Praying in Lent and Easter 2021: 91, Swanwick Conference Centre, Derbyshire

The chapel in the Hayes Conference Centre in Swanwick, Derbyshire

Patrick Comerford

During the Season of Easter this year, I am continuing my theme from Lent, taking some time each morning to reflect in these ways:

1, photographs of a church or place of worship that has been significant in my spiritual life;

2, the day’s Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel).

This week, we are in an ‘in-between week’, between Ascension Day and the Day of Pentecost. My photographs this week are from places I associate with the life of USPG. Earlier in this series, I introduced the Chapel in the USPG offices in Southwark and its stained glass windows (20 March 2021).

This morning (18 May 2021), my photographs are from the Hayes Conference Centre in Swanwick, Derbyshire, which was the planned venue for last year’s USPG conference until the Covid-19 conference forced its cancellation. This year’s conference is planned for the High Leigh conference centre in Hertfordshire (20 to 22 July 2021), and I still have hopes that the roll-out of the vaccine and the easing of travel restrictions may mean I can take part in the conference this year, the last year in my six-year term as a trustee of USPG.

I have also taken part in many USPG conferences in Swanwick in the past (2008, 2010, 2016), sometimes leading workshops and taking part in council and trustee meetings. Archbishop Alan Harper of Armagh was the keynote speaker on the final day of the conference in 2008.

I first attended a peace conference in Swanwick in 1976, when I first met people like Bruce Kent of CND and Harry Mister of Housman’s Bookshop, and I have been back on many occasions since. These visits have often afforded opportunities to take a few extra days off in Lichfield.

Swanwick is near Alfreton, and less than two miles from Ripley, the Derbyshire town that was named by the Guardian in 2016 as the ‘most English town’ in England.

The old country house, Swanwick Hayes – now the Hayes Conference Centre – was built by the Derbyshire industrialist, Francis Wright, in 1860s as a wedding present for his son, FitzHerbert Wright (1841-1910), when he married Charlotte Rudolphine Louise von Beckman (1848-1932), the daughter of a German pastor, in 1865.

Fitzherbert Wright’s father was a leading Derbyshire industrialist, while his mother, Selina FitzHerbert, was a daughter of Sir Henry FitzHerbert (1783-1858) of Tissington Hall, an early 17th-century Jacobean mansion near Ashbourne. The FitzHerberts acquired Tissington by marriage in 1465. The old moated manor at Tissington was replaced with the new mansion in 1609 by Francis FitzHerbert, and it remains the home of the FitzHerbert family. Today, it is the home of Sir Richard Ranulph FitzHerbert. These connections are recalled in the name of the Tissington Room on the ground floor of Lakeside, where I stayed on my most recent visit.

FitzHerbert Wright had interests in local ironworks and coalmines, and was a county councillor and JP. When he was retiring from the Butterley Company as managing director in 1903, he paid for a new tower as a gift for the Parish Church of Saint Andrew, which was built at the crossroads in Swanwick in 1860.

FitzHerbert Wright died on 19 December 1910, and in 1911 the family sold the house for £11,500, about a fifth of its original building cost, to the First Conference Estate Ltd. It was converted into the Christian conference centre that operates to this day.

During World War II, the Hayes was used as a prisoner of war camp for German and Italian prisoners. Franz von Werra, a Luftwaffe officer, escaped from here, but was recaptured at nearby RAF Hucknall as he tried to steal an aircraft. He later made the only verified German escape, from Canada.

Today, the Hayes is one of the largest conference centres of its type. But past stories are cherished with names on rooms such as Butterley, Tissington, Haddon, Chatsworth and Alan Booth. Perhaps I shall return to Swanwick soon.

The Hayes Conference Centre, Swanwick … the original house was built in 1865 by the FitzHerbert Wright family (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 17: 1-11 (NRSVA)

1 After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, ‘Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, 2 since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. 3 And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. 4 I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. 5 So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.

6 ‘I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. 7 Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; 8 for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. 9 I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. 10 All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. 11 And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.’

Swanwick Hayes was built in 1860s as a wedding present for FitzHerbert Wright (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Prayer in the USPG Prayer Diary:

The Prayer in the USPG Prayer Diary today (18 May 2021) invites us to pray:

We pray for the work of theological colleges across the world church. May the work of these institutions help us to better understand God and the path He intends for us.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

Night settles on the Hayes Conference Centre in Swanwick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

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 Andrew’s Parish Church on The Green in Swanwick, Derbyshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Praying in Lent and Easter 2021: 90, High Leigh Conference Centre, Hoddesdon

The Barn Chapel in the grounds of the High Leigh Conference Centre near Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

During the Season of Easter this year, I am continuing my theme from Lent, taking some time each morning to reflect in these ways:

1, photographs of a church or place of worship that has been significant in my spiritual life;

2, the day’s Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel).

This week, we are in an ‘in-between week’, between Ascension Day and the Day of Pentecost. My photographs this week are from places I associate with the life of USPG. Earlier in this series, I introduced the Chapel in the USPG offices in Southwark and its stained glass windows (20 March 2021).

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This morning (17 May 2021), my photographs are from the High Leigh Conference Centre, outside Hoddesdon, in Hertfordshire. High Leigh is the planned venue for the USPG conference once again this year (20 to 22 July 2021), and I still have hopes that the roll out of the vaccine and the easing of travel restrictions may mean I can take part in the conference this year, the last year in my six-year term as a trustee of USPG.

I have taken part in many USPG conferences here in the past (2009, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019), sometimes leading workshops, taking part in council and trustee meetings, and I presided at the Eucharist at the end of the 2012 conference. I was also the chaplain in 2006 at a joint conference of the Friends of the Church in China and the China Desk of Churches Together in Britain and Ireland (CTBI), when I led daily worship and celebrated the Sunday Eucharist.

The High Leigh Conference Centre is a beautiful Victorian country house, set in extensive parkland and landscaped gardens, surrounded by some of Hertfordshire’s most beautiful countryside. The house was built in 1853 by Charles Webb, a gold lace manufacturer, and was bought in 1871 by Robert Barclay, a member of a well-known banking dynasty and a committed Christian, who renamed it High Leigh.

For generations, members of the Barclay family were leading Quakers, and there is a Friends’ Meeting House on Lord Street, leading from Hoddesdon out to High Leigh. By the time they came to live at High Leigh, the Barclays were committed Anglicans.

On the stairs to the room where I was staying in High Leigh on the last occasion, the walls are lined with Victorian photographs of the Barclay family and their staff, and a stained-glass window in the original parts of the house shows an impaled Barclay coat-of-arms that has a bishop’s mitre as one of the two crests.

Robert Barclay (1843-1921) was the son of Joseph Gurney Barclay and Mary Walker Barclay; his wife, Elizabeth Ellen Buxton (1848-1911), was a granddaughter of the 19th century reformer and campaigner against slaver, Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, and their large family included many missionaries. Joseph Gurney Barclay (1879-1976), who was born at High Leigh, left Barclay’s Bank to be become am Anglican missionary in Japan, where his wife Gillian died in 1909.

Another son, the Revd Gilbert Arthur Barclay (1882-1970), was a vicar in Cumbria, Leicester and Essex, and an army chaplain and hospital chaplain. A daughter, Rachel Elizabeth Barclay (1885-1932), who was born in High Leigh, was a missionary in Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Her sister, Clemence Rachel Barclay (1874-1952), married Bishop Edward Sydney Woods (1877-1953) in Hoddesdon in 1903. He was the Principal of Ridley Hall, Cambridge, Suffragan Bishop of Croydon, and Bishop of Lichfield (1937-1952).

Robert Barclay continued to live at High Leigh until he died in 1921. His family then sold the property on favourable terms to First Conference Estate, a company he had been a director of, so that the house could become a Christian conference centre. The generosity of the Barclay family is celebrated in a plaque in the Oak Room.

Hoddesdon is a parish is in the Diocese of St Alban’s, and the parish church, the Church of Saint Catherine and Saint Paul, is in Paul’s Lane.

The High Leigh Conference Centre is a beautiful Victorian country house, long associated with the Barclay family (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 16: 29-33 (NRSVA)

29 His disciples said, ‘Yes, now you are speaking plainly, not in any figure of speech! 30 Now we know that you know all things, and do not need to have anyone question you; by this we believe that you came from God.’ 31 Jesus answered them, ‘Do you now believe? 32 The hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each one to his home, and you will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone because the Father is with me. 33 I have said this to you, so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world!’

An image of the Virgin Mary in a quiet corner at the High Leigh Conference Centre in Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Prayer in the USPG Prayer Diary:

The Prayer in the USPG Prayer Diary today (17 May 2021) invites us to pray:

Let us give thanks for the relationship between the Anglican Church in Korea and USPG.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

The impaled Barclay and Buxton coats-of-arms with an episcopal mitre at High Leigh (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

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 parish church of Saint Catherine and Saint Paul in Hoddesdon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

‘Pray for the peace of Jerusalem …Peace be within your walls’

‘‘Pray for the peace of Jerusalem’ (Psalm 122: 6) … the city of Jerusalem depicted on a tile in a restaurant (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

I spent much of today (12 May 2021) at a meeting of the trustees of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel).

This was a virtual meeting by Zoom, rather than an actual physical meeting in the USPG offices in Southwark, and I missed the actual contact we have with one another at those physical meetings: the throw-away remarks, the asides, the knowing glances, the one-to-one contact with one another over shared coffees, over lunch, or as we hang around in ones and twos, lingering a little longer after the meeting ends in the afternoon.

All of these contacts, which are difficult if nor impossible online, help to build confidence, nurture friendships, bridge any gaps between trustees and staff, and develop the ethos and values of USPG

I particularly miss each and all of these opportunities as this was one of my last meetings of trustees. I am due to step down after six years as a trustee at the USPG annual conference, which takes place at the High Leigh Conference Centre near Hoddesdon in Hertfordshire on 19 to 21 July.

I am still hoping against hope that I may be able to take part in this year’s conference. So, it was a personal pleasure to have been asked to provide a review of the meeting as our agenda reached a conclusion this afternoon.

In our prayers this afternoon we remembered five people associated with USPG who died since our last meeting:

• The Right Revd Botomazava Théophile, Bishop of Antsiranana, Madagascar, died 8 March 2021
• The Revd Herbert Frederick Giraud Floate, SPG/USPG missionary in the Seychelles and on Rodrigues (Diocese of Mauritius), died 17 March 2021
• The Revd Brian Taylor, SPG/USPG missionary in the Diocese of Kuching, Malaysia, died 25 March 2021
• The Right Revd Collin Theodore, member of the Brotherhood of the Ascended Christ in Delhi and former Bishop of Rajasthan, died 15 April 2021
• Dr James Tejosh Das, former General Secretary of the Church of Bangladesh, died 20 April 2021

Given the current news these days, I found it appropriate to conclude those prayers today with verses from Psalm 122, which is a ‘Song of Praise and Prayer for Jerusalem’:

6 Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
‘May they prosper who love you.
7 Peace be within your walls,
and security within your towers.’
8 For the sake of my relatives and friends
I will say, ‘Peace be within you.’
9 For the sake of the house of the Lord our God,
I will seek your good.