The website Royal Central has the following post today which has a special resonance for those of us who live in Oxford:
by Elizabeth Jane Timms
A
building in a suburb of Oxford has a remarkably unique history. At
first glance, it could be yet another late-Victorian townhouse, although
the presence of its distinctive blue double-doors suggests something
more unusual. Although now split up into apartments, the building hints
at having once been something else, despite having been flats for over
30 years. The building replaced the apothecary and almshouses of the
Cutler Boulter Charity on St Clement’s Road. It remained the main
dispensary for this East Oxford suburb until 1948 and is, therefore,
historically significant to the area. The building had incidentally also
been the main A.R.P telephone station for Oxfordshire until 1945.
Several years after this, it attracted the interest of the person with
whom it is now most closely associated.
Charles Sydney Gibbes with Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna
Image: Romanov family Flickr / Wikimedia
Charles
Sydney Gibbes, who became a well-recognised figure in Oxford, was
originally from Yorkshire and educated at St John’s College, Cambridge.
Gibbes initially went to Russia to teach English to the aristocracy but
was later summoned to the Russian Imperial Court to be considered as
tutor to the daughters of Tsar Nicholas II, the Grand Duchesses Olga,
Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia. In 1913, Gibbes became English tutor to
the nine-year-old Tsarevich Alexei, the heir-apparent to the throne.
Following
the Tsar’s abdication on 2/15 March 1917, the Imperial Family was
detained under the Provisional Government, interned as prisoners within
their residence of the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo (Tsar’s
Village) outside St. Petersburg. Initially, the Imperial Family was
moved to the 'Governor's House' at Tobolsk in Siberia, but in April
1918, orders were issued to move the Tsar and his family again, this
time to Ekaterinburg. The Imperial Family was housed at the Ipatiev
House (also dubbed the House of Special Purpose) where on the night of
16/17 July 1918, the entire family - together with their faithful
retainers, the maid Anna Demidova and the former court physician Dr
Botkin - were shot in the cellar of the house by Bolsheviks. Gibbes had
not been allowed contact with the Imperial Family and was only able to
enter the Ipatiev House later, following the murder, in the subsequent
period when Ekaterinburg was briefly under the control of the White
Army.
Gibbes
returned to England and enrolled in an ordination course at St
Stephen’s House in 1928; although, he subsequently decided against a
career in the Anglican Church. On his return to Harbin, he was received
into the Russian Orthodox Church as a tonsured monk, taking as his new
name Father Nicholas, after the murdered Tsar Nicholas II. Gibbes again
returned to England, moving to Oxford in 1941, where he established an
Orthodox congregation in the medieval chapel at Bartlemas, which
borders the recreation grounds of Oriel, Jesus and Lincoln Colleges. It
was after the end of the Second World War when Gibbes found himself
looking for somewhere permanent to settle that he came across the
building in Oxford.
Father
Nicholas purchased the house in 1949 and converted one ground-floor
room of the house into a chapel dedicated to St Nicholas the
Wonderworker, where the Russian Imperial Family was mentioned in the
services which were celebrated there. It was within this chapel that
Gibbes displayed many of the relics which he had preserved and carried
with him across the world. Most poignantly perhaps, was the chandelier
of red and white glass tulips which hung originally in the ‘House of
Special Purpose’ at Ekaterinburg, which Gibbes had salvaged. Among the
icons hung in the chapel were those which had been personally given to
Gibbes by the Imperial Family or were those rescued from the dustbins
and stoves of the ‘House of Special Purpose.’
Elsewhere,
Gibbes carefully preserved his other relics of the Imperial Family,
which included a handkerchief, pencil-case and bell owned by the
Tsarevich Alexei. There was also a pair of Tsar Nicholas II’s felt boots
which were kept near the altar. Gibbes established a library behind the
chapel, which contained some exercise books of his Imperial pupils
Grand Duchesses Maria and Anastasia, as well as some of his photographs.
Other items included a coat-of-arms from the imperial yacht Standart
and a collection of sleigh bells.
The
house was subsequently split into flats, and the chapel that held such
poignant relics of the Imperial Family was also turned into a flat.
Nothing remains of Gibbes's time there. Much of his collection was sold
to the Wernher Collection at Luton Hoo where a memorial chapel was made
to house them, consecrated by Archbishop Anthony of Sourozh. When Luton
Hoo became a luxury hotel, the Wernher Collection moved to Greenwich and
was managed by English Heritage. The Gibbes collection, however, is now
in private hands.
The
house was successfully nominated as a heritage asset in 2015. It is
also a building of spiritual importance regarding the history of
Oxford’s Orthodox communities, as the Russian Orthodox Chapel in Oxford
was only established much later and not within Gibbes’s lifetime.
Appropriately enough, the chapel today contains an engraving of Gibbes
in its main entrance hall, showing him as the white-bearded figure in
black that he had familiarly become in 1950s Oxford. Fittingly, the
chapel contains also icons of the Russian Imperial Family in its window
niches, who were finally recognised - following much debate - as Passion
Bearers by the Moscow Patriarchate in 2000.
Gibbes
died aged 87 in 1963 and is buried in Headington Cemetery, his
gravestone bearing the three staves of the Russian Orthodox Cross. In
2013, a memorial service took place at Headington Cemetery to mark his
137th birthday, attended by the Russian Orthodox Community.
The service took place in deep snow; ironically enough, it was a scene
that fittingly could have occurred in Russia.
