Daily prayers in Ordinary Time with USPG: (125) 30 September 2023

Saint Michael le Belfrey Church in York stands in the shadow of York Minster … yesterday was the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, and tomorrow is the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XVII, 1 October 2023). The Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today celebrates the life and work of Saint Jerome (420), Translator of the Scriptures, Teacher of the Faith.

Two of us travelled to York overnight, and we are spending a few days here this weekend. I hope to be at the Choral Eucharist in York Minister tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, before today gets busy, I am taking some time this morning for prayer and reflection.

The Church celebrated Saint Michael and All Angels yesterday (29 September). So my reflections each morning this week and next are taking this format:

1, A reflection on a church named after Saint Michael or his depiction in Church Art;

2, the Gospel reading of the day in the Church of England lectionary;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

Inside Saint Michael le Belfrey Church, York, facing east (Photograph Patrick Comerford)

Saint Michael le Belfrey Church, York:

Saint Michael le Belfrey Church stands in the shadow of York Minster, at the junction of High Petergate and Minster Yard in the city centre, and is known as a centre of the charismatic revival. The church takes its name from the Minster Belfrey that stood on the site before the church was built.

The church is near the place where Constantine was proclaimed the Roman Emperor. An early church on the site dated back to at least 1294. But this earlier mediaeval church was so badly maintained that parishioners were afraid to enter the building for services.

The present church was built between 1525 and 1537, under the direction of the master mason to the Minster, John Forman. Saint Michael-le-Belfrey is the only church in York to have been built in the 16th century and it is the largest pre-Reformation parish church in the city.

Saint Michael’s has one of the most notable collections of mid-16th century glass in any English parish church. The east window contains a large collection of glass from about 1330, that came from the demolished predecessor of this church.

The east window includes a depiction of the martyrdom of Saint Thomas Becket and there are four panels depicting the life of Gilbert, Thomas Becket’s father. This is a rare survival as Henry VIII ordered all images of Saint Thomas to be destroyed in 1538, and Thomas’s name to be removed from the English church calendar.

Guy Fawkes was baptised in the church on 16 April 1570. He later became a Roman Catholic, and was part of the failed Gunpowder Plot in 1605.

The reredos and altar rails were designed by John Etty and completed by his son, William, in 1712. The gallery was added in 1785.

The stained glass panels on the front of the building were restored by John Knowles in the early 19th century. The west front and bellcote date from 1867 and were supervised by the architect George Fowler Jones.

In the early 1970s, the parish of Saint Michael le Belfrey was joined with nearby Saint Cuthbert’s, which had experienced revival in the late 1960s under the leadership of David Watson and could no longer be accommodated in the building. Growth continued in the 1970s and the church became known as a centre for charismatic renewal.

• The Revd Matthew Porter is the incumbent of Saint Michael le Belfrey. The church continues to reflect the legacy of David Watson. There are usually three Sunday services: a more formal morning service at 9 am; the XI, a family service at 11 am; and ‘The6’, an evening service with an informal style. The ‘Faith in the City’ service is at 12:30 on Wednesday lunch-times. A daughter church, G2, meets twice on Sundays at Central Methodist Church, York.

Inside Saint Michael le Belfrey Church, York, facing west (Photograph Patrick Comerford)

Luke 9: 43b-45 (NRSVA):

49 While everyone was amazed at all that he was doing, he said to his disciples, 44 ‘Let these words sink into your ears: The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into human hands.’ 45 But they did not understand this saying; its meaning was concealed from them, so that they could not perceive it. And they were afraid to ask him about this saying.

The reredos and altar rails in Saint Michael le Belfrey Church, York, were designed by John Etty and completed by his son, William, in 1712 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayer:

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), has been ‘Flinging open the doors.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday by the Revd Anthony Gyu-Yong Shim, Diocese of Daejeon, Korea.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (30 September 2023, International Translation Day) invites us to pray:

We give thanks to all who facilitate translation. Opening dialogues and building relationships between people and churches of different languages.

The Collect:

O Lord, we beseech you mercifully to hear the prayers
of your people who call upon you;
and grant that they may both perceive and know
what things they ought to do,
and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfil them;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

Almighty God,
you have taught us through your Son
that love is the fulfilling of the law:
grant that we may love you with our whole heart
and our neighbours as ourselves;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Saint Michael le Belfrey has a notable collections of stained-glass windows (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

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

The church was built between 1525 and 1537, under the direction of the master mason to the Minster, John Forman (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Wolverhampton’s only synagogue survived for 90 years and is now used as a church

Wolverhampton Synagogue was rebuilt in 1903 and closed in 1999; it is now Saint Silas Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Patrick Comerford

Have you heard about the street named Short Street that became Long Street?

Or about the synagogue in the West Midlands that has become a fundamentalist church?

Wolverhampton Synagogue, also known as Wolverhampton Hebrew Congregation, was once the only synagogue in South Staffordshire, and closed in 1999. While I was in Wolverhampton last month, I went in search of the synagogue that has since been turned into a church by a fundamentalist evangelical group.

Wolverhampton is a city with a population of over 260,000, about 15 km north-west of Birmingham. It was part of Staffordshire until 1974, when it became a metropolitan borough in the newly created metropolitan county of West Midlands. It became a Millennium City in 2001.

The Jewish community in Wolverhampton dates back to the 1830s. Levi Harris, who is the first known Jew to settle there, arrived in Wolverhampton in 1834, having made the journey from Kretinga, Lithuania, to Gravesend, Kent, two years earlier. Levi Harris was a pawnbroker and clothier and he spent the last 21 years of his life in Wolverhampton. He became a British citizen in 1849, and owned property in Berry Street and Worcester Street.

Levi Harris was joined in Wolverhampton by a small Jewish presence. The first organised congregation reputedly owes its origins to a Mr Aarons of Berry Street who, after the death of his father in the mid-1840s, was able to organise a minyan or prayer quorum of 10 local Jewish men at his home to recite prayers during the week of shiva (שִׁבְעָה‎) or mourning.

At the end of the week, those 10 men met and decided to form an organised congregation. They initially meeting in private homes, with Marcus Gordon of Saint George’s Parade, Wolverhampton, acting as a lay reader. Later, premises were rented for a synagogue that opened on 16 October 1850. David Lazarus Davis from Kent was elected chair and Levi Harris became vice-chair of the synagogue.

The synagogue was rebuilt in 1903-1904 by the Wolverhampton architect Frederick Thomas Beck (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

That first synagogue in Wolverhampton was a licensed room in a house in the now demolished St James’s Square, Horseley Fields, that is now demolished. It was the home of Rabbi Isaac Barnett, a Polish Jew who had moved to Wolverhampton from Woolwich with his wife and three children. There was also a Jewish boys and girls school in St James’s Square, perhaps also in Rabbi Barnett’s house. The schoolmaster was the Revd Manasseh Cohen, originally from Pzydry, Poland.

The Duke of Sutherland agreed to a piece of his land becoming an Orthodox Jewish burial ground in 1851. The first burial was seven-year-old Benjamin Cohen. Levi Harris died on 5 November 1855 at the age of 60. The last burial was in 2000.

When the lease for the synagogue and house expired in 1857, a site for a new synagogue was bought on the corner of Fryer Street and Long Street – previously known as Short Street. The foundation stone was laid by JC Cohen, President of the Birmingham synagogue, in 1858, and the synagogue was consecrated later that year by the Chief Rabbi, Dr Nathan Marcus HaCohen Adler (1803-1890). By then, the Revd Manasseh Cohen was the resident rabbi in Wolverhampton.

Key prominent Victorian Jews were donors to the new synagogue, including Sir David Salomons, Baron Rothschild and Sir Moses Montefiore.

The synagogue had two doors, one for men and one for women (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

The synagogue suffered a major fire in 1902. Remarkably, the Ark and the Torah scrolls were untouched by the fire. The entire building was largely rebuilt in 1903-1904 in the Ashkenazic style by the Wolverhampton architect Frederick Thomas Beck, a pupil of TH Fleeming, who designed some of the Victorian buildings in Wolverhampton, including the Municipal Grammar School, Midland Counties Eye Infirmary and Barclay’s Bank in Queen’s Square.

Beck was based in Darlington Street and he designed several churches in the area and many domestic and commercial buildings, including the Posada on Lichfield Street.

The exterior of the synagogue was said to be ‘very pleasing’ and made of Kingswinford brick with York stone dressing. There are two doors into the building, one for men and one for women.

Inside, men and women were seated separately, with men in the main hall below and women in the gallery. The interior was described as ‘light and attractive,’ panelled out and enamelled in cream with gold detail. The pillars raising the gallery were green and gold, with the pews and remaining woodwork made of oak. Electricity was added to the building and a Mikvah or women’s ritual bathing room and other accommodation were added in the basement.

The exterior of the synagogue was said to be ‘very pleasing’ and made of Kingswinford brick with York stone dressing (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

The synagogue’s heyday was in the 1930s. Meanwhile, a Liberal Jewish Circle was formed in Wolverhampton In the mid-1960s and continued in existence until the mid-1970s.

The Revd Abraham Bernstein was the last resident minister to serve the Wolverhampton Hebrew Congregation. He arrived in 1953, and was the minister until about 1967. He then served in the South-East London District Synagogue at New Cross and retired to Prestwich, north Manchester, around 1972.

However, the congregation of Wolverhampton Hebrew Congregation had dwindled gradually after World War the II. When a quorum or minyan could no longer be found, the membership transferred to Singers Hill Synagogue in Birmingham in 1999.

Wolverhampton Synagogue closed in 1999, but narrowly escaped demolition, thanks largely to the Wolverhampton Civic Society. It was sold in 2000 and converted into a place of worship known as Saint Silas Church for an ultra-conservative evangelical breakaway group formed in 1994 and that calls itself the Church of England (Continuing). It has two bishops, two priests and four small congregations. It opposes the ordination of women, Anglo-Catholic liturgical practices and liberal religious and social values.

The Hebrew date 5663 and the western date 1903 mean the building is recognisable as the former synagogue(Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Although the old synagogue is now a church, it is still recognisable as the former synagogue, with an inscription of the Hebrew date 5663 and the western date 1903.

Many of the original interior features from the synagogue have been preserved, including the Ark, the gilded, double headed Luhot or Ten Commandments, the galleries, furniture, railings and panelling, although the Gothic bimah and pews have not survived.

Only three or four Jewish families survive in Wolverhampton today.

Meanwhile, the Jewish festival of Sukkot or Festival of Booths begins at sunset this evening (29 September 2023) and ends at nightfall on 6 October 2023. The first two days of Sukkot, from sundown of the first date until nightfall two days later, are full-fledged, no-work-allowed holiday days.

Shabbat Shalom

Wolverhampton Synagogue is now used by the Church of England (Continuing) as Saint Silas Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Daily prayers in Ordinary Time with USPG: (124) 29 September 2023

Skellig Michael and the Skellig Rocks … both the church and the monastery were dedicated to Saint Michael (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, and this week began with the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XVI, 24 September 2023).

Two of us are travelling to York later today. But, before the day gets busy, I am taking some time this morning for prayer and reflection.

The Church celebrates Saint Michael and All Angels today (29 September). So my reflections each morning this week and next are taking this format:

1, A reflection on a church named after Saint Michael or his depiction in Church Art;

2, the Gospel reading of the day in the Church of England lectionary;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

The ruins of Ballinskelligs Priory, Co Kerry … still a place of prayer and peace for pilgrims and tourists alike (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Skellig Michael and Ballinskelligs Priory:

Legend says that the first inhabitants in Ireland arrived in in the Bay of Ballinskelligs. The myths say that Ireland was uninhabited until a woman named Cessair, accompanied by her father, two men and over 40 women, arrived in a ship that landed at Ballinskelligs Bay in the year 2361 BC.

The legend says Cessair was the granddaughter of Noah, who had no room for her in the Ark when he had finished building it. She built her own three ships and set sail for Ireland, believing it was free from sin.

After surviving a voyage that endured for seven years and that suffered the loss of two ships, Cessair landed in Ballinskelligs and decided to stay. Two of the men died, the third fled, leaving Cessair so heart-broken that she too died soon.

I first became enamoured with Ballinskelligs when I spent the summer of 1966 at Dungeagan as part of an Irish summer school programme that my parents hoped would give me adequate Irish to pass the ‘Inter Cert’ (Junior Certificate) in 1967.

It was a beautiful summer, but I learned less Irish than they probably expected, and I have memories of endless, sun-filled afternoons swimming at the long sandy beach, reading Anne Frank’s Diary and Catcher in the Rye in the sand-dunes, watching the 1966 England v Germany World Cup final on the only television my cousins and I could find – a black and white television in a convent – and maturing as a teenage boy.

I have been back in Ballinskelligs three or four times since, enjoying walks along the long sandy beach, watching the Atlantic waves break against the sand, and walking out to the ruins of the old Augustinian priory, the old graveyard and the ruins of the MacCarthy castle that once guarded the entrance to Ballinskelligs Bay.

It is said the monks of Skellig Michael called Ballinskelligs ‘the nearest thing to heaven’ when they settled in the area, and they made this place a spiritual centre in early Christian Ireland. According to legend, the monks had travelled across Ireland to find ‘a paradise on earth.’

These early Irish monks wished to emulate the sacrifice and the pure withdrawal into a life of faith exemplified by Saint Anthony who went out into the Western Desert in Egypt.

Ireland’s remote and deserted offshore islands offered a parallel experience. The monastic ideal was to demonstrate an intense devotion by acts of self-exile: peregrination pro Dei amore or ‘pilgrimage for the love of God.’

The monastic settlement on Great Skellig is said to have been founded in the sixth century by Saint Fionán, a saint from south Kerry who founded Innisfallen Abbey. The site attracted the support of the members of the local Corcu Duibne dynasty in Kerry, and there the love of God was brought to a new level, for no other Irish monastery was built in such a challenging location.

Saint Finian is said to have founded both the monastic settlement on the Skelligs Islands and a church at Killemlagh in the sixth century. The ruins of two early churches can still be seen near the Skelligs Chocolates factory, a major attraction on the Skelligs Ring, and Saint Finian’s Bay, which offers some of the best views of the Skelligs Rock – although they are often shrouded in clouds and mist at this time of the year.

While the monks settled on the rocks of Skellig Michael, they found a winter home on the mainland in Ballinskelligs.

The first definite reference to monks on the Skelligs dates to the eighth century when the death of ‘Suibhni of Scelig’ is recorded. By the ninth century, the continuity and survival of life on the remote monastery was challenged with the arrival of the Vikings. The flights of steps on three sides of the island, which had provided the monks with landing for their boats in different sea conditions, now gave the invading Vikings the opportunity to attack the monastic site from different sides simultaneously.

The annals record: ‘In 824 AD, Scelec was plundered by the heathens and Étgal was carried off into captivity, and he died of hunger on their hands. There came a fleet from Luimnech [Limerick], in the south of Erinn, they plundered Skellig Michael, and Inishfallen and Disert Donnain and Cluain Mor, and they killed Rudgaile, son of Selbach, the anchorite. It was he whom the angel set loose twice, and the foreigners bound him twice each time.’

It is said that in 993 the Viking Olaf Trygvasson, later to become Olaf I, King of Norway, was intent on a raid of the monastery but instead was baptised a Christian by a Skellig hermit. His son, Olaf II, became the patron saint of Norway.

Increasing hardships, Viking raids and changing climatic conditions all contributed to the eventual decision of the monks to move from their monastic settlements on the Skelligs Rocks to the mainland, settling on an outcrop at the edge of Ballinskelligs Bay.

The Skelligs Rocks and the Abbey at Ballinskelligs shared one abbot, and the move was completed some time between the 11th and 13th century.

The dedication of the monastery to Saint Michael the Archangel appears to have happened some time before 1044, when the death of ‘Aedh of Scelic-Mhichíl’ is recorded. It is probable that this dedication to Saint Michael was celebrated by the building of Saint Michael’s church in the monastery.

The church of Saint Michael is mentioned by Giraldus Cambrensis in the late 12th century. His account of the miraculous supply of Communion wine for daily Mass in Saint Michael’s Church implies that the monastery had a large community at the time.

The Church was being reorganised along diocesan patterns in Ireland in the 12th and 13th centuries. These changes, and harsher winter storms, forced the monks to abandon the island.

By then, the monks on Skellig Michael had adopted the rule of Saint Augustine. Eventually, they left the island and settled on the mainland at Ballinskelligs, where they founded a new abbey. In the early 14th century, the Prior of the Augustinian Abbey at Ballinskelligs was referred to as the Prior de Rupe Michaelis, indicating that the island still formed an important part of the monastery at the time.

The ruins of the later Augustinian Priory date from ca 1210, and include a church, the prior’s house, cloisters and a refectory. A number of buildings, mainly from the 15th century, constitute the priory, including a rectangular church. The church and the other buildings were arranged around a central cloister, which had covered walkways for working and praying. Parts of the cloister and a large domestic hall still survive.

The abbey is one of a number of important spiritual sites dedicated to Saint Michael in this area. For visitors who come to Ballinskelligs as pilgrims or tourists, this remains a place of peace and prayer.

The names of the vicars and rectors of Killemlough are known only from the early or mid-15th century. Eugene O’Sullivan was appointed to the parish ca 1447 even though he had not been ordained. He was eventually forced out of the parish in 1459 because he had still not been ordained.

His successor, Florence O’Sullivan, also had to leave the parish after he was ‘said to have committed simony and to be guilty of fornication.’ Cornelius O’Mulchonere had to obtain a dispensation to be ordained for the parish because he was the illegitimate son of an Augustinian Canon Regular – perhaps a friar from the priory at Ballinskelligs.

In the Church of Ireland, the parish was known as Killemlough and sometimes as Killemlagh or Kyllemleac, and the parish included the offshore island of Puffin Island and the Skelligs Islands.

The Parish of Killemlough was held by the Treasurers of Ardfert from 1615 to 1839. They included William Steere, who became Bishop of Ardfert in 1628, James Bland, who became Dean of Ardfert in 1728, and William Cecil Pery, who became Bishop of Limerick. The Church of Ireland parish was united with Valentia in the 1870s.

Meanwhile, the connection between the monastic settlement on the Skelligs Rocks and the people of Ballinskelligs remained part of romantic memory and folklore.

In the late 1930s, JB Leslie recalled a custom from 60 years earlier known as the ‘Skelligs Lists.’ Doggerel poetry was issued early in Lent naming and pillorying couples who were supposed to be courting but who had not married before Shrove Tuesday.

‘Sometimes those lists were distinctively libellous and perhaps malicious, but were anonymous,’ Leslie notes.

Leslie quotes the phrase ‘send them to Skelligs,’ and suggests ‘that on the island (Skelligs) marriages might be celebrated, perhaps as in Gretna Green.’

‘Or could it have been,’ he asks, ‘that the keeping of Easter and Lent was different in Skelligs and on the mainland, so that marriage could be celebrated there after Shrove Tuesday?’

The monks from Skellig Michael settled at the priory in Ballinskelligs in the 13th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 1: 47-51 (NRSVA):

47 When Jesus saw Nathanael coming towards him, he said of him, ‘Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!’ 48 Nathanael asked him, ‘Where did you come to know me?’ Jesus answered, ‘I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.’ 49 Nathanael replied, ‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!’ 50 Jesus answered, ‘Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.’ 51 And he said to him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.’

The ruins of the Augustinian priory, behind the beach at Ballinskelligs (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayer:

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Flinging open the doors.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday by the Revd Anthony Gyu-Yong Shim, Diocese of Daejeon, Korea.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (29 September 2023, Saint Michael and All Angels) invites us to pray:

Almighty God, renew your spirit within us and your churches across the globe.

A lancet window in the old priory buildings in Ballinskelligs (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Collect:

Everlasting God,
you have ordained and constituted
the ministries of angels and mortals in a wonderful order:
grant that as your holy angels always serve you in heaven,
so, at your command,
they may help and defend us on earth;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

Lord of heaven,
in this eucharist you have brought us near
to an innumerable company of angels
and to the spirits of the saints made perfect:
as in this food of our earthly pilgrimage
we have shared their fellowship,
so may we come to share their joy in heaven;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The monk’s beehive at Saint Michael’s Well, behind the house where I stayed in my teens in Dungeagan in Ballinkselligs (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

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

The beach at Ballinkskelligs, close to the monastic settlement founded by the monks from Great Skellig (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

‘Dangerous Liaisons’ offers a hint of Venice in the Theatre District in Milton Keynes

‘Dangerous Liaisons,’ a bronze sculpture by Philip Jackson in the Theatre District in Central Milton Keynes (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Patrick Comerford

There is a little taste of Venice in Milton Keynes. While we were out at dinner in the Theatre District in Central Milton Keynes one recent evening, we stopped to admire ‘Dangerous Liaisons,’ a bronze sculpture by the Scottish sculptor Philip Jackson unveiled in 1995.

Milton Keynes has a large collection of public sculpture, much of it commissioned or bought when the new city was being built in the 1970s and 1980s. When I walk through the city centre, I can you can see work by some of the most influential sculptors of the past 40 or 50 years, including Dame Elisabeth Frink, Michael Sandle, Bill Woodrow, Dhruva Mistry and Peter Freeman, and Milton Keynes to actively commissioning artists and sculptors.

‘Dangerous Liaisons’ in the Theatre District is one of a distinctive series of sculptures by Philip Jackson that are based on the Venetian carnival and masque, inspired by Venice and the Maschera Nobile. It was completed in 1997 and renovated in 2017.

The mask and costume hid the identity and gender of the wearer in 17th and 18th century Venice (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Jackson’s many public commissions include the Bomber Command Memorial in London’s Green Park, and his twice life-size (6 metre) bronze statue of Bobby Moore, erected outside the main entrance at Wembley Stadium in 2007.

Philip Henry Christopher Jackson was born in 1944 and studied at the Farnham School of Art, now the University for the Creative Arts). After leaving school, he was a press photographer for a year and then joined a design company as a sculptor. He now works at the Edward Lawrence Studio in Midhurst, West Sussex and lives nearby. Half of his time is spent on commissions and the other half on his gallery sculpture.

He is known for his major outdoor pieces, such as the Young Mozart in Chelsea and the Jersey Liberation sculpture. Recently, he was the acting Royal Sculptor to Queen Elizabeth II. His sources of inspiration have included Jacob Epstein, Auguste Rodin, Henry Moore, Oscar Nemon and Kenneth Armitage. But he says the most powerful influences in his life are his wife Jean and son Jamie who work with him.

The mask and costume allowed for intrigues and love affairs to take place in Venice without fear of discovery (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Jackson based his ‘Dangerous Liaisons’ in the Theatre District in Milton Keynes on the mask and was inspired by the Maschera Nobile in 17th and 18th century Venice. The mask and costume hid the identity and gender of the wearer, allowing him or her to go about the city unrecognised. This would allow for intrigues and love affairs to take place without fear of discovery.

Jackson is known for his modern style and emphasis on form, and says his sculptures ‘are essentially an impressionistic rendering of the figure.’ His finishes are gentle and delicately worked, ‘culminating in the hands and the mask, both of which are precisely observed and modelled.’ His works inspired by Venice and the Maschera Nobile and are sought after by collectors around the world.

Philip Jackson’s other significant public statues and monuments include: a statue of Mahatma Gandhi, Parliament Square (2015);a bust of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, founder of Pakistan, Lincoln’s Inn (2017); sculptures of Sir Matt Busby (1996) Sir Alex Ferguson (2012), George Best, Denis Law and Bobby Charlton for Manchester United; Peter Osgood for Chelsea FC; the Archangel Gabriel for South Harting Church; Saint John the Evangelist at Portsmouth Roman Catholic Cathedral; the Founders of Saint Margaret’s Convent, Handsworth; Christ in Judgment and Saint Richard at Chichester Cathedral; Constantine the Great at York Minster; the Gurkha Memorial, London; and the Wallenberg Monument, Buenos Aires.

‘Dangerous Liaisons’ by Philip Jackson is based on the Venetian carnival and masque (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Daily prayers in Ordinary Time with USPG: (123) 28 September 2023

Saint Michael’s Church, Cornhill, London, ‘stands on one of the oldest Christian sites in Britain’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, and this week began with the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XVI, 24 September 2023).

I am having my latest COVID-19 injection later this afternoon, and have two committee meetings later today, one this afternoon and another this evening. So, before the day gets busy, I am taking some time this morning for prayer and reflection.

The Church celebrates Saint Michael and All Angels tomorrow (29 September). So my reflections each morning this week and next are taking this format:

1, A reflection on a church named after Saint Michael or his depiction in Church Art;

2, the Gospel reading of the day in the Church of England lectionary;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

Inside Saint Michael’s Church, Cornhill, facing east (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Saint Michael’s Church, Cornhill, London:

Saint Michael’s Church, Cornhill, is a mediaeval parish church in the City of London with a pre-Norman Conquest parochial foundation. The church noticeboard says Saint Michael’s ‘stands on one of the oldest Christian sites in Britain, dating back to the Roman occupation.’ The church was in existence by 1133. The Abbot and convent of Evesham were the patrons until 1503, when it passed to the Drapers’ Company. A new tower was built in 1421, possibly after a fire.

The church lands were surrendered during the reign of Edward VI, and four tenements were built on the north side of the church, where there had been ‘a green churchyard.’ A churchyard on the south side had cloisters with lodgings for choristers, and a pulpit cross at which sermons were preached. The choir was dissolved in 1530 and the cross fell into decay.

The mediaeval church, except for the tower, was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. The present church was built in 1672 to design traditionally attributed to Sir Christopher Wren. Other sources believe Wren’s office had no involvement in rebuilding the church, saying the parish dealt directly with the builders.

The new church was 83 ft long and 67 ft wide, divided into nave and aisles by Doric columns, with a groined ceiling. There was an organ at the west end, and a reredos with paintings of Moses and Aaron at the east. The walls did not form right angles, indicating the re-use of the medieval foundations.

The 15th century tower became unstable and was demolished in 1704. A 130 ft replacement was built in 1715-1722 in a Gothic style, similar to the tower at Magdalen College, Oxford. The designer of the lower stages was probably William Dickinson in Wren’s office. The tower was half-completed when work stopped in 1717 due to inadequate funds. It was completed in 1722, with the upper stages designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor. The tower is topped by four elaborately panelled turrets, resembling those of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge.

Repairs were made to the church in 1751, and by George Wyatt in 1775 and 1790. In his work in 1790, Wyatt installed the circular east window and south aisle windows. A new pulpit, desk, altar rail, east window glass, and 12 new brass branches were added.

The tower is topped by four elaborately panelled turrets, resembling those of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Drapers’ Company funded a lavish scheme of embellishment in the late 1850s carried out by Sir George Gilbert Scott. Scott demolished a house that had stood against the tower, replacing it with an elaborate porch, built in the ‘Franco-Italian Gothic’ style (1858-1860), facing towards Cornhill. It is decorated with carving by John Birnie Philip, including a high-relief tympanum sculpture depicting Saint Michael disputing with Satan.

Scott inserted Gothic tracery in the circular clerestory windows and in the plain round-headed windows on the south side of the church. New side windows were created in the chancel, and an elaborate stone reredos, incorporating the paintings of Moses and Aaron by Robert Streater from its predecessor, was constructed in an Italian Gothic style.

The chancel walls were lined with panels of coloured marble, up to the level of the top of the reredos columns, and richly painted above this point.

Stained glass by Clayton and Bell was installed, with a representation of Christ in Glory in the large circular east window. The other windows held a series of stained glass images illustrating the life of Christ, with the crucifixion at the west end.

Herbert Williams, who had worked with Scott, carried out further work in the late 1860s. Williams built a three-bay cloister-like passage, with plaster vaults, on the south side of the building, and in the body of the church added richly painted decoration to Wren’s columns and capitals.

The reredos was enriched with inlaid marble, and the chancel was given new white marble steps and a mosaic floor of Minton’s tesserae and tiles. A circular opening was cut in the vault of each aisle bay and filled with stained glass, and skylights installed above.

Few of the original furnishings survived this work, apart from the font given by James Paul in 1672.

A World War I memorial was unveiled beside the church entrance in 1920, featuring a bronze statue of Saint Michael by Richard Reginald Goulden. The memorial received a Grade II* listing in 2016.

The church escaped serious damage during World War II, and was designated a Grade I listed building in 1950. The Victorian polychrome paintwork was replaced in 1960 with a more restrained colour scheme of blue, gold and white.

A new ring of twelve bells, cast by Taylors of Loughborough, was installed in the tower in 2011.

Saint Michael’s describes itself as an oasis of calm in the heart of the City, with a long tradition of Book of Common Prayer worship accompanied by excellent music. The church is a corporate member of the Prayer Book Society.

The Revd Henry Eatock-Taylor is the priest-in-charge of Saint Michael Cornhill with Saint Peter le Poer and Saint Benet Fink (London), following the move of the Revd Charlie Skrine from Saint Michael’s to All Souls, Langham Place.

Choral Eucharist or Matins are at 11 am each Sunday. The church is open most weekdays to visitors and for private prayer. Visitors are welcome to attend choral evensong services at 6 pm on Tuesdays during university terms.

The World War I memorial with a bronze statue of Saint Michael by Richard Reginald Goulden has a Grade II* listing (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 9: 7-9 (NRSVA):

7 Now Herod the ruler heard about all that had taken place, and he was perplexed, because it was said by some that John had been raised from the dead, 8 by some that Elijah had appeared, and by others that one of the ancient prophets had arisen. 9 Herod said, ‘John I beheaded; but who is this about whom I hear such things?’ And he tried to see him.

Inside Saint Michael’s Church, Cornhill, facing west (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayer:

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Flinging open the doors.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday by the Revd Anthony Gyu-Yong Shim, Diocese of Daejeon, Korea.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (28 September 2023) invites us to pray:

We pray for clergy and lay people within churches who are always looking outward for ways in which they can serve those around them.

The elaborate stone reredos incorporates paintings of Moses and Aaron by Robert Streater (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Collect:

O Lord, we beseech you mercifully to hear the prayers
of your people who call upon you;
and grant that they may both perceive and know
what things they ought to do,
and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfil them;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

Almighty God,
you have taught us through your Son
that love is the fulfilling of the law:
grant that we may love you with our whole heart
and our neighbours as ourselves;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The stained glass by Clayton and Bell includes a representation of Christ in Glory in the large circular east window (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

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

Saint Michael depicted in the mosaic floor of Minton’s tesserae and tiles in the chancel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

‘Walls and Trumpets’: a triumph in blue on a grey, dreary office block in Southwark

‘Walls and Trumpets’ by Ofra Zimbalista on the walls of Maya House in Southwrk (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Patrick Comerford

Over the years, I have become very familiar with Borough High Street in Southwark, through my visits to Southwark Cathedral close to London Bridge and USPG offices at the other end of Borough High Street on Trinity Street.

Between the two there are so many place of interest: the literary connections with Chaucer, Shakespeare and Dickens; the many reminders of John Harvard, who gives his name to Harvard University; Saint George the Martyr, the church of Little Dorrit; the old coaching inn courtyard of the George; and the array of enticing and appetising food stalls in Borough Market.

Walking along Borough High Street, I might never have noticed Maya House on the west side of the street, but for the Costa coffee shop. It is a dreary, drab-looking, almost soulless 1970s office block at Nos 134-138.

However, as I said earlier this week, I benefit from walking around London instead of taking the tube, with my head up and my eyes open. And Maya House has an impressive art installation of three blue figures that make the building worth looking at.

‘Walls and Trumpets’ is an art installation on the walls of Maya House created in 2007-2008 by the late Israeli artist Ofra Zimbalista (1939-2014).

Ofra Zimbalista was one of the most important female artists in Israel, where she was born, lived and worked. She studied lithography, etching and screen-print at the Kalisher Art Academy, in Tel Aviv. She exhibited throughout Europe and Israel, and her works are displayed in public spaces around the world. Her human-sized figures casted from aluminium and bronze were often engaged in acrobatic activities.

A common feature of her public artworks was to show her groups of people in transitional situations: hanging and climbing as though trying to find their place.

Blue figures are a recurring motif in Zimbalista’s work. The figures are created by moulding real people in fibreglass, coloured with a deep blue pigment she imported specially from Morocco where it is used in house paint. This Yves Klein-like deep blue is one of Ofra Zimbalista’s signature motifs.

Maya House on the west side of Borough High Street in Southwark (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Her installation at Maya House, ‘Walls and Trumpets’, consists of three life casts. They were cast from real people who adopted their poses and then held them while they were covered in alginate and plaster. She created her initial moulds from these, and then shaped the final figures in blue fibreglass.

These three figures, each a vivid shade of brilliant blue, appear to be clinging to and climbing the wall of Maya House; they might be window cleaners, they might even be absailing. Looking more closely, you see two climbing figures, one holding a trumpet, the other holding a bugle, and a third seated figure who seems to be marching triumphantly atop the others, playing a drum – perhaps celebrating the fact that he has reached the top place he was trying to get to.

These three figures, with their vivid shade of blue and their musical instruments, add a splash of colour and joy to the drab façade of Maya House and they brightened up my rainy autumn day.

The best-known Biblical encounter between ‘Walls and Trumpets’ is, of course, at the Siege of Jericho, when the priests marched around the city walls for seven days, blowing their trumpets until the walls came tumbling down (see Joshua 6: 1-20). Being so close to Southwark Cathedral, it might not be too difficult to find priests seven days of the week. But, did the artist wish to see the drab and dreary walls of Maya House come tumbling down as these three blue figures blew their trumpets?

The three figures in vivid blue appear to be clinging to and climbing the wall of Maya House (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Daily prayers in Ordinary Time with USPG: (122) 27 September 2023

In the cloisters of the Church of San Michele in the Venetian Lagoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, and this week began with the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XVI, 24 September 2023).

The Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today (27 September) remembers the life and witness of Vincent de Paul (1660), Founder of the Congregation of the Mission (Lazarists).

Before the day gets busy, I am taking some time this morning for prayer and reflection.

Later this week, the Church celebrates Saint Michael and All Angels (29 September). So my reflections each morning this week and next are taking this format:

1, A reflection on a church named after Saint Michael or his depiction in Church Art;

2, the Gospel reading of the day in the Church of England lectionary;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

The Chiesa di San Michele in Isola, designed by Mauro Codussi in 1469, was the first Renaissance church in Venice (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

San Michele, Venice:

Venice is a collection of islands linked by canals and bridges, interconnected by narrow alleyways, squares of all shapes and sizes and the vaporetti or water buses. While tourists find their way from Rialto to San Marco, or from Cannaregio to Giudecca, few move beyond the main highlights found in their guidebooks.

More discerning visitors may spend a few hours in the islands of the lagoon, especially the Lido, Torcello and Murano and Burano.

But the smaller islands are generally missed, and few make it in any great numbers to the Isola di San Michele, a former prison island that takes five or ten minutes to reach by water bus, half-way between Fondamente Nuove on Cannaregio and the island of Murano on vaporetto routes 41 and 42.

Perhaps they are deterred by the name of the vaporetto stop for San Michele: Cimitero. For this has been Venice’s cemetery since the early 1800s, when the occupying Napoleonic forces told the Venetians to start taking their dead across the water instead of burying them in Venice itself.

It was all in the name of hygiene and because of a growing shortage of burial places.

The lagoon was once the preserve of fishermen and hunters, and the stories of the islands is shrouded in myth and legend. Murano is the island of glassmakers and Burano the island of lace, but other islands were monasteries, used as prisons and gunpowder factories, or serving as market gardens or cemeteries.

Cimitero, with a large number of cypress trees and enclosed within high terracotta walls, was originally the two islets of San Michele and San Cristoforo della Pace.

The Hermits of the Camaldolese Order moved onto the island in the 12th century, and founded the Monastery of Saint Michael (San Michele di Murano), which became a centre of learning and printing. The famous cartographer, Fra Mauro, who drew maps that helped European explorers, was a monk of this community.

The landmark building on the island is the Chiesa di San Michele in Isola, designed by Mauro Codussi in 1469. This was the first Renaissance church in Venice, and the first church in Venice to be faced in white Istrian stone.

But the monastery was suppressed by French forces under Napoleon, in the course of their conquest of the Italian peninsula, and the monks were expelled in 1814. The Napoleonic administration decreed that burial on the main islands of Venice was unsanitary, and these two small islands then became Venice’s major cemetery. The canal separating the two islands was filled in between 1837 and 1839, and the larger island became known as San Michele.

Jan Morris, in The World of Venice, compares the cemetery island to a ship where ‘the director stands as proudly in his great graveyard as any masterful cruiser captain, god-like on his bridge.’

The cemetery is wide and calm, with a series of large gardens, studded with cypress trees and cluttered with hundreds of thousands of tombs and graves. Some are lavishly monumental, with domes and sculptures and wrought-iron gates; many more are stacked in high modern terraces, like filing cabinets.

Most of San Michele is reserved for Catholics. Walls separate the different areas, and the graves lie in neat, tightly-packed, serried rows, separated by paths. Some graves are neglected, but most are well-tended, often with recently-laid flowers.

The island also has two smaller, separate graveyards for other Christians. Those who are buried in the Greci or Greek Orthodox cemetery include the composer Igor Stravisky (1882-1971) and the Russian ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev (1872-1929). Venice has always had a sizeable Greek population, and here too are the graves of bishops, merchants and refugees who fled Smyrna in the 1920s.

In the Evangelisti or Protestant graveyard are the graves of the American poet and critic, and fascist collaborator, Ezra Pound (1885-1972), who influenced the work of TS Eliot, James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway, and of Pound’s mistress, the violinist Olga Rudge (1895-1996). Here too are the graves of the Russian and American poet and essayist Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996), and the German painter August Wolf (1842-1915).

One gravestone has an awkwardly-composed inscription: ‘In loving memory of Frank Justice Stanier of Staffordshire who left us in peace, Febry 2nd 1910.’ His family lived at Madeley Manor, Staffordshire, and at Moor House, Biddulph. Another gravestone is of Edward Douglas Guinness (1893-1983), a member of the banking branch of the family and a partner in Guinness Mahon.

In contrast to the formal, tended graves and gardens of graves in other parts of the cemetery, the Greci and Protestant sections have an atmosphere of rustic decay. Some tombstones are covered in moss, a few are leaning over, and others are collapsing.

The Chiesa di San Michele in Isola was designed by Mauro Codussi and built ca 1469. This is the first Renaissance church in Venice, and the church and the monastery also served for a time as a prison.

The other churches and chapels on the islands include cemetery church of San Cristoforo, designed by Gian Antonio Selva (1751-1819), the Cappella Emiliana chapel, and a small Greek Orthodox funeral chapel.

If San Michele is not crowded by living tourists, it is certainly crowded by dead Venetians. It is so crowded that graves are on short-term leases. The bodies in each row of graves are allowed to decompose for 12 years, and are then dug up.

When families could not pay for reburial, the bones of the dead are taken to the ossuary island of Sant’Ariano, near Torcello. That island is described vividly by Michael Dibdin in his novel Dead Lagoon. Today, after a respectful passage of time, bones are transferred to small metal boxes in tall grey cement-block piles that look more like gigantic filing cabinets.

Does the name of the vaporetto stop at Cimitero deter visitors to San Michele? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 9: 1-6 (NRSVA):

1 Then Jesus called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, 2 and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal. 3 He said to them, ‘Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money – not even an extra tunic. 4 Whatever house you enter, stay there, and leave from there. 5 Wherever they do not welcome you, as you are leaving that town shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.’ 6 They departed and went through the villages, bringing the good news and curing diseases everywhere.

Ballet shoes on the grave of the Russian ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev on the cemetery island of San Michele in the Lagoon of Venice (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayer:

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Flinging open the doors.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday by the Revd Anthony Gyu-Yong Shim, Diocese of Daejeon, Korea.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (27 September 2023) invites us to pray:

Let us pray for churches re-opening – that their doors will be flung open to welcome in all who seek the Lord.

The church and the monastery of San Michele also served for a time as a prison (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Collect:

Merciful God,
whose servant Vincent de Paul,
by his ministry of preaching and pastoral care,
brought your love to the sick and the poor:
give to all your people a heart of compassion
that by word and action they may serve you
in serving others in their need;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

Merciful God,
who gave such grace to your servant Vincent de Paul
that he served you with singleness of heart
and loved you above all things:
help us, whose communion with you
has been renewed in this sacrament,
to forsake all that holds us back from following Christ
and to grow into his likeness from glory to glory;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The graves of Igor and Vera Stravinsky on San Michele (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

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

The graves of Ezra Pound and Olga Rudge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Modern design at Euston seeks to make heraldry relevant to art and tastes today

Art and design on the London Underground has always caught my eye and ear (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Patrick Comerford

Euston Station was the first mainline and underground station in London that I got to know in my teens and early 20s. In a typical year, more than 40 million journeys start or end at this station.

Back in the late 1960s and the 1970s, this was the station I arrived at in London from Lichfield or after taking the ferry from Dublin. In my teens, I hitch-hiked most of the time, and train travel was a luxury until I was in my 20s. By then, Euston had become familiar and was convenient. These days, this is the station I arrive at on trains from Milton Keynes.

Euston Station opened in May 1907 as part of the City and South London Railway’s extension from Angel Station. The architect Sidney Smith designed the entrance at Euston station.

A few months later, the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway opened its own Euston Station, with a surface structure designed by the architect Leslie Green. Despite having separate entrances, the two stations shared an underground ticket hall.

The station was closed 100 years ago, from 1922 to 1924, to allow tunnels to be enlarged in preparation for both branches of the Northern Line joining at Camden.

The station was rebuilt in the mid-1960s, when the surface mainline station was built. Most of the Underground work was designed to accommodate the Victoria line, which began calling at the station in 1968, just as I was about to get know the station.

Tom Eckersley’s designs and illustrations on the Victoria line platforms recall the Euston Arch (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Art and design on the Underground have always caught my eye and ear, from the buskers to Tom Eckersley’s designs and illustrations on the Victoria line platforms in Euston of the Euston Arch that once stood as the gateway to the mainline station. The Doric Arch is also commemorated in the name of a pub between the station and Euston Square.

Going back to my teens, I have long had an interest in heraldry, and I remain curious about the abstract graphic patterns that I see regularly on the Northern Line (Charing Cross branch) platforms in Euston. They were created in the 1980s by the designers David Hamilton and Robin Cooper to represent the coat of arms of the Dukes of Grafton, whose family home is at Euston Hall in Sffolk. Grafton Regis, the village in the south Northamptonshire that gives its name to the title of the Dukes of Grafton, is about 13 km south of Northampton and 14 km north of Milton Keynes.

To many, heraldry must seem anachronistic, even feudal, if not irrelevant. Some of the conventions in heraldry are misogynist and crassly classist and need updating and modernisation. But the inspirational adaptations of the Euston or Grafton arms by Hamilton and Cooper in Euston Station show heraldry can still inform art and design.

David Hamilton and Robin Cooper created the abstract graphic patterns on the Northern Line platforms in Euston Station (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

The design in Euston Station is based on the coat of arms of Henry FitzRoy (1663-1690), 1st Earl of Euston, an illegitimate son of King Charles II and his mistress Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland.

The Duke of Grafton’s shield shows the Royal Stuart arms, with supporters, based on the royal lion and the Tudor greyhound. Across the shield is a baton sinister denoting illegitimate birth. The Earl of Euston was later given the title of Duke of Grafton and his coat-of-arms, seen on the platforms in Euston Station, is still used by his descendants.

The land on which the main line station is the situated was the property of the FitzRoy family. The family name and titles associated with it are to be found in the names of streets and squares in the surrounding area, including Euston Road, Euston Street, Euston Square, Cleveland Street, Fitzroy Square, Fitzroy Street and Grafton Street.

Henry FitzRoy, 1st Duke of Grafton, was only 27 when he died in Ireland on 9 October 1690 of a wound received at the storming of Cork while leading William's forces, less than three months after the Battle of the Boyne.

His son, Charles FitzRoy (1683-1757), 2nd Duke of Grafton, was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from 1721 to 1724, and gave his name to Grafton Street and Duke Street in Dublin.

The V6 Grafton Street is a major local road in Milton Keynes key to the layout and urban form of the 'new city'. It starts beside Wolverton railway station in the north-west of Milton Keynes, between Wolverton and New Bradwell, and extends as far as Denbigh, where it provides access to the Stadium:mk and where it terminates in a roundabout with the H10 Bletcham Way, V4 Watling Street and Denbigh Road.

The Dukes of Grafton have given their names to Grafton Street in Dublin and in Milton Keynes (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)