23 August 2022

Praying with USPG and the music of
Vaughan Williams: Tuesday 23 August 2022

The chapel of Trinity College Cambridge … the three organ preludes are a tribute by Vaughan Williams to the organist Alan Gray (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

I am back in Stony Stratford this morning after taking part yesterday in the first stage of the three-day Lichfield Peace Walk from Saint Chad’s Church, Lichfield, to Saint Chad’s Church, Stafford.

I regret that I cannot be in Dublin later today for the funeral of my friend and colleague, the Revd Canon Professor John Bartlett, in Christ Church Cathedral this afternoon. Before the day begins, I am taking some time this morning for reading, prayer and reflection.

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, whose music is celebrated throughout this year’s Proms season. In my prayer diary for these weeks I am reflecting in these ways:

1, One of the readings for the morning;

2, Reflecting on a hymn or another piece of music by Vaughan Williams, often drawing, admittedly, on previous postings on the composer;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary, ‘Pray with the World Church.’

‘You … have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith’ (Matthew 23: 23) … the symbol of justice above the Doge’s Palace in Venice (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

The Gospel reading at the Eucharist in the Lectionary of the Church of Ireland this morning is:

Matthew 23: 23-26 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 23 ‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practised without neglecting the others. 24 You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!

25 ‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26 You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may become clean.’



Today’s reflection: ‘Rhosymedre’

For these three mornings [Monday to Wednesday], I am listening to his Three Preludes Founded on Welsh Hymn Tunes, and this morning [10 March 2015] I continue as I listen to the second of these preludes, ‘Rhosymedre.’

These three organ solos are based on Welsh tunes, which Vaughan Williams had already arranged for hymns in the English Hymnal, which he edited with Canon Percy Dearmer.

Vaughan Williams’s father, the Revd Arthur Vaughan Williams, came from a family of Welsh origins that had distinguished itself in the law.

The composer first published these organ preludes in 1920 and dedicated them to Alan Gray (1855-1935), who was the organist of Trinity College Cambridge (1892-1930) when Vaughan Williams was an undergraduate there.

Vaughan Williams studied the organ under Gray at Trinity, and with Gray’s patient help he passed his exams to become a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists (FRCO) in 1898, and received his Doctorate in Music (MusD) at Cambridge the following year. These three organ preludes are Vaughan Williams’s tribute as a grateful student to Alan Gray.

The second of these preludes, ‘Rhosymedre,’ is based on the tune of that name by the Welsh Anglican priest, the Revd John David Edwards (1805-1895). That tune was harmonised by Vaughan Williams for Charles Wesley’s hymn ‘Author of Love Divine’ in the English Hymnal (No 303; see New English Hymnal, No 274).

Edwards was born in Ceredigion (Cardiganshire) in Wales, and studied at Jesus College, Oxford, before his ordination. In 1843, he became the Vicar of Rhosymedre, near Wrexham in north Wales, and remained until he died in 1895.

He composed many hymns tunes, and his collection Original Sacred Music (1836) was the first book of hymn-tunes for Anglican churches in Wales. A second collection was published in 1843.

Edwards named the tune Rhosymedre after the village where he was vicar for over half a century, although it is also known as ‘Lovely.’ The hymn tune is seven lines long, with a metrical index of 6.6.6.6.8.8.8. The tune was used by Vaughan Williams as the basis of the second movement of his organ composition ‘Three Preludes on Welsh Hymn Tunes.’

Vaughan Williams’s Choral Prelude based on this Welsh tune was played on the organ at the Church Musical Festival in the Crystal Palace, London, on 21 July 1933.

Here, as with so many of his arrangements of folk music, Vaughan Williams turns an apparently simple tune into a work of great beauty and with profound emotional impact.

This prelude is probably best known as an orchestral arrangement by Arnold Foster published in 1938. It has also been arranged for other instruments and combinations of instruments, including solo piano, piano duet and four recorders.

In 2008, to mark the 50th anniversary of the death of Vaughan Williams, Richard Morrison arranged the piece for string quartet and solo tenor.

In Wales, the original tune by Edwards is associated with Easter and is thought of as a jubilant hymn tune. Outside Wales, however, it often receives a more devotional treatment, and so it Vaughan William’s prelude provides an appropriate meditation this morning.

Today’s Prayer, Tuesday 23 August 2022:

The theme in the USPG prayer diary this week is ‘The Pursuit of Justice.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday by Javanie Byfield and Robert Green, ordinands at the United Theological College of the West Indies.

The USPG Prayer Diary invites us to pray today (International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and Its Abolition) in these words:

We give thanks for those who worked to abolish the slave trade. May we remember the horrors and atrocities of the past, and work towards a better future.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

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

350 years of Quaker
meetings and burials
in Sheffield and York

The Quaker Meeting House on the corner of Saint James Street and Vicar Lane in Sheffield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

Patrick Comerford

When Horace Walpole visited Sheffield in September 1760, he wrote: ‘I passed through Sheffield, which is one of the foulest towns in England, in the most charming situation. There are 22,000 inhabitants making knives and scissors; they remit £11,000 a week to London. One man there has discovered the art of plating copper with silver. I bought a pair of candlesticks for two guineas. They are quite pretty.’

Walpole’s candlesticks were of Sheffield Plate. The man he referred to was Thomas Boulsover (1705-1788), a Sheffield cutler who is best remembered as the inventor of Sheffield Plate in 1743. He discovered that when silver and copper were put together and the silver melted, the fusion of the two metals produced an ingot which, when rolled out into a sheet, had all the virtues of a single metal.

One of the leading cutlers in Sheffield at the time, Robert Sutcliff, was also a prominent Quaker and businessman. The few Quakers whose names appear in the history of 18th century Sheffield exercised an influence out of all proportion to their number. They included cutlers such as Robert Sutcliff, Thomas Colley and George Crapper.

During my visits to Sheffield and York last week, I visited the two cathedrals in Sheffield, Church of England and Roman Catholic, the sites of three former synagogues in Sheffield, and a number of churches in York. In addition, I also visited the Quaker Meeting House near the cathedrals in Sheffield, and a Quaker burial ground in York.

Quaker meetings have been held in Sheffield since 1668 … a plaque at the entrance to the Meeting House (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

Quaker meetings have taken place in Sheffield since 1668. Within 20 years of George Fox, the founding figure among Quakers, bringing his radical message, Quaker meetings sprang up at Tickhill, Balby and Woodhouse, followed by Upperthorpe and Sheffield in 1668-1669.

The Shaw family lived at Brookside and its neighbouring farm, The Hill. George Shaw bought the Brookside estate from Richard Rawson of Hatfield House in 1649. GeorgeShaw, and his father, Robert Shaw , and his brother, William Shaw of The Hill, welcomed George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends or Quakers, to their home on several occasions between 1652 and 1660.

The Shaws suffered harassment from the curate of Bradfield for not paying their tithes, until 1684 when a verdict was given against them and they had to pay damages and costs. When George Shaw died in 1708, he was buried in Bowcroft Cemetery where his tombstone records, ‘He suffered much for bearing testimony against payment of tythes.’ The Bowcroft cemetery at Stannington was used by one family only – the Shaw family of Brookside and The Hill, who were buried there between 1708 and 1731.

Meanwhile, Sheffield Quakers bought land for a burial ground off Broad Lane in 1676, at what is now a vacant lot beside McCague’s Garage. At that time Quakers in Sheffield met for worship at sites like this or in their own homes.

Land and buildings for a meeting house and stables were eventually bought in 1707. This was situated on the west of Scargill Croft, off Hartshead, now the top end of Meeting House Lane. An orchard was then bought as a burial ground on the east side of Meeting House Lane and, over the next 100 years, various meeting houses were built on this site.

At one point, the Meeting House had seating capacity for up to 800 people. A Friends’ Adult School building, seating 500, was added in 1871. However, during the bombing raids in the Blitz in World War II, the main buildings were gutted by fire in December 1940.

Friends met in temporary accommodation until 1947, when Sheffield Council erected a temporary wooden building on the site of the old adult school.

Eventually, the whole site was bought for redevelopment with land exchange and a grant from the War Damage Compensation Scheme. A replacement meeting house was built on High Court, on the south side of Hartshead in 1964. This, in turn, was bought for redevelopment, and the Society of Friends moved into the present Sheffield Quaker Meeting House on Saint James Street in 1991. Friends House on Hartshead was never actually redeveloped.

The Quaker Meeting House on Saint James Street fits into the character of the Cathedral Conservation Area in Sheffield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

The present Quaker Meeting House at 10 Saint James Street, Sheffield, on the corner with Vicar Lane, is a fine piece of architecture, fitting into the character of the Cathedral Conservation Area. Sheffield Central Meeting is large, with up to about 60 people attending on Sundays.

There is a second, smaller Quaker meeting in Sheffield at Nether Edge in rented premises at Shirley House on Psalter Lane. Nether Edge Meeting has a typical attendance of 10 to 15.

Both meetings have their main meeting for worship from 10.30 to 11.30 each Sunday, and the two meetings are closely linked, sharing many activities.

The two Sheffield Quaker meetings, together with Balby (Doncaster) Meeting and Hope Valley Meeting, which meets at the Quaker Community in Bamford, are grouped together as Sheffield and Balby Area Meeting which meets regularly as the co-ordinating meeting of Quakers in the area. The original Balby meeting, one of the world’s oldest Quaker Meetings, dates back to ca 1652.

The grave of the Quaker abolitionist John Woolman in the burial ground in Bishophill, York (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

In York, I visited the Quaker Burial Ground in Cromwell Road, Bishophill. This burial ground opened in 1667 and closed for burials in 1854. It is now managed by Friargate Quaker Meeting House and leased as a garden to the York Housing Association.

Four of us entered the garden by the residents’ gate to see the headstones, repositioned around the perimeter walls of the garden. The burial ground was bought on 1 November 1667, was extended with an adjoining garden in 1823, and closed for burials on 11 December 1854.

By the mid-19th century, the now-distinctive form of Quaker headstones – small, round-topped, identical in shape and size – had been widely adopted to reflect the Quaker belief in the equality of all humans in life and death. Dates were originally inscribed in numbers only to avoid using names of days and months derived from the names of pagan deities.

However, some of surviving headstones in Bishophill predate this custom. The headstones are fixed along the edges, amongst old brick walls, lime trees, terraces and flower beds.

The surviving headstones include are those of the American Quaker John Woolman (1720-1772), a prominent spiritual writer and an early abolitionist, who came to England seeking Quaker support for the abolition of slavery but died of smallpox in York in 1772.

Other headstone we saw include those of the American lawyer and grammarian Lindley Murray (1745-1826) and his wife Hannah (Dobson) Murray (died 1834), and William Alexander (1768-1841), businessman, educator, bookseller, publisher and author, who wrote under the name Amicus.

Here too are the graves of several members of the Tuke family, a family of Quaker innovators involved in establishing Rowntree’s Cocoa Works, the Retreat Mental Hospital, one of the first modern asylums, and three Quaker schools, Ackworth, Bootham, and The Mount. They include: Elizabeth (Hoyland) Tuke (1729-1760), who was born in Sheffield, Esther Tuke (1727-1794), founder of The Mount School, Henry Tuke (1755-1814), Mary Maria Tuke (1748-1815) and William Tuke (1733-1822), who founded The Retreat.

The burial ground in Bishophill closed for burials in 1854 and was succeeded in 1855 by the large Quaker burial ground shared with The Retreat in Heslington Road and still in use. Although the burial ground is now closed for burials and the interment of ashes, the scattering of ashes may be arranged.

The burial ground in Bishophill includes the graves of many prominent York Quakers (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)