trinity Street frontage of Saint John’s College (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Two Sidney Street plaques are reminders of Charles Darwin’s days in Cambridge

A plaque at Boots in Cambridge recalls Charles Darwin lived in rooms on Sidney Street in 1828 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

During my visits to Cambridge this week, I noticed for the first time two plaques – one a blue plaque – at Boots in Sidney Street announcing that Charles Darwin (1809-1882) ‘lived in a house on this site’ in 1828.

Darwin once said, ‘Upon the whole, the three years which I spent at Cambridge were the most joyful in my life.’ I had always thought he spent those three years in rooms in Christ’s College, and knew he had later rented rooms on Fitzwilliam Street after returning to Cambridge from the Beagle. But I had never realised that he once stayed in rooms above a tobacconist’s shop on Sidney Street.

It has long been debated why Charles Darwin came to Christ’s College, Cambridge. His grandfather, Dr Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) of Lichfield, went to Saint John’s College, and Charles Darwin’s school, Shrewsbury School, also had connections with Saint John’s.

Darwin’s cousin, Hensleigh Wedgwood (1803-1891), later a philologist and barrister, also went to Saint John’s College in 1821. However, at the time it had a reputation for strict discipline. Wedgwood moved to Christ’s after only one term. He took his BA in 1824 and was elected a Finch and Baines Fellow of Christ’s in February 1829, a position he held until October 1830.

I suppose it is not surprising then that his cousin, Charles Darwin’s brother, Erasmus Darwin, joined Christ’s College on 9 February 1822. He received his MB in 1828. Darwin’s second cousin, William Darwin Fox (1813-1881), later a clergyman and naturalist, came up in 1824.

So, Charles Darwin was following his cousins and brother to Christ’s. In those days, it was known as a quiet and relaxed college, neither academically rigorous nor religiously strict.

Charles Darwin’s name was entered in the admissions books at Christ’s College on 15 October 1827 as a candidate for an ordinary BA degree. As Darwin had forgotten much of his school Greek, he was tutored before coming up to Cambridge in the Lent Term of 1828.

Darwin’s rooms on Sidney Street provided a a glimpse of Lady Margaret Beaufort’s great gatehouse at Christ’s College (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Darwin arrived in Cambridge on Saturday 26 January 1828, at the age of 18. His brother Erasmus returned two weeks later on 8 February. As the academic year began the previous October, all the college rooms were already full, and so Charles found lodgings in rooms above the shop of William Bacon, a tobacconist, in Sidney Street.

Sidney Street was then a narrow street, and he was just a minute or two in walking distance from Christ’s College. The view from his window probably gave him a glimpse of Lady Margaret Beaufort’s great gatehouse, which I was writing about yesterday.

His lodgings above a tobacconist’s shop led to some teasing. One friend, Albert Way (1805-1874) of Trinity College, drew a mock coat of arms for Darwin in April that included crossed tobacco pipes, meerschaum pipes, cigars, a wine barrel and beer tankards.

That summer, Darwin went home to Shrewsbury. When he returned to Cambridge for the Michaelmas Term on 31 October 1828, he found a room was now available in Christ’s College and the Tutor assigned him to a comfortable set on the south side of First Court.

On All Saints’ Day, 1 November 1828, he moved into a set of rooms, as he later recalled, ‘in old court, middle stair-case, on right-hand on going into court, up one flight, right-hand door & capital rooms they were.’

There is a tradition that these were once the rooms of the natural theologian William Paley (1743-1805), although there is no evidence to substantiate this story. At the time, college staircases were not named with letters as they are today, but Darwin’s rooms are now known as G4.

Darwin had a panelled main sitting room with an adjoining dressing room and bedroom. His three windows on the north side overlooked First Court, with the Chapel directly across from him, the Master’s Lodge to its right and closer still the Hall. Darwin’s south facing windows overlooked what was formerly called Bath Court and is today the site of the new undergraduate library.

He decorated his room with 18th century engravings of master paintings, and loved spending time listening to the choir in the Chapel at nearby King’s College.

Darwin spent time listening to the choir in the Chapel at King’s College (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Darwin later recalled: ‘During the three years which I spent at Cambridge my time was wasted, as far as the academical studies were concerned.’ But he graduated in the Easter Term of 1831.

In December 1831, he left England with Captain Robert Fitzroy (1805-1865) on the voyage of HMS Beagle.

When he returned from the five-year voyage in October 1836, Darwin visited his family home in Shrewsbury and then returned to Cambridge and took lodgings at 22 Fitzwilliam Street, near the site where the Fitzwilliam Museum would open in 1848, and where he organised his specimen collection from the voyage. He dined often in Christ’s College, and I was once shown where his name occurs frequently in the Combination Room wine book.

For the rest of his life, he had a strong affection for Christ’s College, and he sent his eldest son, William, there in the 1860s. In his Autobiography in 1876 he recalled, ‘Upon the whole, the three years I spent at Cambridge as the most joyful of my happy life; for I was then in excellent health, and almost always in high spirits.’

Darwin was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws (LL.D) from the University of Cambridge on 17 November 1877. It was a somewhat raucous event in the Senate House, at which a stuffed monkey was dangled above Darwin’s head by undergraduate pranksters.

Christ’s College regretted that new statutes were not approved in Parliament in time to confer on him the only honour it could, that of an honorary Fellowship. He died in London on 19 April 1882 and is buried in Westminster Abbey.

Darwin’s rooms in Christ’s College were made into an exhibition space. The Cambridge University Library holds many of his documents, including letters, and Cambridge University Press has published much about Darwin, including the correspondence series.

The site of Bacon’s tobacconist shop in Sidney Street is now occupied by Boots the chemist. A blue plaque under the first floor windows commemorates Darwin’s stay there: ‘Charles Darwin lived in a house on this site 1828.’

Lower down, at ground floor level, a slate plaque on a pillar facing the street reads, ‘Charles Darwin 1808-1882 kept in lodgings on this site in 1828 while an undergraduate of Christs [sic] College.’

Darwin’s days on Sidney Street are recalled on two plaques at Boots (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

An afternoon rummaging in some of my favourite bookshops in Cambridge

The Cambridge University Press Bookshop on the corner of Trinity Street and Market Hill (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

Cambridge has a wonderful array and choice of bookshops, and so, after this week’s USPG conference at High Leigh in Hoddesdon, I found I had the best part of an afternoon to spend rummaging and browsing in some of my favourite bookshops.

Cambridge is just half an hour by train from Broxbourne, the station nearest to High Leigh, and there are trains every half an hour or so. As you might expect for a university city, Cambridge has a wide variety of bookshops in Cambridge, some of them unique.

A favourite bookshop for many was Galloway and Porter at 30 Sidney Street, beside Sidney Sussex College. But, sadly, the shop closed in 2010. The Angel Bookshop was another bookshop in Ben’e’t Street, just off King’s Parade, but closed in 2015 and is still much-missed independent. More recently, John Smith closed its bookshop in Cambridge at the end of last month [31 May 2019]. But Cambridge still has an enthralling array of bookshops.

The Cambridge University Press Bookshop looks out onto the Senate House, Gonville and Caius College and Great Saint Mary’s Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

This week, I was oblivious to the passing time on a summer afternoon while I was browsing in the religious studies section on the first floor of the Cambridge University Press Bookshop is at No 1 Trinity Street, on the corner with Market Hill. On one side I was looking out onto the Senate House and Gonville and Caius College on one side, and on the other at Great Saint Mary’s Church. This shop claims to be the oldest bookshop site in Britain, selling books from the oldest publisher in the world.

Cambridge University Press opened its bookshop here in 1992, but the shop itself has been around for a great deal longer, selling books all the while – since 1581, in fact, when it was run by William Scarlett. Some sources claim there was a bookshop on the site from 1505, but it can certainly claim to be the oldest known bookshop in Britain.

The Cambridge University Press originated from Letters Patent to the University from Henry VIII in 1534. CUP printed its first book in 1584 and has been producing books ever since. The first University printer, Thomas Thomas (1553-1588), was based from 1583 just across the street on what was Regent Walk – not to be confused with Street, but on what is now the Senate House Lawn. At one time, this area was the book-selling centre of the town.

Meanwhile, the bookshop at No 1 Trinity Street passed from hand to hand over the centuries, until Thomas Stevenson died. It was then bought in 1846 by the Scottish publisher Daniel Macmillan (1813-1857), grandfather of the Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, and his brother Alexander Macmillan (1818-1896).

It was here that Tennyson gave a reading of his poem Maud, that Thackeray had lunch with the founders of the Macmillan publishing empire, and that Charles Kingsley was welcomed as a frequent guest.

The Macmillans employed their nephew Robert Bowes as an apprentice. He later became a partner and eventually took over the business.

During a vote on the right of women to received the BA degree at Cambridge in 1897, protesting students took over Macmillan and Bowes and displayed an effigy of a woman on a bicycle from a first floor window. The university rejected the application to admit women that year, although they were finally admitted in 1948.

A plaque on the Trinity Street side summarises the story of the bookshop (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

The shop became Bowes & Bowes in 1907, was renamed Sherratt & Hughes in 1986, and became the Cambridge University Press Bookshop 25 years ago on 30 April 1992.

The bookshop is still thriving today. It does not stock fiction or poetry, but specialises in academic texts on literary theory, philosophy and more. There are around 50,000 different titles on the shelves and access to a substantial backlist of print on demand editions, delivering books that are often hard-to-find to people who need them around the world.

The shop expanded around the corner in 2008 into No 27 Market Hill, where it opened its specialist Education and English Language Teaching shop the following year. Recently, the shop has been transformed with touch screens placing its catalogue of books and teaching materials at the fingertips of buyers and browsers.

A few steps away at No 30 Trinity Street, opposite Trinity College, Heffers Bookshop has been called ‘the most knowledgeable bookshop in Cambridge.’ William Heffer, reportedly the son of illiterate agricultural workers, was born in a village 15 miles from Cambridge.

An invitation to Britain’s oldest bookshop (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Heffers first opened its doors in Cambridge at 104 Fitzroy Street in 1876. Initially it was a stationery shop, but books were soon added. Heffers moved to Petty Cury and was there until 1970, when the shop moved to the present premises at Trinity Street, opposite Trinity College. Although Heffers became part of the Blackwell’s academic chain in 1999, it remains an institution in Cambridge.

The shop’s departments range from children’s books to crime fiction, and there is an array of fiction and non-fiction titles, as well as music and stationery and the probably the best range of board games in Britain. It opened its dedicated children’s department in 2010 in a bright space that is filled with thousands of books.

The shop also has a year-round events programme, featuring both well-known and debut authors, children’s activities and games nights.

I also called into Waterstones at 22 Sidney Street, close to Sidney Sussex College. Although it is part of large chain, the shop always has many books of Cambridge interest. Across four floors, there are books from all over the world that give this a more academic atmosphere than most chain bookshop.

Oliver Soskice, a Cambridge painter and the husband of Janet Soskice – a fellow of Jesus College and Professor of Philosophical Theology in Cambridge – found himself trapped upstairs in Waterstones in Cambridge two years ago [13 February 2017].

Staff closed up that evening while he was still inside, and he was alone inside for almost an hour and a half before a manager came to his rescue – which just goes to show how easy it is to get lost in a book and in a bookshop in Cambridge.

G David is in a quiet corner in Saint Edward’s Passage (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

My favourite independent, second-hand and antiquarian bookshop in Cambridge is G David in a quiet corner at 16 Saint Edward’s Passage, beside the Church of Saint Edward King and Martyr.

This independent bookshop sells antique, second-hand, remaindered books, maps and prints dating back to the late 1800s. It was founded by Gustave David in 1896, and has been run by his family across three centuries.

The Haunted Bookshop is also in Saint Edward’s Passage. The names Sarah Kay and Phil Salin are above the door, but it is known as the Haunted Bookshop because of stories about a resident ghost.

However, the main attraction is the treasure trove of books, stacked on the ground floor and on the footpath outside in huge piles.

Cambridge has so many book lovers that it is no surprise that the charity bookshops are well-stocked. They include the Amnesty Bookshop at 4 Mill Road and the Oxfam Bookshop at 28 Sidney Street, near Sidney Sussex, Magdalene and Saint John’s.

Over the years, I have found many treasures in the Oxfam Bookshop. This is a bookshop with a difference, well-stocked with rare and unusual books, maps, children’s books, vinyl, art and philosophy, books in Greek and Latin, sheet music, fiction and non-fiction. fiction.

Graduands from King’s College line up outside the Cambridge University Press Bookshop this week to enter the Senate House (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Lady Margaret Beaufort’s gatehouse is restored at Christ’s College, Cambridge

The gatehouse at Christ’s College, Cambridge, has been restored and repainted in a project that took four years to complete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

Strolling through Cambridge before and after this week’s USPG conference in High Leigh, it was a delight to see how one of the majestic college gates in Cambridge has been restored recently.

The restoration work at Christ’s College has taken four years to complete.

This Gatehouse on St Andrew’s Street is the main entrance to Christ’s College and is highly visible to tourists and shoppers in Cambridge. But the heraldic detail, dating from the early 1500s, had not been painted for many years and had become dull faded. The four-year project included research into the original colours and methods used, repairs, and the painting itself.

Lady Margaret Beaufort’s coat of arms on the gatehouse at Christ’s College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

The gatehouse was built by Lady Margaret Beaufort, the mother of Henry VII and grandmother of Henry VIII, who refounded the college in the early 16th century.

Christ’s College was originally established in 1437 by William Byngham, who called his new college God’s House. The college moved to its present location in 1448 after Henry VI decided that he needed the original site for his new King's College.

In 1505, God’s House was re-dedicated as Christ’s College under the patronage of Lady Margaret Beaufort. She was the only daughter of John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, and was married four times. With her marriage to Edmund Tudor, the mother of Henry VII, she became a key figure in the Wars of the Roses as the matriarch of the House of Tudor.

Lady Margaret is revered as the founder of not one but two Cambridge colleges, refounding Christ’s College in 1505, and before she died in 1509 beginning the development of Saint John’s College, which was completed posthumously by her executors in 1511. Lady Margaret Hall, the first Oxford college to admit women, is also named in her honour.

The Chapel of Christ’s College was consecrated on or around 1 June 1510 by the then Bishop of Ely, James Stanley, a stepson of Lady Margaret Beaufort. A pious woman, it is said that even before the chapel was consecrated she heard Mass from a gallery now represented by a window in the south wall of the chapel, although the chapel was not formally consecrated until a year after her death.

The chapel survived the Reformation and now stands as a spiritual presence at the front of Christ’s College, tucked away beside the Master’s Lodge. Much of the original chapel fabric is still visible and its original construction is almost entirely intact.

Lady Margaret Beaufort’s statue on the gatehouse at Christ’s College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Lady Margaret’s contribution to re-founding Christ’s College is celebrated in a number of statues, heraldic emblems, and other architectural features around the college buildings. The college is entered through the imposing 16th century gatehouse, which still boasts its original oak doors. Above the entry is a statue and the coat of arms of Lady Margaret Beaufort.

Much of the façade, including the late 16th century oak doors, remained largely unchanged until the masonry was refaced with harder stone in 1714. A statue of Lady Margaret was added in the 19th century.

Christ’s College is laid out in a series of four courts. First Court is the oldest part of the college, dating to the 15th century. The range between the Gatehouse and the Chapel formed part of the original God’s House and were built between 1448 and 1452. The buildings in First Court do not look their age as they were refaced with stone in the 18th century.

The Dining Hall is an early 16th century building. Although it was remodelled in the late Victorian period, the hall retains its original roof and a 16th century portrait of Lady Margaret Beaufort.

Second Court gives access to the Fellows’ Garden, arguably the finest such garden in a Cambridge college. The site has been owned by the college since 1554, but the present garden dates from 1825.

Milton’s Mulberry Tree was planted in the garden in 1608 – the year Milton was born – as part of an attempt to encourage the silk industry in England. Legend says Milton composed Lycidas under the tree. A bathing pool and summerhouse nearby have stood there since at least 1763.

The Old Library houses an excellent collection of mediaeval manuscripts and early printed material.

The notable alumni of Christ’s College include the Poet John Milton and the naturalist Charles Darwin.

I preached in the Chapel of Christ’s College, Cambridge, ten years ago [1 February 2009] at the Solemn Orchestral Mass for the Eve of Candlemas. The sermon was part of the Lent Term series, ‘The ears of the heart …,’ organised by the then chaplain, the Revd Christopher Woods.

I stayed in Christ’s College again in 2010 for a weekend before moving to rooms in Sidney Sussex College, where I was taking part in a summer school organised by the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies.

Recently, people at Christ’s College realised that it had been many years since the gatehouse had been repainted and redecorated. It took about four years to research the right colours to be used, to restore wear and tear to the stonework and then to complete the repainting itself, which was undertaken by skilled craftsmen and women.

The restoration was carried out by Brown and Ralph, based in Longstanton. The firm believes the conservation of the stonework is going to increase its natural life, but also brighten the Cambridge streetscape.

Lady Margaret Beuafort’s coat of arms at the gatehouse at Saint John’s College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

There is a similar gatehouse at Saint John’s College, Cambridge. Anyone interested in architecture, Tudor history and heraldry can catch an alternative glimpse of what the gatehouse at Christ’s College might look like should visit Saint John’s.

There however, the heraldic emblems of Lady Margaret are displayed in a burnished gold, and instead of a statue of Lady Margaret above her coat of arms, the gatehouse displays a statue of Saint John the Evangelist holding the poisoned emblem associated with him in many legends.

The gatehouse at Saint John’s College is similar in many ways to its counterpart at Christ’s College (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

A plaque in Cambridge is a reminder of the needs and plight of refugees

No 22 Station Road, Cambridge, where 29 Basque children found refuge in 1938-1939 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

On my way to the USPG conference at High Leigh in Hoddesdon, I spent a few hours in Cambridge yesterday morning [24 June 2019], browsing in some of my favourite bookshops and dropping in to Sidney Sussex College to see the wisteria that remains in Hall Court.

As I walked along Station Road from the train station to the centre of Cambridge, I notice for the first time a blue plaque on a house at 22 Station Road commemorating the Basque refugees children who found solace in Cambridge and refuge from the terrors of the Spanish Civil War just as World War II was about to break out.

This plaque on Station Road in Cambridge reads:

From January 1938 to November 1939
twenty-nine Basque Children, refugees
from the Spanish Civil War, were
cared for by local volunteers in
this house provided by
Jesus College.

The destruction of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War inspired Pablo Picasso’s masterpiece of the same name. But it also brought almost 4,000 children from Spain to Britain as refugees.

Public opinion in Britain was outraged by the destruction of Guernica, the first-ever saturation bombing of a civilian population. The Basque government appealed to foreign nations to give temporary asylum to the children, but the British government adhered to its policy of non-intervention.

The Duchess of Atholl, who was President of the National Committee for Spanish Relief, launched a campaign calling on the British government to accept the Basque children. Finally, the British Government conceded and granted permission, albeit reluctantly.

However, the government refused to be responsible financially for the children, claiming this would violate the non-intervention pact and supposed British neutrality in the Spanish Civil War. The government demanded that the newly-formed Basque Children’s Committee guarantee 10 shillings a week for the care and education of each child – 10 shillings or 50p may not seem much today, but it was the equivalent of about £33 in 2019 spending power.

The children left for Britain on the steamship Habana on 21 May 1937. Each child had been given a cardboard hexagonal disc to pin on his or her clothes with an identification number and the words Expedición a Inglaterra (‘Expedition to England’) on it.

Originally, the ship was only supposed to carry around 800 passengers. But when it sailed, it carried 3,480 children, 80 teachers, 120 helpers, 15 Roman Catholic priests and two doctors. The children were crammed into the boat, and slept where they could, some even sleeping in the lifeboats. The journey was extremely rough in the Bay of Biscay and during the journey most of the children were violently seasick.

The steamer arrived at Southampton two days later, on 23 May 1937. Thousands of people lined the quayside and the children, in spite of their ordeal, were excited, thinking the bunting everywhere was to celebrate their arrival. Later, they realised it had been put up to mark the coronation of King George VI 10 days earlier.

When they disembarked, the children were sent in busloads to a camp that had been set up in three fields at North Stoneham in Eastleigh in south Hampshire. The camp had been set up in less than two weeks thanks to a remarkable effort by the whole community. Volunteers had worked round the clock and all through the Bank Holiday to prepare the cap.

The children were completely unprepared for the camping. Most of them had lived in densely packed flats in working-class districts in Bilboa, one of the most industrialised cities in Spain. Indeed, many of the children did not stay there long. The idea was to send them on to homes or ‘colonies’ as soon as possible. The Basque government insisted they stay in groups in order to preserve their national identity.

The first to offer asylum was the Salvation Army, which offered to take 400. Next was the Roman Catholic Church, with a commitment to take 1,200 children. Little by little, from the end of May, the children left the provisional camp in groups to go to other homes all across Britain and staffed and financed by volunteers, church groups and trade unions.

From June 1937 until January 1938, 29 children from the ‘Ayuda Social’ orphanage in Bilbao, whose fathers were militiamen and had been killed in the early stages of the war, were housed in a former derelict vicarage at Pampisford, near Sawston, south of Cambridge.

The plaque at 22 Station Road, Cambridge, recalls a time when refugees were welcome in Britain (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

They were transferred in January 1938 to a house in Station Road, Cambridge, leased by Jesus College. They would stay there until November 1939. The Cambridge colony was considered one of the most privileged.

All the children had been brought up in an intensely political atmosphere and they were very receptive to and benefited from the support of local academics and students. A programme of child-centred educational activities was drawn up, with the mornings being dedicated to schoolwork, and the afternoons to painting, music and handicrafts.

The children produced their own monthly magazine Ayuda. Their music teacher was the Spanish composer and pianist Rosa García Ascot, also known as Rosita Bal (1902-2202), a pupil of the Spanish composer Manuel de Falla (1876-1946). She trained them in music and dances that they performed in concerts all over East Anglia and London.

At the time, the Cambridge classicist Professor Francis Cornford (1874-1943) of Trinity College Cambridge, was Laurence Professor of Ancient Philosophy. His son, the poet John Cornford (1915-1936), had been killed fighting with the International Brigade in Spain. Professor Cornford invited the children to spend a month in the summer of 1938 at his mill at Ringstead, on the Norfolk coast.

The Dean of Saint John’s College, Cambridge, the Revd Dr Hugh Fraser Stewart (1863-1948), and his wife Jessie were also involved actively with the children. They offered them hospitality, and their daughter Frida organised fundraising tours throughout Britain for the Cambridge colony’s concert party. Incidentally, it was also Hugh and Jessie Stewart who took TS Eliot to Little Gidding on 23 May 1936, a visit that Jessie had been proposed a decade earlier. Eliot’s interest had been aroused by a play he had been given to read by George Every, dealing with the contact Charles I had had with the Little Gidding community in 1646.

After the fall of Bilbao and Franco’s capture of the rest of northern Spain, the process of repatriation began. By the late 1940s, most of the children had been reunited with their families, either in Spain or in exile. But over 250 children settled permanently in Britain.

Despite the hardships these children endured, life in the colonies was a unique experience of community living. From a practical point of view, it was a positive experience – there were undoubtedly happy times – nevertheless, they would never forget their underlying sadness and the anxiety of separation from their families.

The plaque today is a reminder of how the rise of far-right populism and nationalism destroyed Europe 80 years ago, and a reminder of why we continue to need European unity and compassion. I wondered yesterday whether children with the same needs would be welcome in Britain today?

Would refugee children find a similar welcome in Britain today? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)