St Chad's Day

Today is the feast of St Chad, who died in 672, and who is seen as the Apostle of Mercia, founder of the ancient see of Lichfield and patron of the Catholic archdiocese of Birmingham. His surviving relics are now housed above the High Altar in St Chad's Cathedral. The cathedral website has a piece about them and their survival at The Relics of St Chad.

The reliquary containing the bones of St Chad in front of the altar at the

Metropolitan Cathedral and Basilica of St Chad, Birmingham,
on the Solemnity of St Chad, March 2nd.

Image:clasmerdin.blogspot.com 

Many churches, both medieval and modern are under his patronage in the counties of the west midlands and Lancashire, the southern half of which was in the Lichfield diocese until 1541. I have posted about some of them previously in my post Churches of St Chad.

This year the church of St Chad at Uppermill in the moorland township of Saddleworth, historically in Yorkshire until the mangling of boundaries  in 1974, but looking more towards Lancashire in terms of its local economy, is celebrating its 800th anniversary, originating as a chapel established by Whalley Abbey. The parish website is at St Chad's (Uppermill) — Saddleworth Churches.

Saddleworth was the one piece of Yorkshire not in the medieval diocese of York, but in that of Lichfield and its successor dioceses of Chester and Manchester. 

 

Saddleworth Parish Church of St Chad

 

    Image: Geograph/© Copyright David Dixon and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

The church as it is today is a rebuilding of 1831-33, and typical of the style known as a "Waterloo Church." The smaller previous building, which looks to have been largely seventeenth and eighteenth century in date, the tower being rebuilt in 1746, can be seen below:

Rushcart Festival at Saddleworth Church, Yorkshire 

Painted circa 1826 by John Holland before the old church of St Chad was rebuilt from 1831 to 1833. This depicts the annual rushbearing ceremony, which has  recently been revived when rushcarts processed from the various villages and assembled outside the church. 

Image: Saddleworth Museum/BBC My Pictures website

There is more about the history and revival of the of the Saddleworth Rushcart here, and about the Rushcarts in general here.

It was at St Chad's that many of my ancestors must have worshipped before my branch of the family (and there are many branches of the Whiteheads in Saddleworth) became Wesleyan in the late eighteenth century, and eventually moved away to Manchester. The man who was the apparent founder of our family in Saddleworth, Henry Whitehead, sometime bailiff of the lands of Roche Abbey there, was recorded in the 1546 Chantry survey as one of the Churchwardens of St Chad's. I wonder how much his experience of parish life in those years mirrored that of The Voices of Morebath?

Pilgrimage to Birmingham

Yesterday I went on a pilgrimage to mark the Year of Faith organised for parishes from the North Oxford Deanery. The idea was to link together visits to places associated with, and indeed the relics, of St Chad, patron of the Archdiocese and cathedral, Bl. John Henry Newman,  and Bl.Dominic Barberi, and to see in them men who had lived by faith.

Our first stop was at the Birmingham Oratory. We joined member sof the congregation in saying the rosary before the  statue of Our Lady, splendidly coped and crowned for May, before Fr Richard Duffield C.O., the main organiser of the pilgrimage, gave a talk about the life of Bl. John Henry and the building of the church - the present structure was erected as a memorial to Newman in the early years of the twentieth century.

 
The High Altar at the Birmingham Oratory

 
Image: Catholic Church (England and Wales) on Flickr

We then went through to the shrine chapel, the only part of Newman's church to survive, and redecorated in advance of his beatification in 2010. Here we had atime to pray, to view some relics of the Cardinal, including his mitre and crozier and the bull creating him a Cardinal, as well as seeing the modern chasse that contains such few fragments of bone as were found in his grave at Rednall, and which also incorporates the original handles from his coffin. There are mounted so that pilgrims may indeed touch them to establish a tangible, tactile contact with him.

The altar in the shrine chapel of Bl. John Henry Newman

Image:anglicanpatrimony.blogspot

There were too many of us to visit Newman's room, which has been preserved as it was at the time of his death. I have been fortunate enough to do so on three previous visits to the Oratory, and that is very remarkable exprience indeed - it is not areconstruction or redecoration, it is a genuine, undisturbed nineteenth century room, and that of one of the great voices of the age.

I think we could all have spent more time exploring the Oratory church and the other displays about Bl. John Henry, but the exigencies of timing sent us on to the cathedral in the centre of the city for the next stage of our pilgrimage.

The Cathedral and Basilica of St Chad Birmingham

 Image: Simon_K on Flickr

If the Oratory is wonderfully Philippine in its baroque style and decoration, St Chad's cathedral is one of the great workks of A.W.N. Pugin, and built in 1839-41. In recent years a lot of work has been done to restore and reinstate aspects of Pugin's scheme, and the interior is striking and beautiful. like the oratory church, very much a place of prayer.

Interior of St Chad's Cathedral

Aidan MCRae Thomson on Flickr

In the cathedral we had a votive Mass of St Chad, whose relics are preserved in the shrine above the High Altar. and time to look around before having our packed lunch and then back into the cathedral for a group photograph on the steps leading to the altar.

The cathedral has some splendid treasures amongst its furnishings, including late medieval items which were acquired from the Low Countries by Pugin. In the oils chapel is a reliquary with some hair of Bl.John Henry, one of his Cardinal's red zucchettos and his ring.

Either side of the steps leading to the altar are the Coenopium or Ombrellino and the tintinnabulum which indicate its status as a Minor Basilica, and honour granted to mark its centenary in June 1941, and about which there is more here.  

The last stage of our pilgrimage took us north of the city centre to the inner suburb of handsworth and to the Convent of the Sisters of Mercy, and built by Pugin for them in 1841 on land given bt his collaborators the Hardman family. A daughter of the family, Juliana, became the first Mother Superior of the house, and in those early months the foundress of the Sisters, Ven. Catherine McAuley stayed there, before returning to Dublin to die the same year.

St Mary's Convent Handsworth

Image: birminghamheritage.org.uk

The convent is typical of Pugin, and was supported not only by the Hardman family but also by his great patron the 16th Earl of Shrewsbury. The church to the east which served as both the sister's church and as parish church was, alas, wrecked by a bomb in 1942, which also destroyed the House of Mercy which had provided shelter for vulnerable women. The descending cloister whuich linke dteh convent and church, atypically Puginesque feature, survives in part, and there are pictures of the lost church - rather like those he designed in Marlow and in Salisbury - on display in the extended house chapel, togetehr with examples of Hardman plate and furnishings.

Pugin's original design

Image: English Heritage

In the chapel is a chair and table which were used by Bl. Dominic Barberi when he visited the Sisters as their Extrordinary Confessor. It is also known that Bl. John Henry Newman used to visit the convent as a place of quiet.

Today the conevent continues to work with the local community, serves as a focus for Mercy Associates, and also is a heritage centre, open to visitors, which recounts the history of the Sisters in Handsworth and in the life of the Church and country.

The whole pilgrimage was very enjoyable, and we were blessed with beautiful weather, and the sight of the countryside finally bursting into leaf and flower as we travelled to and from Birmingham.

The Lichfield Angel

Whilst it is still St Chad's feast day, and indeed the 1340th anniversary of his death, it seems a good opportunity to draw attention to the eighth century carving now known as the Lichfield Angel.

It was discovered, in three pieces, in 2003 beneath the floor of the nave of the present cathedral and recognised as an outstanding survival. Not only is it work of high quality, but unlike much surviving Anglo-Saxon sculpture from standing crosses it has not suffered from weathering, and has retained substantial portions of its original paintwork.

The Lichfield Angel

Image: Lichfield Cathedral website

It is thought to be the left hand side of a representation of the Annunciation - the other portion with Our Lady may still lie under the present cathedral - and may well have formed part of the early tomb or shrine of St Chad. The pigment on it has been compared with that in the St Chad Gospels, also preserved at the cathedral, which date from 730, but the Angel is usually dated to circa 800 - that is from the end of the reign of King Offa, the Mercian overlord of England south of the Humber, who died in 796, and who had secured the temporary elevation of the see of Lichfield to the status of an Archbishopric.

Not only is the carving an indicator of the quality of craftsmanship in a cathedral such as Lichfield but the indications of colour show how splendid the interior must have been. For too long peiopel have had a view of the Anglo-Saxon church as 'home-spun' and impoverished - other than the surviving altar books. Here is proof of a rich decorative tradition that stands fully in the tradition of Catholic worship and devotion.

There is more about the Angel on the Lichfield Cathedral website which can be viewed here.

The Angel and St Chad's Gospels can be seen on display in the chapter house of the cathedral.

Relics of St Chad

Today is the feast of St Chad, the apostle of Mercia, founder of the see of Lichfield and patron of the Archdiocese of Birmingham. The cathedral, designed and decorated by A.W.Pugin, is dedicated to him and his relics are enshrined above the High Altar.

There is a good account of his life and times here. The Oxford DNB biography by D.H.Farmer can be read here, and it includes some details as to the history of his relics.

Statue of St Chad in his cathedral in Birmingham
He is holding a model of Lichfield cathedral

The reliquary holding the relics of St Chad above the High Altar of the cathedral

I have adapted and developed the section about his relics from the article above as follows:

According to St. Bede, Chad was venerated as a saint immediately after his death, and his relics translated to a shrine. He remained the centre of an important cult, focussed on healing, throughout the Middle Ages. Indeed it was the presence of the relics that probably led in the twelfth century to the re-establishment of a co-cathedral at Lichfield following its removal to Coventry in the late eleventh century. Bythe later middle ages the cult had twin foci: his tomb, in the apse, directly behind the high altar of Lichfield cathedral, and, more particularly, his skull, kept in a special Head Chapel, above the south aisle, with a balcony from which the reliquary could be displayed.

The transmission of the relics after the Reformation was tortuous, and a testimony to the faith of recusant families in the centuries that followed. At the dismantling of the Shrine on the instructions of King Henry VIII in about 1538, Prebendary Arthur Dudley (d.1577) of Lichfield Cathedral removed and retained some relics. These eventually passed to his nieces, Bridget and Katherine Dudley, of Russells Hall, near the town of Dudley.

In 1651, they reappeared when a farmer, Henry Hodgetts of Sedgley, was on his death-bed and kept praying to St Chad. When the priest hearing his last confession, Fr Peter Turner SJ, asked him why he called upon Chad. Henry replied, "because his bones are in the head of my bed". He instructed his wife to give the relics to the priest, whence they found their way to the Seminary at St Omer, in France. After the penal times, in the early 19th century, they found their way into the hands of Sir Thomas Fitzherbert-Brockholes of Aston Hall, near Stone in Staffordshire. When his chapel was cleared after his death, his chaplain, Fr Benjamin Hulme, discovered the box containg the relics, which were examined and presented in 1837 to Bishop Thomas Walsh, the Vicar Apostolic of the Midland District, and were enshrined in the new St Chad's Birmingham, opened in 1841, in a new casket designed by Pugin. In 1850 the church became the cathedral of the new diocese.

The relics, which comprise some long bones, were examined by the Oxford Archeological Laboratory by carbon dating techniques in 1985, and all but one of the bones (which was a third femur, and therefore could not have come from Bishop Chad) were dated to the seventh century, and were authenticated as true relics by the Vatican.

In 1919, an Annual Mass and Solemn Outdoor Procession of the Relics was inaugurated at the cathedral in Birmingham. This observance which was at on epoint discontinued because of the redevelopment of the road system round the cathedral has been revived in recent years, on the Saturday nearest to his feast Day, 2 March. There are more pictures of last year's St Chad's Day on the website of St Chad's Cathedral Birmingham.

The Shrine lies in front of the nave altar on St Chad's day 2011

Images: St Chad's cathedral website

St Chad and his relics

Today is the feast of St Chad, bishop of York and then of Lichfield, who died in 672. He is the patron of the cathedral of the Archdiocese of Birmingham and a secondary patron of the diocese.

There is a good account of his life here. His episcopal centre at Lichfield became his shrine church, and the present thirteenth and fourteenth century cathedral housed his relics until the reformation. Lichfield Cathedral Image:Wikipedia Today they are enshrined above the High Altar in St Chad's Cathedral in Birmingham, seat of the Catholic Archbishop of the see, and the cathedral's website has a section on the survival of the relics. St Chad's Cathedral in Birmingham Designed by AW Pugin in 1840 Image:Wikipedia