Rough diamonds, bleeding hearts, a Star of David, bluecoat scholars and a walk around Hatton Garden

‘Ingot, 2006’ by Tom Dixon on the Johnson Building tells the many stories of Hatton Garden (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Patrick Comerford

I was in Hatton Garden in London last week for the first time. Charlotte introduced me to the area that is home to the highest concentration of jewellery shops within a single area.

Famous jewellers, goldsmiths, diamond sellers, gemstone specialists, bespoke designers, watchmakers, jewellery value experts, and insurance companies can all be found in this small area.

There are family-owned jewellery shops that have been around for a long time, contemporary boutiques, repair services, and buyers of second-hand jewellery. All can be found in Hatton Garden in the Holborn district of the Borough of Camden, close to the narrow precinct of Saffron Hill which then abuts the City of London.

A ‘Great Robbery in Hatton Garden’ occurred in 1678, when 20 men turned up at the house of a wealthy gentleman claiming to have a warrant to search the house for dangerous persons. They were apprehended two days later while trying to dispose of the stolen property. George Brown, John Butler, Richard Mills, Christopher Bruncker and George Kenian were hanged at Tyburn on 22 January 1679.

Thieves stole £7 million worth of gems belonging to the jewellers Graff Diamonds in 1993 This was London’s biggest gem heist of modern times. An underground safe deposit facility in the Hatton Garden area was burgled in the Hatton Garden safe deposit burglary in 2015. The total stolen may have had a value of up to £200 million, although court reports referred to £14 million.

Today there are almost 300 businesses in Hatton Garden in the jewellery industry and over 90 shops, representing the largest cluster of jewellery retailers in the UK. The largest of these businesses was De Beers. The area is now home also to many media, publishing and creative businesses.

Hatton Garden takes its name from Sir Christopher Hatton, a favourite of Queen Elizabeth I, who built his mansion in the area and gained possession of the garden and orchard of Ely Place, once the London palace of the Bishops of Ely.

Saint Etheldreda’s Church in Ely Place is all that survives of the old Bishop's Palace and one of only two remaining buildings in London dating from the reign of Edward I. It is one of the oldest churches in England and since 1879 has been used as a Roman Catholic church.

All the local streets have stories to tell, and ‘Ingot, 2006’ by the sculptor Tom Dixon, a large bronze Ingot on the newly refurbished Johnson Building, on the corner of Hatton Garden and Saint Cross Street, to help to narrate some of these stories through a piece of public art.

A large rectangular slab of metal is in a recess above the entrance to the Johnson Building. Down the left side of the slab is a row of ten icons on top of one another, resembling hallmarks that would appear on a real ingot. The icons depict a mitre, a strawberry, a rose and haystack, a tree trunk, a bleeding heart, a gin bottle, a diamond, a star of David and a computer cursor, representing various historical aspects of the area.

This work is inspired by the gold trade and also shows the creation of a new hallmark for the building. Working with Mind Design, the Ingot features a series of symbols, each representing a certain historic aspect of the local area.

The Mitre represents the old palace of the Bishop of Ely, founded ca. 1300, which once stood here. The palace boasted a vineyard and an orchard, as well as gardens, fountains and ponds. The symbol also refers to the Ye Old Mitre nearby, dating from 1546, which I described in a posting on Tuesday.

The Strawberry recalls how the strawberries grown in Hatton Garden in Elizabethan times were considered to be the finest in London. In Shakespeare’s Richard III, the Duke of Gloucester remarks to the Bishop: ‘… I saw good strawberries in your garden there: I do beseech you, send me some of them.’

The Rose and the Haystack below it tell another story about the palace grounds and the thoroughfare, Ely Place, and how they were let to Sir Christopher Hatton through the intervention of Queen Elizabeth I in 1575. The Bishop of Ely, however, retained the right to walk in his garden, and the annual rent of the gatehouse was one red rose and ten stacks of hay.

The Tree Trunk represents the preserved trunk of the cherry tree that marked the palace boundary that can now be found in a corner of the Olde Mitre in Ely Court, a tiny passageway off Hatton Garden. It is said that Elizabeth I took a part in a maypole dance around the tree.

The Bleeding Heart relates to the ‘Lady of the Bleeding Heart Yard’. Legend says Lady Elizabeth Hatton entered into an alliance with the Prince of Darkness, but was murdered by him while walking in the yard. A stable lad found her heart still pumping blood over the cobblestones.

The Bottle of Gin makes a connection with the way the population of Holborn swelled in the 19th century and slums began to appear in the Hatton Harden area. Gin consumption was rife, not least because of the nearby Gordon’s Distillery. The slums of Leather Lane are described by Charles Dickens in Oliver Twist’, and Saffron Hill was the insalubrious setting for Fagin’s den.

Next is a Diamond. Since the 1830s, the Hatton Garden area has had an international reputation as London’s jewellery quarter. Diamonds are at the heart of this trade. The London Diamond Bourse at 100 Hatton Garden is one of the places where brokers trade the world’s rough diamonds.

The Star of David represents the strong Jewish presence in the area, which has existed locally since the establishment of the jewellery industry. London first developed trading links in the diamonds when the Portuguese Jews moved arrived in the 17th century.

Finally, a computer cursor represents the creative organisations in the area today and is a reminder that the Hatton Garden area is also noted for its many design and media offices. They thrive in the tightly packed and atmospheric local streets and attract numerous supporting industries.

A pair of Bluecoat scholars on the façade of Wren House at 43 Hatton Garden (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

The red-brick building across from the Johnson Building, now known as Wren House, stands at the south-east corner of Hatton Garden and Saint Cross Street. It served briefly as the church for the Hatton Garden area.

Now known as Wren House, this Grade II listed building at 43 Hatton Garden, was once Saint Andrew’s Parochial School. It was originally built as a church ca 1670 by Lord Hatton, supposedly to designs by Sir Christopher Wren.

It served as a church while Wren was rebuilding Saint Andrew’s Church, Holborn, after the Great Fire of London in 1666. After Saint Andrew’s was rebuilt and reopened, the building was adapted as a charity school ca 1696.

Saint Andrew’s Parochial School was given two entrances, boys and girls, one on each frontage, and a pair of the charity children statues was placed at each door, showing bluecoat scholars in 18th century costume.

The building was damaged by incendiary bombs during the Blitz. After World War II, it was rebuilt internally as offices. The façade and was restored and retained, and the building was renamed Wren House.

The two pairs of bluecoat scholars were taken down during World War II and sent for safe keeping to Bradfield College, Berkshire. Two figures have been replaced in their original positions above the main entrance as a memorial of the former use of the building, while the other pair now stand on the tower of Saint Andrew’s Church, Holborn.

Wren House at 43 Hatton Garden was built as a church in 1686, and is said to have been designed by Sir Christopher Wren (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Daily prayers in Ordinary Time with USPG: (11) 8 June 2023, Corpus Christi

The Corpus Christi procession in Cambridge last year (Photograph © Martin Bond / A Cambridge Diary)

Patrick Comerford

This week began with Trinity Sunday (4 June 2023). Over these few weeks after Trinity Sunday, I am reflecting each morning in these ways:

1, Looking at relevant images or stained glass window in a church, chapel or cathedral I know;

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

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

However, today is the feast of Corpus Christi, and I am digressing this morning as I reflect on this day in the Church Calendar.

The chapel in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge … designed by William Wilkins as a miniature replica of the chapel in King’s College (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Feast of Corpus Christi:

The Feast of Corpus Christi is marked in the calendar of many Anglican churches as Corpus Christi. Although it is not a feast in the Calendar of the Church of Ireland, Corpus Christi features in the calendar of the Church of England on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, and this day is being celebrated in many English churches and cathedrals today. For example, there is a Solemn Eucharist in Lichfield Cathedral at 5.30 this evening. Saint Editha’s Church, Tamworth, is celebrating the Feast of Corpus Christi with the Sung Eucharist at 7 pm, followed by sherry and shortbread refreshments in the new café.

Although Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church in Stony Stratford has been in the Anglo-Catholic tration, Corpus Christ is not being celebrated there today, and instead the Corpus Christi celebrations have been transferred to next Sunday (11 June 2023).

Traditionally, there has a Corpus Christi procession in Cambridge each year, with a brass band and hymn-singing starting with the Sung Eucharist at St Bene’t’s Church at 7 p.m., then moving along Trumpington Street, passing Corpus Christi College, Fitzbillies and the Fitzwilliam Museum as it processes to Little Saint Mary’s for Benediction, followed by refreshments. The preacher in Cambridge this evening is the Revd Jennifer Totney, Director of Contextual Training at Westcott House.

Little Saint Mary’s says this is always a ‘most enjoyable event’ and an act of witness through the streets of Cambridge. ‘We are especially keen for this to be well supported this year after the last few years of Covid and the recent loss of our friend and colleague, the Revd Anna Matthews, the former Vicar of Saint Bene’t’s, who helped start this annual tradition some years ago. So please do come along and support.’

Pusey House in Oxford has a number of Corpus Christi celebrations this week including Choral Evensong in the Chapel yesterday for the Eve of Corpus Christi with music by Brewer and Byrd. Today, on the Feast of Corpus Christi, there is High Mass at 6:30 pm with Father Guy Willis, of Saint Bene’t’s Church, Kentish Town, preaching and with music by Vaughan Williams and Byrd.This is followed with procession to Saint Barnabas Church, Jericho, for Benediction.

In Rose Macaulay’s The Towers of Trebizond, Father Hugh Chantry-Pigg says Mass in a corner of the public gardens in Trebizond to mark the Feast of Corpus Christi. After Mass, he holds a procession round the gardens, chanting Ave Verum, stops, preaches a short sermon in English, and says that Corpus Christi is a great Christian festival and holy day, ‘always kept in the Church of England.’

The survival of Corpus Christi in the Anglican tradition is also illustrated in the history of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Formally known as the College of Corpus Christi and the Blessed Virgin Mary, this is the only Cambridge college founded by the townspeople of Cambridge: it was established in 1352 by the Guilds of Corpus Christi and the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Today, Corpus Christi is best known to visitors to Cambridge for its clock, the Chronophage or ‘Time Eater,’ which is accurate only once every five minutes. But the Old Court in Corpus is the oldest court in any Oxbridge college.

The new college acquired all the guild’s lands, ceremonies and revenues, including the annual Corpus Christi procession through the streets of Cambridge to Magdalene Bridge, during which the Eucharistic host was carried by a priest and several of the college’s treasures were carried by the Master and fellows, before returning to the college for an extravagant dinner.

The procession in Cambridge continued until the Reformation, but in 1535 William Sowode, who was Parker’s predecessor as Master (1523-1544), stopped this tradition. However, the college retains its pre-Reformation name and continues to have a grand dinner on the feast of Corpus Christi.

In the calendar of the Church of England, Corpus Christi is known as The Day of Thanksgiving for the Institution of Holy Communion (Corpus Christi) and has the status of a Festival (Common Worship, p. 529). But in many parts of the Roman Catholic Church, it has now been moved from the Thursday after Trinity Sunday to the following Sunday. Yet, in the Roman Catholic Church, the feast of Corpus Christi is one of the five occasions in a year when a bishop must not to be away from his diocese unless for a grave and urgent reason.

Corpus Christi does not commemorate any one particular event in the life of Christ or in the history of the Church – but the same can be said too of Trinity Sunday (last Sunday, 4 June 2023) or the Feast of Christ the King (the Sunday before Advent). Instead, this day celebrates the presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

Corpus Christi first made an appearance in the Church Calendar at the suggestion of Saint Juliana of Liège, a 13th century Augustinian nun, when she suggested the feastday to her local bishop, Bishop Robert de Thorete of Liège and the Archdeacon of Liège, Jacques Pantaléon.

The bishop introduced the feastday to the calendar of his diocese in 1246, and the archdeacon subsequently introduced it to the calendar of the Western Church when he became Pope Urban IV in 1264, when he issued a papal bull, Transiturus de hoc mundo.

A liturgy for the feast was composed by the great Dominican theologian, Saint Thomas Aquinas, who also wrote the hymns Verbum Supernum Prodiens for Lauds and Pange Lingua for Vespers of Corpus Christi.

The last two verses of Pange Lingua are often sung as a separate Latin hymn, Tantum Ergo, while the last two verses of Verbum Supernum Prodiens are sometimes sung separately as O Salutaris Hostia.

This was the very first universal feast ever sanctioned by a Pope. Corpus Christi was retained in Lutheran calendars until about 1600, and continues to be celebrated in some Lutheran churches.

Anglicans generally and officially believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist – is there any ‘presence’ that is not ‘real’? But the specifics of that belief range from transubstantiation, to something akin to a belief in a ‘pneumatic’ presence, from objective reality to pious silence.

Anglican teaching thinking about the Eucharist is best summarised in the Prayer of Humble Access:

We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy: Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen. – (Book of Common Prayer, 1662)

The classic Anglican aphorism with regard to this debate is found in a poem by John Donne that is often attributed to Queen Elizabeth I:

His was the Word that spake it;
He took the bread and brake it;
and what that Word did make it;
I do believe and take it.

This, in many ways, also reflects Orthodox theology, which does not use the term ‘transubstantiation’ to systematically describe how the Gifts become the Body and Blood of Christ. Instead, the Orthodox speak of the Eucharist as a ‘Sacred Mystery’ use only the word ‘change.’ That moment of transformation of change does not take place at one particular moment during the Liturgy, but is completed at the Epiclesis.

And that completion is affirmed by our ‘Amen’ at the distribution and reception.

But when we say ‘Amen’ to those words, ‘The Body of Christ,’ at the distribution we are also saying ‘Amen’ to the Church as the Body of Christ, as Corpus Christi: ‘He [Christ] is the of the body, the church’ (Colossians 1: 18), ‘which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all’ (Ephesians 1: 23).

In the act of communion, the entire Church – past, present, and even future – is united in eternity. In Orthodox Eucharistic theology, although many separate Divine Liturgies may be celebrated, there is only one Bread and one Cup throughout all the world and throughout all time.

Corpus Christi is not just a celebration for Roman Catholics and Anglo-Catholics. It is part of the shared pre-Reformation heritage of the Church, and long pre-dates Tridentine teachings on the Eucharist and transubstantiation.

It is a reminder too that the Eucharist is supposed to be a regular celebration for the Church, and not just once a month, once a quarter or once a year. As someone reminded me recently, if Christ had meant us to celebrate the Eucharist only on special occasions, he would have used cake and champagne at the last Supper. But he used ordinary everyday bread and table wine.

Preaching at the Corpus Christi ecumenical protest service at the US embassy in Dublin in 1982 (Photograph: The Irish Times, 1982)

Corpus Christi in Dublin

In the Church of Ireland in Dublin, a Chantry Guild of Corpus Christ attached to Saint Michan’s Church survived for decades after the Reformation, and was still in existence in the mid-17th century.

Over forty years ago, on Good Friday, 9 April 1982, I was involved in organising and as chair of Christian CND preached at an ecumenical service outside the US Embassy in Dublin to protest against proposals to name a US nuclear submarine Corpus Christi. Those who took part included Anglicans, Roman Catholics, Methodists, Mennonties and Quakers.

A few days earlier, nine of us, calling ourselves ‘Corpus Christ Witness’ and writing from the Student Christian Movement (SCM) offices then in Rathgar, Dublin, signed an open letter published in Irish newspapers condemning the proposal as blasphemous. We said that by giving that name to a ‘hunter killer’ nuclear submarine, the world was faced ‘with the choice of which God we will serve: Jesus of Nazareth, who died that all might live, or the new ‘Christ,’ which lives that all may die.’

In the US, the choice of name was condemned by 259 Roman Catholic bishops, archbishops and cardinals, 25 Episcopalian bishops, and more than 250 religious orders, denominations, organisation and councils of churches, including the United Church of Christ, the National Assembly of Women Religious and the Unitarian Universalist Association.

The Chronophage or ‘Time Eater’ at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, is accurate only once every five minutes … in Orthodox Eucharistic theology, there is only one Bread and one Cup throughout all time (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 6: 51-58 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 51 ‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.’

52 The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’ 53 So Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; 55 for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. 56 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. 57 Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live for ever.’

‘Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them’ (John 5: 56) … the Last Supper depicted in the East Window in Holy Trinity Church, Old Wolverton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Today’s prayer:

The theme in the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel) this week is ‘Protecting the Environment in Zambia. This theme was introduced on Sunday by USPG’s Regional Manager for Africa, Fran Mate, with a reflection from Zambia for the United Nations World Environment Day on Monday.

The USPG Prayer invites us to pray this morning (Thursday 8 June 2023, Corpus Christi):

Let us pray for the Church worldwide. May it seek to be Christ’s body on earth and through sharing his life bring life to others.

Collect:

Lord Jesus Christ,
we thank you that in this wonderful sacrament
you have given us the memorial of your passion:
grant us so to reverence the sacred mysteries
of your body and blood
that we may know within ourselves
and show forth in our lives
the fruits of your redemption;
for you are alive and reign with the Father
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
(Common Worship, p. 407)

Post Communion Prayer:

All praise to you, our God and Father,
for you have fed us with the bread of heaven
and quenched our thirst from the true vine:
hear our prayer that, being grafted into Christ,
we may grow together in unity
and feast with him in the kingdom;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

(Common Worship, p. 407).

Corpus Christi College, Oxford, was founded in 1517 by Richard Foxe, Bishop of Winchester (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

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

Celebrating Corpus Christi in Lichfield Cathedral last year (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)