The return journey from Belmont

This morning we packed up and left Belmont after breakfast to make our return to Oxford. I gather that we as the Brothers from the Oratory had managed to impress the monks at Belmont by our assiduity in attending the Offices in church. I think we all wish to return at some time or anothe rto the peace and dignity of the abbey and its community.

Belmont Abbey church from the south east

Image: Wikimedia/geograph.org.uk

Our first stop was in Hereford. Our time there was spent mainly in and around the cathedral, with Fr Jerome checking that all was well with the fine array of monumental brasses the cathedral still posseses despite the depredations of time, destruction and neglect. On ehe poined out to me is the  brass of a Dean from just before the reformation which has two represntations of the Holy Trinity - one being the standard late medieval enthroned father holding the Crucifix with the Holy Spirit hovering and the other, unique in his enormous experience of brass iconography, is the Orthodox equivalent, the Three Angels in the Hospitality of Abraham.

We also went into the Catholic church of St Francis Xavier, which is close by and holds the relic of St John Kemble I posted about in conecction with our pilgrimage to his grave.

 The interior of St Francis Xavier Hereford

The relic of St John Kemble is at the altar on the right

Image: Flickr

I have visited the church before and it is beautifully appointed and cared for. It is in the care of the monks of belmont, one of whom occupies the Presbytery anmd is Pariah Priest

After a bit of shopping in the open market  we set off, past the remains of the Hereford Blackfriars and the unique survival of the Preaching Cross from their graveyard. This is not far from the site of St John Kemble's martyrdom. We did not stop at the Blackfriars and the following notes and illustrations are taken from an online source:

One of Hereford’s hidden gems is the Black Friars Rose Garden hidden down a passageway in Widemarsh Street.  The garden contains the remains of the friary of the Black Friars, once one of the city’s most important religious houses.  The Black Friars were given the site outside Widemarsh Gate in around 1246 and the monastic buildings were consecrated in around 1276.  The Black Friars were also known as ‘Friars Preachers’ and regularly gave sermons to the local populace from their preaching crosses.  The cross in the grounds is one of the few surviving examples in England and was considerably restored in the 19th century.

In 1538 the Friary was dissolved by Henry VIII and the buildings were converted into a fine town house by Sir Thomas Coningby of Hampton Court near Dinmore.  This was badly damaged during the Civil War and later became a farm building.  The existing ruins are the Refectory and the Prior’s House dating from about 1322.

In the 13th century the roadside site was occupied by a house of the Knight’s Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, and parts of the hall and chapel dating from this period are now incorporated into the almshouses built by Sir Thomas Coningsby in 1614.  Grouped around a quiet quadrangle, the twelve separate lodgings were formerly used to accommodate a chaplain and eleven retired soldiers, seamen or servants who were known as ‘The Coningsby Servilors’.

The preaching cross and monastic ruins are now set in an attractive rose garden

Text and images;shawsseasonalliving.

We called in at a pub for lunch, before our final stop at the church at Stanford Bishop near Bromyard.

 Stanford Bishop church

Image: Birmingham Post

This is an intriguing place and raises all manner of historical and archaeological questions. The parish is a scattered community and the church stands by itself on a low eminence. Dedicated to St James it  is not mentioned in Domesday Book, and the present, rather plain structure is mid- to late-twelfth century, when the cult of St James was at its height. There is more about work of that period at St James, Stanford Bishop, Herefordshire · The Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture

However what we had come to see is claimed to be much older - the chair of St Augustine, in which he sat - and continued to sit rather than rise - at his fateful and futile meeting with the British bishops in 603.

 

The reputed Chair of St Augustine

Image: catexpert.co.uk

The story of the chair can be read in an article from the Birmingham Post from 2014 at The battle over a chair once thought to be the oldest in Britain, and from which I quote "The earliest claim for its importance was made in the 1840s. Some years afterwards, the chair was discovered in the church tower, when a restoration of the church was taking place, probably in the 1890s. Later on it was turfed out, and served the church sexton as a piece of garden furniture. Later still (in 1899), when it was recognised that the chair might be of major importance, the church authorities presented it to the Beaney Institute or Royal Museum in Canterbury"

In 1943 it was returned to the church and scholarly opinion at the time thought it might be no earlier than eighteenth century in date.  

This is clearly an ancient site.  There is a prehistoric standing stone by the gate into the churchyard and within an ancient yew - there is more about these at  Stanford Bishop Church Stone Standing Stone (Menhir) It may have once been the site of circle, or perhaps a place of assembly. It lies close to the county boundary with Worcestershirewhich is essesntially the same as that between the seventh century sub-Kingdoms of the Hwicce ( represented by Worcestershire, Gloucestershire and part at lease of Oxfordshire - Hwicce as in Wychwood ) and the Magonsaeten ( the medieval diocese of Hereford ). If the ill-fated meeting did not take place at Aust on the banks of the Bristol Channel, as is usually claimed, could it have taken place ata  recognised place of meeting near the borders of two tribal units? looking around from the slightly raised site occupied by the church it is a tempting hypothesis. Time to get the a dendrochronologists to work I suspect.

We travelled back across Worcestershire - a subtly different landscape from that of Herefordshire - and had time to look slightly wistfully as we drove past at the remains of Pershore Abbey in the middle of that attractive town, but had not the time to stop. Pershore was Benedictine, and today just the choir, south transept and central tower of the monastic church survive:

Pershore Abbey from the south east

Image: Wikimedia

 Pershore Abbey from the south west

Image:pershoreabbey.org.uk

Then we continued our journey ascending Broadway Hill with its panoramic view of the county and on home across the edge of the Cotswolds to the Oratory and Oxford - and the chance to collect my mobile phone which has been in for repair, of which I have been physically and emotionally bereft.

This has been a wonderful break both spiritually and recreationally and I am immensely grateful to all who made it possible, Fr Jerome, the community at Belmont, my fellow Brothers and others besides.

A day in Hereford

Yesterday I joined a party from the Oxford Oratory for a day at Hereford Cathedral. I am very fond of it as a cathedral, and it is one which is, undeservedly, not as well known or visited as it should be. Quite a few of the party yeasterday had not been their previously. These days it offers a lot for the visitor and pilgrim.

I have adapted the  post on the Oratory website, adding to it more comments and information for this piece.

The Wednesday Morning Group and others in the cloister of the Vicars Choral. 

The coach ride over to Herefordshire took us through some beautiful scenery, with lush foliage lining the roads, and sweeping views over the Cotswolds, Severn valley and Malvern Hills.

Hereford Cathedral is noted for the shrines of St Ethelbert, King of the East Anglia, who was murdered near Hereford by King Offa of Mercia in 794 AD, and St Thomas Cantilupe (sometime Chancellor of Oxford University) who died in 1282. Both of these shrines have been restored in recent years under the leadership of the Dean. 

We had coffee on arrival, lunch and then afternoon tea in the Hall of the former College of the Vicars Choral - this was only dissolved as an institution in 1937 as part of the revision of the cathedral statutes. The buildings date from 1475, when the Vicars were given a residence in the Close, rather than running the hazards of walking from Castle Street late at night. The former Chapel can still be seen, as well as the Hall, whaich has been extended and modified over succeeding centuries.

The Oxford pilgrims in the Hall of the Vicars Choral

We were divided into two groups so as to have a tour of the cathedral or to visit the exhibition which includes the Mappa Mundi, of circa 1300, a copy of the writ from King John accompanying the 1215 Magna Carta (the original writ is unique and onshow at the Bristish Librray exhibition this summer), a copy of the 1217 reissue of Magna Carta - considered the best surviving example - and the Chained Library, which, it was noted, houses three editions of the Annals of the Christian Church by Cardinal Baronius of the Roman Oratory. The Chained Library was installed in the late sixteenth century in the disused Lady Chapel, removed from there in the nineteenth century restoration and only finally and fully reassembled in 1996 in the new Mappa Mundi centre. It was only in those years that the original frame of the Mappa Mundi was rediscovered in a cellar - a remarkable story of survival.

Before lunch, we were able to go to Holy Mass at the Catholic church of St Francis Xavier, in Broad Street, just next to the Cathedral.

St Francis Xavier is a magnificent church, splendidly restored in recent years. Originally built by the Jesuits and opened in 1839  it has been since the 1850s in the care of the Benedictines of Belmont Abbey, which is on the western edge of the city. Dom Michael Evans, O.S.B. was most gracious in his welcome, as were his enthusiastic parishioners, who clearly have a great love for their beautiful, well-restored church. It is evident that it is open as an important act of witness in the centre of the city - they too had recently held a Corpus Christi procession through the city centre. There is more about the church at St Francis Xavier Church, Hereford

 Here are some of our group, after Mass:

To the right of the High Altar is the relic of St John Kemble, a local martyr who ministered as a priest in Herefordshire and Monmouthshire for over fifty years, before being arrested on false charges during the Popish Plot and executed on nearby Widemarsh Common on 22 August 1679. there is more about him online at  St John Kemble . A Catholic woman managed to catch his left arm as it fell from the gallows when he was quartered, and it is this relic which is preserved at St Francis Xavier. The relic is believed to have worked miracles, down to our own time.

After lunch we had had the second part of our tour, either of the cathedral or the Mappa Mundi-Magna carta exhibition and then a tour of the lovely gardens, which was a great treat - especially to see the gardens of the Bishop's Palace and the Deanery.

The wall behind the party is all that survives of the handsome twelfth century Bishop's chapel, "taken down" in the mid-eighteenth century - which was a bad century for the cathedral with the demolition of the remains of the late fourteenth century Chapter House in 1779, and the collapse of the west end in 1786, and the consequent disastrous "restoration" by James Wyatt, who also remocved the spire from the central tower.

Two views in the gardens of the Bishop's Palace

After tea we attended said Evensong in the Lady Chapel. We were warmly welcomed by the Dean, The Very Reverend Michael Tavinor, and other members of the Cathedral community. Afterwards I spoke with the dean, whom i knew slightly when he was Vicar of Tewkesbury and where i spent several Christmas- New Year and summer breaks

Our journey back to Oxford was in wonderful in summer evening sunshine, which enabled one to appreciate the countryside of Herefordshire and Gloucestershire.

this was an excelelnt day out,  and quite a tonic, with plenty to see and think about historically, as well as being amongst friends. Hereford cathedral offers an excellent welcome and plenty to do, and is well worth a visit.

Images: Oxford oratory website