‘Tea and Oranges’ as I ‘hear the boats go by’ on the canal between Armitage and Rugeley in April sunshine

‘You can hear the boats go by … and she feeds you tea and oranges’ … ‘Tea and Oranges’ on the canal below Hawkesyard Hall in Armitage (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

As I was walking one day last week by the canal towpath between Rugeley and Armitage in the April sunshine, I noticed that one of the boats I saw below the pinnacles and turrets of Hawkesyard Hall is called ‘Tea and Oranges’.

I found myself singing the lyrics of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Suzanne’, with its images of lovers walking hand-in-hand by boats and the water and of ‘tea and oranges that come all the way from China’:

Suzanne takes you down
To her place near the river
You can hear the boats go by
You can spend the night beside her
And you know that she’s half-crazy
But that’s why you want to be there
And she feeds you tea and oranges
That come all the way from China
And just when you mean to tell her
That you have no love to give her
Then she gets you on her wavelength
And she lets the river answer
That you’ve always been her lover

‘Suzanne’ is a haunting composition and over the years it has become one of the best known works by the Canadian poet singer and songwriter Leonard Cohen, who died almost ten years ago on 7 November 2016.

Like many of Cohen’s songs, ‘Suzanne’ began as poem. He published his first book of poetry, Let Us Compare Mythologies (1956) at the age of 22. This was followed by The Spice-Box of Earth (1961), Flowers for Hitler (1964), and his novels The Favourite Game (1963) and Beautiful Losers (1966).

‘Suzanne’ was first published 60 years ago in 1966 as the poem ‘Suzanne Takes You Down’ in his third poetry collection, Parasites of Heaven (1966). Judy Collins recorded ‘Suzanne’ for her album In My Life, released in November 1966. A year later, Cohen included the song as the first track on Side A of his debut album, Songs of Leonard Cohen, released on 27 December 1967.

The album’s front cover depicts a sepia tint photo of Leonard Cohen. The back cover is a Mexican religious picture of the Anima Sola depicted as a woman breaking free of her chains surrounded by flames and gazing towards heaven. In a Rolling Stone interview, he described the image as ‘the triumph of the spirit over matter. The spirit being that beautiful woman breaking out of the chains and the fire and prison’.

‘Suzanne’ was released as a single in 1968, but only reached the charts after Cohen died in 2016.


‘You can hear the boats go by’ … 90 seconds on the canal between Armitage and Rugeley (Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Suzanne has become one of the most covered songs in Cohen’s catalogue. Far Out and American Songwriter ranked the song No 4 and No 2, respectively, on their lists of the ten greatest Leonard Cohen songs. In 2021, it was ranked at No 284 on Rolling Stone’s ‘Top 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.’

Leonard Cohen had a lengthy relationship with the Los Angeles artist Suzanne Elrod in the 1970s. But he later said ‘cowardice’ and ‘fear’ prevented him from ever marrying her. They had two children, a son Adam (born 1972) and a daughter Lorca (born 1974) named after the poet Federico García Lorca.

Leonard Cohen and Suzanne Elrod had split up by 1979. But, contrary to popular belief, ‘Suzanne’ in the song is not Suzanne Elrod, but the dancer Suzanne Verdal, the former wife of his friend, the Québécois sculptor Armand Vaillancourt.

The song’s brilliance lies in its pairing of a spare, hypnotic melody with evocative lyrics:

Now Suzanne takes you down
To her place near the river
You can hear the boats go by
You can spend the night beside her
And you know she’s half crazy.

In Cohen’s version first recorded in 1968, the mood is underscored by a lilting female chorus and Cohen’s own subtle, insistent guitar playing. Cohen recalls ‘Suzanne,’ the enigmatic title figure, who wears ‘rags and feathers from Salvation Army counters.’

‘Suzanne’ was inspired by Cohen’s platonic relationship with Suzanne Verdal and the lyrics describe the rituals that they enjoyed when they met. She would invite him to visit her apartment by the harbour in Montreal, where she would serve him Constant Comment tea, and feed him ‘oranges that come all the way from China’.

Together, they savoured the beautiful view of the St Lawrence River from her waterfront apartment in Montreal, and they would walk around Old Montreal past the Church of Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours, where sailors were blessed before heading out to sea.

Other details speak of a romantic longing that, seemingly, remained unfulfilled:

And you want to travel with her
and you want to travel blind …
for you’ve touched her perfect body
with your mind.

The hunger these two gifted people had for one another illuminates the lyrics, giving them a spark that seems to resonate from the inside. On a human level, the song is about the mysterious forces that bring people together and, then, just as inexplicably, move them apart. ‘Suzanne’ can be heard or read as a statement of human frailty, representing a special moment in time, created by two people whose mutual attraction was not fulfilled in a physical sense, but still fulfilled in an emotional, deeper, way.

Verdal went on to travel the world, going from Montreal to France to Texas, and, finally, by the early 1990s, to Los Angeles, where she worked as a choreographer. Cohen said in a BBC interview in 1994 that he only imagined having sex with her, as there was neither the opportunity nor inclination to actually go through with it.

A fall and injury ended her career as a dancer. By 2006, she was living in a converted truck in Venice Beach, California. That year she told a CBC interview that she had ‘put the boundaries’ on the relationship with Cohen. She said then that they never had a sexual relationship, contrary to what some interpretations of the song suggest: ‘Somehow, I didn’t want to spoil that preciousness, that infinite respect that I had for him … I felt that a sexual encounter might demean it somehow.’

‘She is wearing rags and feathers from Salvation Army counters’ … the Salvation Army shop on Market Street in Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Despite beginning as a story of love and infatuation, Suzanne turns to a religious theme in the second verse:

And Jesus was a sailor
when he walked upon the water …

His ‘lonely wooden tower’ is, of course, the cross. Cohen is so fascinated by Jesus that he writes:

And you want to travel with him
you want to travel blind
and you think maybe you’ll trust him
for he’s touched your perfect body
with his mind.

The stanza ends in the most tragic and cryptic lines of the poem, as the voice returns to a third person of Jesus:

But he himself was broken
Long before the sky would open
Forsaken, almost human
He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone

This must refer to the crucifixion and the burial. He was ‘forsaken almost human.’ Despite being divine he is also human.

‘And she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China’ … oranges in the Tua Pek Kong Chinese temple in Kuching (Photograph: Patrick Comerford,)

Leonard Cohen, Suzanne:

Suzanne takes you down
To her place near the river
You can hear the boats go by
You can spend the night beside her
And you know that she’s half-crazy
But that’s why you want to be there
And she feeds you tea and oranges
That come all the way from China
And just when you mean to tell her
That you have no love to give her
Then she gets you on her wavelength
And she lets the river answer
That you’ve always been her lover

And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that she will trust you
For you’ve touched her perfect body with your mind

And Jesus was a sailor
When he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching
From his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain
Only drowning men could see him
He said ‘All men will be sailors then
Until the sea shall free them’
But he himself was broken
Long before the sky would open
Forsaken, almost human
He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone

And you want to travel with him
And you want to travel blind
And you think maybe you’ll trust him
For he’s touched your perfect body with his mind

Now Suzanne takes your hand
And she leads you to the river
She is wearing rags and feathers
From Salvation Army counters
And the sun pours down like honey
On our lady of the harbour
And she shows you where to look
Among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed
There are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love
And they will lean that way forever
While Suzanne holds the mirror

And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know you can trust her
For she’s touched your perfect body with her mind.

The Chetwynd murders in Rugeley: but did Dorothy strangle her husband, and was she burned at the stake?

Brocton Hall, between Rugeley and Stafford … home to generations of the Chetwynd family of Rugeley

Patrick Comerford

In my visits to Rugeley and Brereton in Staffordshire over the past week or two I heard again the stories of a number of murders or supposed murders in the area from the 16th to the 19th centuries, including a murder on the canal, the murderous spree of a local doctor who became known as the ‘Poisoner of Rugeley’, and the story of two sisters said to have been buried alive by Cromwell.

I came across these stories of intrigue and plotting, murder and supposed murder, once again in the churchyards of old Saint Augustine’s, the ‘Old Chancel’, and the new Saint Augustine’s, its 19th century successor.

But a story that truly caught my imagination is one that has tangential links with the Comberford family, a drama with links with two women called Dorothy Chetwynd – one the granddaughter of William Comberford of the Moat House, Tamworth, the other a young 16th century teenage ‘beauty’ who, according to local lore, was burned at the stake for murdering a husband three times her age, although all the historic evidence denies there was ever such a murder or such a grizzly execution.

I first became aware of this gruesome story through links provided by Dorothy Comberford, a daughter of William Comberford (1551-1625) of Comberford Hall, who entertained Charles I, as Prince Charles at the Moat House on Lichfield Street, Tamworth, in 1619. She married Walter Coleman of Cannock, a partner with the Comberford family in iron ore and mining interests in Wednesbury.

And so, I came across some family links with Rugeley: Dorothy’s youngest half-sister, Anne Comberford, was born in 1609, and in 1634, she married Benjamin Rugeley, who was closely related to the Rugeley family of Hawkesyard in Armitage.

Dorothy (Comberford) and Walter Coleman were the parents of two sons and two daughters, and their elder daughter Dorothy married Thomas Chetwynd (died 1633) of Rugeley, ancestor of the Chetwynd baronets. It was this marriage that introduced me to the supposed story of the Chetwynd murder.

Before all this, there was an earlier murder in the Chetwynd family: Thomas Chetwynd’s immediate ancestor, William Chetwynd of Ingestre, a courtier and one-time Master of the Guild at Lichfield, was murdered in 1494. A rival courtier, Sir Humphrey Stanley of Elford, the Sheriff of Stafford, had set the trap and was clearly responsible but was never brought to trial or punished.

William Chetwynd’s son, another William Chetwynd (d 1546), married Elizabeth Ferrers, a daughter of Sir John Ferrers of Tamworth Castle, and they were the parents of Thomas Chetwynd (d 1555) of Ingestre, who was 16 when he married Jane Salter. They, in turn, were the parents of three sons and three daughters.

The eldest of these six children, John Chetwynd (d 1592), was the Sheriff of Staffordshire. His first wife was Mary Meverell, the daughter of Ludovic Meverell of Bold; his second wife was Margery Middlemore of Edgbaston, Warwickshire. It was John’s son, Thomas Chetwynd of Rugeley, who married Dorothy Coleman, a granddaughter of William Comberford of the Moat House in Tamworth.

The youngest of William Chetwynd’s six children was Dorothy Chetwynd, an aunt of Thomas Chetwynd who married Dorothy Coleman. And it is this aunt who is said in many accounts to have murdered her husband, Sir Walter Smyth (1501-1526), and to have been burned at the stake for the murder 27 years later on Wolvey Heath on 15 May 1553.

Dorothy Chetwynd was not the first nor was she the second wife of Sir Walter Smyth of Elford, six miles from Comberford in Staffordshire. In 1505, Smyth married his first wife Anne Staunton. They were the parents of one daughter, Margery, who married her step-brother, Richard Huddleston, the younger son of Walter’s second wife, Lady Isabel Neville.

Lady Isabel Neville was a daughter of John Neville, Marquess of Montagu, and a niece of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, the ‘Kingmaker’. She was twice married: her first husband was William Huddleston of Millom, Cumberland, and they were the parents of two sons, Sir John Huddleston and Richard Huddleston.

Isabel then married Sir Walter Smyth of Elford in what was the second marriage for both partners. When Isabel died in 1516, she was buried at Elford, and Walter soon married his third wife, Dorothy Chetwynd. In what may have been a source of gossip in the day, Dorothy was only 16 or 17 when she married Walter Smyth, and he was 50 – although Dugdale says that at 50 he was an aged man, he was certainly more than three times her age and 33 or 34 years older than her.

Walter Smyth first met young Dorothy when he was trying to arrange a marriage for his son and heir, Richard. He approached Thomas Chetwynd of Ingestre, who was willing to endow Dorothy with a dowry of £500. But when old Walter set eyes on young Dorothy, he was captivated by her beauty and became a suitor himself. The odd couple were quickly married, and young Richard had to seek another bride.

Dorothy was regarded as one of the beauties of her day. But Dorothy and Walter did not live happily ever after. It is said that soon after the marriage her affections wandered after younger men, especially William Robinson, a 22-year-old from Drayton Basset, and began plotting to get rid of her husband. She induced her housemaid and a stable groom to help her and Robinson in a scheme to strangle Walter in bed.

On the night of the planned murder in 1525, Robinson failed to show up, but Dorothy went ahead with her plans. She waited until her husband was asleep, and then let the maid and the groom into the room. Dorothy tied a long towel about the sleeping man’s neck, got the groom to lie on him to keep him from struggling, and then she and the maid strangled Walter until he stopped breathing. As he was being strangled, Walter woke and cried out his last words, ‘Help, Doll, help!’

Once he was dead, they carried Walter into another room and sat him upright on a stool before the maid and groom tip-toed out of. Only then did Dorothy raise the alarm, wringing her hands, pulling her hair out, and weeping and wailing. She told the others in the house that she had noticed Walter was not in bed and when she went looking for him she found him dead and sitting up.

Sir Walter Smyth was buried in Saint Peter’s Church, Elford, with his first two wives, Annie Staunton and Lady Isabella Neville. But his third wife, Dorothy Chetwynd, is not named on the elaborate alabaster monument, nor is she buried there.

The effigies in Elford of Sir Walter Smyth and his first two wives, Anne Staunton and Lady Isabella Neville, in Elford … but what happened to his third wife? (Photograph Mike Searle, 2015, CCL licence)

Some years after the supposed murder, the former groom told the story to Walter’s son, Richard Smyth. The groom was taken prisoner to Warwick, where he was joined by the housemaid and William Robinson. They confessed to the deadly deed and were executed in Warwick.

Eventually, it is said, Dorothy was arrested, convicted, sentenced to death and burnt at the stake on Wolvey Heath, five miles from Nuneaton – according to local lore retold as historical fact by the historian William Dugdale. It was 1555, 30 years after her husband’s death or murder and the same year her father Thomas Chetwynd died.

Dugdale says the source for his account of the murder of Sir Walter Smyth was a letter from Sir John Smyth, a grandson of Sir Walter Smyth, and a son of Richard Smyth, Dorothy’s first intended husband. But the contents of the letter amount to little more than a detailed but second-hand account of the groom’s confession to Richard Smyth, and all this was denied by the groom and the maid at their trial in Warwick.

The story later provided the plot for an historical novel by the Revd BW Gibsone, a former Vicar of Wolvey. But Gibsone admitted that Dugdale’s story is mostly apocryphal, and he suggested that Dorothy was burnt – if, at all, she was burnt to death – for heresy rather than murder.

Sir William Dugdale (1605-1686) wrote his History of Warwickshire in 1656, a full century after Dorothy’s supposed trial and execution. There are no primary sources or contemporary records of her trial or for her execution.

If the Smyths had set up a charge of heresy when they were unable to substantiate the accusation of murder, there is no record of that either in the several lists that became sources for Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Foxe makes no mention of the case and there is no contemporary evidence for the charges against her, her trial and conviction, or of her being burned to death at the stake.

Perhaps the story of Dorothy Chetwynd’s crime and conviction was the one final and successful revenge by Richard Smyth wreaked on his young beautiful step-mother who had spurned him for his twice-widowed ageing father.

The descendants of the Chetwynd family continued to live in the Rugeley and Lichfield area for many generations after and derived their wealth chiefly derived from the iron industry. Dorothy’s nephew Thomas Chetwynd and his wife Dorothy, granddaughter of William Comberford, were the parents of William Chetwynd (1628-1691) of Rugeley, MP for Stafford from 1661 and wrongly described as a ‘burgess for Lichfield’.

Dorothy and Thomas Chetwynd were also the great-grandparents of Walter Chetwynd (1680-1732) of Rugeley, MP for Lichfield, who was impoverished when he died before taking up an appointment as the Governor of Barbados. Other descendants of this branch of the Chetwynd family (and descendants of the Comberford family too), the Chetwynd baronets, lived for generations at Brocton Hall, half-way between Rugeley and Stafford, until 1923.

A second branch of the Chetwynd family in the Rugeley area lived at Ingestre Hall

A second branch of the Chetwynd family in the area lived at Ingestre Hall, between Stafford and Rugeley, and they derived their wealth from coalmining and the collieries they owned in Rugeley, Brereton and Cannock. Ingestre Hall also gave them one of their titles.

Their wealth and estates eventually passed by marriage to the Talbot or Chetwynd-Talbot family, who held the title of Earl Talbot and eventually succeeded as Earls of Shrewsbury.

They were the heirs and successors of the Chetwynd family, they provided the site for both Saint Michael’s Church and the Red Lion pub in Brereton, and they gave their name to a pub in Rugeley that has been known variously as the Talbot Arms, the Shrewsbury Arms and more recently ‘The Shrew’. It had to change its name because of the embarrassing associations with a more infamous and actual 19th century murderer, the ‘Rugeley Poisoner’, Dr William Palmer.

But more in the days to come, perhaps, about Walter Chetwynd, who never became Governor of Barbados and who was pursued even after his death by gruesome debt collectors. And more too of Dr Palmer and some of those other murders and supposed murders.

Saint Michael’s Church, Brereton … the site was provided by Earl Talbot almost 200 years ago (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

A return visit to Spode House and Hawkesyard Esate, with memories of philosophers and folk masses in the 1970s

Hawkesyard Hall and Spode House in Armitage, where the Dominicans had a priory until 1988 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

In recent days, I have been visiting a number of churches in the Rugeley area that I first got to know when I was about 19 or 20. They include Saint Michael’s Church in Brereton and the now-closed Brereton Methodist Church; the old and new Saint Augustine’s Church, the ruins of the early mediaeval parish church, now known as the ‘Old Chancel’, and the early 19th century church across the street that replaced it in the 1820s; and Saint Joseph and Saint Etheldreda Catholic Churchin Rugeley, with its many associations with the Wolseley family.

Some of my most cherished memories from those youthful days in the 1970s are of Hawkesyard Hall and Spode House in Armitage, where the Dominicans once had a priory, only ten minutes from Lichfield and five minutes from Brereton and Rugeley, and on the edges of Armitage village. My friends from Rugeley and Brereton often brought me there with them to the Folk Masses on Sundays.

So, when I was on the bus from Brereton to Lichfield last week, I hopped off near Armitage, went for a walk along the canal towpaths, and visited Hawkesyard Hall and Spode House.

Hawkesyard Hall and Spode House were known for the Folk Masses and gatherings of the Philosophical Enquiry Group (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Hawkesyard has been known over the generations by a variety of names, including Hawkesyard Hall, Armitage Park, Spode House and Hawkesyard Priory. The estate dates from the 13th century, and has links to the Rugeley family, the poet and author Nathaniel Lister, Josiah Spode the potter, and Sir Robert Peel – and even some tenuous links in the dim distant past through the Rugeley family with the Comberford family.

The story of the estate dates back to 1270 when the land was used for hunting. Simon de Rugeley commissioned the construction on Hawkesyard Hall in 1337. The first house owned by the Rugeley family was a moated manor closer to the River Trent, about half a mile west of Armitage Church.

Anne Comberford of Comberford, Tamworth and Wednesbury, who was a daughter of William Comberford, and was born in 1609. In 1634, she married Benjamin Rugeley of Dunstall in Tatenhill, a younger brother of Colonel Simon Rugeley, a key leader of the Parliamentarians during the English Civil War.

Benjamin Rugeley was a younger son of Richard Rugeley (1564-1623) of Shenstone and his wife Mary Rugeley, daughter and co-heir of Thomas Rugeley (1539-1623) of Hawkesyard. Benjamin’s father, Richard Rugeley, died at Hawkesyard in 1623 and was buried in Mavesyn Ridware.

Benjamin’s eldest brother, Colonel Simon Rugeley of Shenstone and Tatenhill (1598-1666), was a member of the parliamentary committee at Stafford. He inherited Hawkesyard but sold it to Sir Richard Skeffington of Fisherwick, whose family eventually acquired Comberford Hall. The original Hawkesyard Hall lay in ruins by 1660, and was pulled down in 1665.

The towers and turrets of Hawkesyard Hall and Spode House rising above the canal between Armitage and Rugeley (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The estate was bought in 1759 by Nathaniel Lister (1725-1793), poet and author. Lister renamed the Hawkesyard estate as Armitage Park in 1760, and in 1761 in Lichfield Cathedral he married Martha Fletcher, a Lichfield heiress and daughter of John Fletcher, Senior Proctor of the Diocese of Lichfield. They rebuilt the house in its present location as a Gothic-style mansion in red-brick stuccoed with ashlar and standing on the sandstone hill above the site of the original hall.

Lister also bought a house on Beacon Street in Lichfield in 1780, and in 1791 he acquired the lease on Erasmus Darwin’s house beside the Cathedral Close. When he died in 1793, Armitage Park was inherited by his son, John Fletcher Lister.

Mary Spode, widow of the potter Josiah Spode III, bought the estate in 1839 for her six-year-old son Josiah Spode IV (1823-1893), great-grandson of Josiah Spode and the fourth generation of the pottery dynasty but the first not to work in the family business.

The hall was altered and extended, and the cast-iron orangery was added, as well manicured gardens, statues and other buildings. Cellars and six underground tunnels were cut out of the rock by Richard Benton to allow the estate workers to move quickly around the locality, and two tunnels were said to lead to Lichfield and Armitage.

When the Spode family lived there, the hall was known as Spode House and Josiah Spode was appointed High Sheriff of Staffordshire in 1850. Mary died in 1860, and Josiah’s wife Helen died eight years later. Both are buried at Saint John the Baptist Church, Armitage, where Josiah was the organ player and warden. Josiah Spode of Hawkesyard also gave a new organ to Lichfield Cathedral that was installed in 1860 to complement the restoration of the quire by Sir George Gilbert Scott.

Despite these links with Lichfield Cathedral and Saint John’s Church, Armitage, Josiah Spode became a Roman Catholic in 1885, along with his niece Helen Gulson who lived with him at Hawkesyard. At the beginning of Lent 1886, they attended a parish retreat at Saint Joseph and Saint Etheldreda Catholic Churchin Rugeley given by Father Pius Cavanagh. Father Pius soon became in Gulson’s words ‘our best friend and advisor’. Towards the end of 1888, both Josiah Spode and Helen Gulson were clothed as tertiaries by Father Pius in their private chapel, becoming lay Dominicans.

The elaboratre reredos above the High Altar in the former Domician chapel (Photograph: Dominican Archives)

WhenJosiah Spode died in 1893, he asked that Helen should continue to live at Hawkesyard until she died, after which the estate would pass to the English Dominican Order.

However, Helen decided to move out of the hall in 1894 and into Gulson House on the estate, and work on the new priory and church began immediately. Some accounts say her decision was inspired by an apparition of the Virgin Mary in the grounds of the estate, and that the altar of the new priory church of Saint Thomas Aquinas was placed over the site of her vision.

The Dominicans built a new priory within the grounds in 1898, and the priory church was designed by the architect Edward Goldie (1856-1921). Josiah Spode and Helen Gulson were buried in a small chapel within the priory church, and outside in the gardens simple concrete crosses marked the graves of the Dominican community.

The priory was home to a community of nuns until the early 20th century. The convent then became a priory, and the Dominican monks or friars ran a boarding school for young aspiring Dominicans and a theological college.

The towers and turrets of Hawkesyard Hall and Spode House rising above the canal between Armitage and Rugeley (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

I knew Hawkesyard Priory and Spode House well in my late teens and early 20s, when the Philosophical Enquiry Group was still meeting there with Father Columba Ryan and involved the Limerick-born philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe (1919-2001). At the time, the Folk Masses in the priory chapel were popular with many of my friends from Rugeley, Brereton and Lichfield.

The friars there in those heady days in the early 1970s included Father Conrad Pepler (1908-1993), the founding warden of Spode House, where he ran the first Catholic conference centre in England. We did not know then that it was he who provided a Catholic funeral in Cambridge in 1951 for the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, a mentor to both Elizabeth Anscombe and her husband Peter Geach.

The Dominicans at Spode in the early 1970s also included Father Columba Ryan (1916-2009), philosopher, university chaplain and peace activist, who took part in many CND marches and protests in London. He was also the bursar at the Hawkesyard Priory, and in the 1950s and 1960s he set up the Philosophical Enquiry Group at Spode in 1954.

He was born Patrick Ryan, a son of the Cork-born diplomat Sir Andrew Ryan (1876-1949), the last dragoman in Constantinople (1907-1921). He joined the Dominicans at Woodchester Priory, Gloucestershire, in 1935, took the name Columba, was ordained in 25 July 1941, and completed his DPhil at Oxford in 1946.

He was one of the friars who was on the Peace Pilgrimage to Vézelay in Burgundy, selecting ‘30 strong men’ to carry a heavy wooden cross across France in thanksgiving for the end of World War II. On his return he was instrumental in founding Student Cross, the annual Holy Week pilgrimage to Walsingham.

The drive from Armitage Lane leading up to the former Hawkesyard Priory (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Father Columba was teaching philosophy at Hawkesyard Priory when he set up the Philosophical Enquiry Group in 1954. This annual meeting for Catholic philosophers continued to take place at Spode House for 20 years, until 1974.

Elizabeth Anscombe and Peter Geach were among the first philosophers invited to those gatherings at Spode House. They remained leading figures of the group for the 20 years it lasted. They were Wittgenstein’s literary executors and were buried beside him in Cambridge. Other participants the Philosophical Enquiry Group included Sir Anthony Kenny of Oxford and Father Herbert McCabe (1926-2001), editor of New Blackriars. Father Columba had been the novice master of Herbert McCabe, who is attributed with once saying, ‘If you don’t love, you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you.’

Father Columba remained true to his values and joined the hundreds of thousands of people who marched in London on 15 February 2003 in protest at the invasion of Iraq. He continued preaching until shortly before he died at Saint Dominic’s Priory at Haverstock Hill, London, on 4 August 2009, aged 93. It was then the Feast of Saint Dominic, and it was the church in which he had been baptised as an infant; he had just celebrated 68 years of priesthood. His brother John Ryan (1921-2009), who had created the character of Captain Pugwash for the Eagle in 1950, had died two weeks earlier on 22 July 2009 at 88.

Meanwhile, the priory and conference centre at Spode House had closed and the last Dominicans moved out in 1988. When they left Hawkesyard, the hall had fallen into disrepair and had been boarded up. Still, in June 1998, the choristers of Lichfield Cathedral, directed by Andrew Lumsden made a recording, Begone Dull Care (Lammas Records, LAMM 107D), in Hawkesyard Priory.

The emblem of the Dominicans is recalled in the logo of the Hawkesyard Estate (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Hawkesyard was bought in 1999 by Relaine Estates Ltd which was determined to return the building and the estate. The company returned to the original name of Hawkesyard and set about restoring the building, partly relying on photographs from the collection at Shugborough Hall, the seat of the Earls of Lichfield, halfway between Rugeley and Stafford.

The transformation of the hall and other buildings was completed in 2007. The former priory building has been a nursing home since 1989, and the grounds have been turned into Saint Thomas’s Priory Golf Club. Hawkesyard Estate is now a popular venue for civil weddings, golf, conferences, and for three successive years it was the home of the Wolseley National Car Rally.

After visiting Hawkesyard estate, I lingered for a while by the canal towpath, sipping a glass of wine in the April sunshine at the Ash Tree, before continuing on the bus journey to Lichfield, for lunch at the Hedgehog and Evening Prayer in Lichfield Cathedral.

I remember a lengthy lunch in the Hedgehog in Lichfield a few years ago, when some of us recalled so many of our friends who loved Hawkesyard, the folk masses there and the extended Sunday afternoons that inevitably followed.

We talked that afternoon about the underground tunnels at Hawkesyard, including the tunnels said to lead to Lichfield and Armitage. We never seemed to wander down to the canal, as far as I recall. But was I really the one who was so fearless to lead a group of us through those unexplored tunnels and vaults? And are the tunnels still there?

A glass of wine in mid-April sunshine by the canal at the Ash Tree (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Saint Michael’s Church, Brereton: one of the last churches with work by Sir George Gilbert Scott

Saint Michael’s Church, Brereton, was designed by James Trubshaw in 1837 and redesigned by Sir George Gilbert Scott in 1878 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

In recent days, I have been visiting a number of churches in the Rugeley area that I first got to know when I was about 19 or 20. They include Saint Michael’s Church in Brereton; the old and new Saint Augustine’s Church, the ruins of the early mediaeval parish church, now known as the ‘Old Chancel’, and the early 19th century church across the street that replaced it in the 1820s; Saint Joseph and Saint Etheldreda Church, Rugeley; and Hawkesyard Hall and Spode House in Armitage, where the Dominicans once had a priory.

Brereton in the Cannock Chase district in Staffordshire, is 1½ miles south-east of Rugeley, half way between Lichfield and Stafford, and with a population of about 6,000.

Brereton was known in 1279 known as Breredon, the ‘hill where the briars grow’. It was once part of a wider mining community, with several mines, and in the 19th century the extensive collieries belonged to two local magnates, Earl Talbot and the Marquis of Anglesey. Today, all the mines are closed.

Until the mid-19th century, Brereton and Rugeley formed one parish, with Brereton as a chapelry in the parish of Rugeley. Later, Brereton formed a civil parish in its own right from 1894 until 1934, when the parish was abolished and merged with Rugeley. A new civil parish was formed in 1988 and was renamed Brereton and Ravenhill.

Saint Michael’s Church stands on an elevated site above the Main Road in Brereton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

I first visited Saint Michael’s Church, the Church of England parish church in Brereton in the early 1970s. It is a listed building and stands on an elevated site above the Main Road, surrounded by a 2.5 acre landscaped churchyard. Brereton Methodist Church, built in 1809, was the first church building in Brereton, and Saint Michael’s Church followed in 1837.

Saint Michael’s Church was built on land and using stone given by Charles Chetwynd Chetwynd-Talbot (1777-1849), 2nd Earl Talbot from 1793, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1817-1821, and father of Henry John Chetwynd-Talbot (1803-1868), later 3rd Earl Talbot and 18th Earl of Shrewsbury.

Elizabeth and Harriet Sneyd of Brereton Hall were among the principal contributors to building Saint Michael’s Church. They also built Brereton’s first school, Saint Michael’s School.

Saint Michael’s was designed in the Early English Gothic style by a local Staffordshire architect, the prolific Staffordshire architect James Trubshaw (1777-1853) of Little Haywood, father-in-law of the Lichfield architect Thomas Johnson (1794-1865). Saint Michael’s Church was opened in 1837, and Brereton became a district chapelry in 1843.

As the population of Brereton expanded, major extensions and alterations to the church were carried out later in the 19th century under the Sir George Gilbert Scott (1811-1878), the most prolific Gothic Revival architect of the 19th century. The church enlargement by Scott in 1878 was one of his last works carried out in the year he died.

These alterations were initiated by the Revd Edward Samson (1845-1921) when he was the Vicar of Brereton (1874-1894), often at his own expense. Samson, who had an artificial leg, came from a family of wealthy London barristers. He had been the curate of Rugeley (1870-1873) before becoming the Vicar of Brereton. Samson retired due to ill health and moved to Armitage Lodge, and became a church warden of Saint John’s, Armitage. When his health recovered, Sansom returned to ministry, and in 1903 he was appointed Rector of Armitage and Vicar of Pipe Ridware.

The west end of Saint Michael’s Church, seen from the churchyard (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Saint Michael’s Church is built in grey sandstone with tile roofs, and consists of a nave with a west porch, north and south transepts towards the west end, aisles to the east of them, a chancel with a south-west vestry and a north-west steeple. The steeple has a tower that becomes octagonal towards the top and it is surmounted by a spire. The windows are lancets.

Scott extended the transepts eastwards, giving the church, in effect, north and south aisles each of three bays. He also formed the chancel by raising the floor level at the east end of the former nave and surrounding it with low stone screens. The sedilia and the treatment of the chancel window internally are part of this scheme.

The font, which has an arcaded bowl on a base of coloured marble on a marble stem with detached corner shafts, is in memory of George Augustus Selwyn (1809-1878), Bishop of Lichfield (1868-1878).

The painted wooden reredos depicting the crucifixion and angels is by Burlison & Grylls and dates from 1883. The stained glass in the church is by Ward & Hughes and Burlison & Grylls.

The upper part of the tower and spire of Saint Michael’s was remodelled in 1887 by Scott’s son, John Oldrid Scott (1841-1913), with the octagonal tower raised to accommodate a clock and four extra bells. The clock was added to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887.

The carved oak porch outside the west door was added in 1891 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The nave west doorway is dated 1837 in the tympanum, and the south-west vestry is dated 1894.

The richly detailed Gothic oak pulpit was given in 1895 by the Revd Edward Samson. The north and south walls of the chancel have sgraffito work from 1897 by Heywood Sumner, and originally continued across the east wall.

The east end of the north aisle was rearranged as the Lady Chapel in 1927-1928.

The churchyard was extended in 1876 and 1894 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The churchyard was extended in 1876 and 1894, and the roadside lychgate was added to 1884. The stone and brick walls on Main Road and the lychgate were moved back from their original positions during road widening in 1971. The church hall was built by Wood, Goldstraw & Yorath in 1977, and it is linked to the vestry by covered walkway.

Saint Michael’s churchyard remains the one significant area of landscaped green open space in Brereton.

Across the road from the church, the Revd Edward Samson built and endowed four almshouses the Edward Samson Cottage Homes, in 1902. They form a single-storey range, each house having a projecting gabled bay window.

The separate church parishes of Rugeley and Brereton officially became the Parish of Brereton and Rugeley on 1 June 2006, and the union was marked by a day of celebrations on 19 November 2006.

• The Revd Cath Leighton is the Team Rector of the Benefice of Brereton and Rugeley and Armitage with Handsacre, with six churches. Sunday services are held in Saint Michael’s Church, Brereton, at 9:45 am on the second, fourth and fifth Sundays. On the first Sunday of the month, a benefice service is held in one of the churches around the benefice.

The Revd Edward Samson built and endowed the Edward Samson Cottage Homes across the road from Saint Michael’s Church in 1902 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Daily prayer in Easter 2026: 16, Monday 20 April 2026

‘The … crowd … saw that Jesus had not got into the boat … but that his disciples had gone away alone’ (John 6: 22) … a canal boat on the Trent and Mersey Canal between Rugeley and Armitage in Staffordshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

Easter is a 50-day season that continues until the Day of Pentecost, and this week began with the Third Sunday of Easter (Easter III, 19 April 2026).

I have an early start today, but before the day begins I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, reading today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

‘The … crowd that had stayed … saw that Jesus had not got into the boat … but that his disciples had gone away alone’ (John 6: 22) … a lone boat against the harbour walls in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 6: 22-29 (NRSVA):

22 The next day the crowd that had stayed on the other side of the lake saw that there had been only one boat there. They also saw that Jesus had not got into the boat with his disciples, but that his disciples had gone away alone. 23 Then some boats from Tiberias came near the place where they had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. 24 So when the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus.

25 When they found him on the other side of the lake, they said to him, ‘Rabbi, when did you come here?’ 26 Jesus answered them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. 27 Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.’ 28 Then they said to him, ‘What must we do to perform the works of God?’ 29 Jesus answered them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.’

‘Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me … because you ate your fill of the loaves’ (John 6: 26) … bread in a shop window in Melcombe Street, London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Today’s Reflections:

We have read in recent days about Jesus feeding of the 5,000 and walking on the water, and we are now introduced to reading the long Bread of Life discourse (verses 22-59), spoken in the synagogue in Capernaum (John 6: 59).

This ‘Bread’ is compared the manna with which God fed his people during their long wanderings in the desert in the wilderness. Today’s reading is an introduction, and the discourse itself begins tomorrow (20 April 2026). The last part of the discourse is about the mixed reaction of Jesus’ disciples and about Peter’s profession.

The day following the feeding of the 5,000, the people go in search of Jesus. There had been only one boat tied up at the shore, and the disciples had taken it to cross the lake. However, Jesus had not accompanied them, he had stayed behind. The people realise he did not cross the lake with his disciples, but when they go to the site of the feeding, they find he is not there either.

Eventually they find Jesus and his disciples near Capernaum, Jesus’ principal base in Galilee. They ask him: ‘Rabbi, when did you come here?’ (verse 25). In typically Johannine fashion, the question is loaded with deeper meanings, of which those asking it are quite unaware. Jesus’ origin (where he comes from) is a constant source of misunderstanding both on the part of the crowds and of the religious leadership of the day.

Jesus begins by telling the crowds that they are coming in search of him not because of the ‘signs’ that he is doing, but because of the bread that they had been given to eat. They have missed the point of what Jesus is doing. They have seen the things that Jesus has been doing, but have missed the ‘sign’, the deeper meaning behind them.

There are two kinds of food: food for the body, and food for the inner person, the spirit or the soul. The food the people are looking for is not the food that counts. The real food brings a life that never ends, and that is the food that Jesus is offering. It parallels the ‘spring of water gushing up to eternal life’ that Jesus promised the Samaritan woman (John 4: 14).

The source of this ‘bread’ is the Son on whom the Father has set his seal. This ‘seal’ was given at his baptism. It is the Spirit of the Father, who is the power of God working in and through Jesus.

The people ask him: ‘What must we do to perform the works of God?’ (verse 28). Jesus tells them: ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent’ (verse 29).

‘Work’ in this context refers to the fulfilment of the requirements of the religious law of the day. But Jesus substitutes this with faith in himself as the delegate of the Father. He challenges us not just to ‘believe’, but to ‘believe in’. This is not merely a question of accepting certain statements about Jesus and who he really is. ‘Believing in’ involves a total and unconditional self-commitment to Christ, to the Gospel and the vision of life that Jesus proposes, and making it part of myself. This is where the real bread is to be found.

Jesus is not just speaking of the Eucharistic bread, but the deep-down nourishment of which the Eucharist is the sign and sacrament – nourishment that also comes from the Word of God in Scripture and the experience of the whole Christian community.

As we read this full chapter, we should not limit the truth of Jesus as the Bread or Food of our life simply to the Eucharist, which is the sacramental sign of something much larger – all that we receive through Christ and the whole Christian way of life.

Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!

‘They … got into the boats and went … looking for Jesus’ (John 6: 24) … boats in the harbour in Iraklion (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Monday 20 April 2026):

‘Turning Waste into Wonder’ provides the theme this week (19-25 April 2026) in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), pp 48-49. This theme was introduced yesterday with a Programme Update from Linet Musasa, team member of the Partners in the Gospel Comprehensive Climate Change initiative of the Anglican Council of Zimbabwe.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Monday 20 April 2026) invites us to pray:

Heavenly Father, we give thanks for the ‘Waste Smart, We Care’ campaign. Bless churches and communities as they learn about climate issues, adopt sustainable practices, and care for your creation.

The Collect:

Almighty Father,
who in your great mercy gladdened the disciples
with the sight of the risen Lord:
give us such knowledge of his presence with us,
that we may be strengthened and sustained by his risen life
and serve you continually in righteousness and truth;
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:

Living God,
your Son made himself known to his disciples
in the breaking of bread:
open the eyes of our faith,
that we may see him in all his redeeming work;
who is alive and reigns, now and for ever.

Additional Collect:

Risen Christ,
you filled your disciples with boldness and fresh hope:
strengthen us to proclaim your risen life
and fill us with your peace,
to the glory of God the Father.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

‘Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life’ (John 6: 27) … food on the table at restaurants in Crete (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

Daily prayer in Easter 2026: 14, Saturday 18 April 2026

‘His disciples went down to the lake, got into a boat, and started across the lake’ (John 6: 16-17) … boats on the Trent and Mersey Canal in Rugeley this week (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

Our Easter celebrations continue in the Church Calendar, and tomorrow is the Third Sunday of Easter (Easter III). Easter is a 50-day season that continues until the Day of Pentecost.

As a prelude to the new Cricket season, Stony Stratford Cricket Club is blowing off the cobwebs with an interclub training game in Ostler’s Lane today. This an opportunity for players to shake off the winter rust and for everyone else to catch up as the club marks the start of the season, which begins officially next Saturday (25 April). But, before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, reading today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

‘When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the lake’ (John 6: 19) … a lone rower at the Sidney Sussex Boat Club on the Backs in Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 6: 16-21 (NRSVA):

16 When evening came, his disciples went down to the lake, 17 got into a boat, and started across the lake to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. 18 The lake became rough because a strong wind was blowing. 19 When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the lake and coming near the boat, and they were terrified. 20 But he said to them, ‘It is I; do not be afraid.’ 21 Then they wanted to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the land towards which they were going.

‘His disciples went down to the lake, got into a boat, and started across the lake’ (John 6: 16-17) … an old fishing boat on the Sarawak River in Kuching (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Today’s Reflections:

This morning’s Gospel reading at the Eucharist follows immediately after the account of the feeding of the 5,000 (John 6: 1-15), which we read about yesterday.

These are two of the seven signs in Saint John’s Gospel:

• Turning water into wine in Cana (John 2: 1-11)
• Healing with a word (John 4: 46-51)
• Healing a crippled man at Bethesda (John 5: 1-9)
• The feeding of 5,000 (John 6: 1-14)
• Walking on water (John 6: 16-21)
• The healing of the man born blind (John 9: 1-7)
• The Raising of Lazarus from the dead (John 11: 1-46).

The Dominican author and theologian, Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe, points out that that in the Bible, seven is the number of perfection. We know of the six days of creation and how God rested on the seventh. In Saint John’s Gospel, we have seven signs and seven ‘I AM’ sayings disclosing for us who Christ truly is.

The feeding with the bread and fish is also a prelude to, looks forward to, another meal by the shores of Lake Tiberias. We read tomorrow about that breakfast with the disciples when Jesus feeds them with bread and fish (John 21: 1-19).

Immediately after he hears and responds to the cry of the poor, Christ hears the cry of creation. He calms the waves and the waters and brings his light into the darkest fears of the disciples.

‘It is I; do not be afraid.’

We can be transfixed by fear or paralysed into inaction.’ But poverty, the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, and the assault on the earth challenge us to hear the groaning of creation, and we need to be reminded that there can be no salvation for humanity that does not include creation.

Let the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup take us to the heart of creation.

Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!

An icon of the Church as a boat, including Christ, the Apostles and the Church Fathers (Icon: Deacon Matthew Garrett, www.holy-icons.com)

Today’s Prayers (Saturday 18 April 2026):

‘Stocked with Hope’ has been 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), pp 46-47. This theme was introduced last Sunday with a Programme Update by Mayank Thomas, Programme Manager, the Synodical Board of Social Services, Church of North India.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Saturday 18 April 2026) invites us to pray:

Heavenly Father, we lift up the wider Church of North India. May it flourish as a beacon of hope, justice, and equality, reaching people across every village and town it serves with the love of Christ.

The Collect:

Almighty Father,
you have given your only Son to die for our sins
and to rise again for our justification:
grant us so to put away the leaven of malice and wickedness
that we may always serve you
in pureness of living and truth;
through the merits of your Son Jesus Christ 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 God our Father,
through our Saviour Jesus Christ
you have assured your children of eternal life
and in baptism have made us one with him:
deliver us from the death of sin
and raise us to new life in your love, in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit,
by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Additional Collect:

Risen Christ,
for whom no door is locked, no entrance barred:
open the doors of our hearts,
that we may seek the good of others
and walk the joyful road of sacrifice and peace,
to the praise of God the Father.

Collect on the Eve of Easter III:

Almighty Father,
who in your great mercy gladdened the disciples
with the sight of the risen Lord:
give us such knowledge of his presence with us,
that we may be strengthened and sustained by his risen life
and serve you continually in righteousness and truth;
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.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow


Canal boats on the Trent and Mersey Canal by the Hawkesyard Estate in Armitage, Staffordshire, this week (Patrick Comerford, 2026)

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

Enjoying blackberries along Cross-in-Hand Lane

Blackberries in full fruit on the side of Cross-in-Hand Lane, a few miles north of Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

Patrick Comerford

While London and many other parts of England were devastated by riots, looting and violence last week, the nearest I came to a Blackberry during the days I spent in Lichfield was the blackberries in the shrubs and the growths along the sides of the roads in the surrounding countryside.

I spent three days in Lichfield, staying at the Hedgehog, a country inn on Stafford Road, on the northern edge of the cathedral city. The 10-bedroom Hedgehog is a country house pub and restaurant with all the attraction of a bijou hotel, and is part of “Innkeeper’s Lodge” chain. It has local charm and character that attracts business and leisure travellers alike, local people and ramblers, as well as diners and drinkers from Lichfield and the surrounding villages.

The Hedgehog was built as Lyncroft House in 1797 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

Originally known as Lyncroft House and dating from 1797, the Hedgehog is within sight of Lichfield Cathedral. Each day we strolled down Stafford Road and Beacon Street to the cathedral, to attend Evening Prayer, to see the exhibition of the “Staffordshire Hoard,” and to take part in the Cathedral Eucharist.

There was time too to pray in the chapel at Saint John’s Hospital on the corner of Saint John Street and Birmingham Road, to enjoy the gardens at the back of Darwin House, and to stroll through Vicar’s Close, the Cathedral Close, along Stowe Pool and along the new walk on the south side of Minster Pool.

On one enjoyable afternoon, we had lunch in the centre of Lichfield with a friend from my late teens and early 20s that I haven’t been in touch with for over 35 years. There were memories to share, stories to catch up on, friends to recall, once-favoured haunts in Lichfield and Rugeley to revisit in our minds’ eyes.

The Dominican Priory was only ten minutes from Lichfield and five minutes from Brereton and Rugeley, and stood on the edges of Armitage village. Spode House dated from the 13th century, and Hawkesyard Estate is steeped in Staffordshire history with links to the Rugeley family, the poet and author Nathaniel Lister, Josiah Spode the potter, and Sir Robert Peel.

After Josiah Spode’s niece, Helen Gulson, said she had a vision of the Virgin Mary in the gardens in 1893, a church was built at Hawkesyard and the altar was placed on the spot where she said the apparition took place. Helen Gulson left the hall, church and grounds in 1894 to the Dominican Order, who built a priory in the grounds. When the Dominicans left in 1988 the Hall fell into a state of disrepair and was boarded up.

The former priory building has been a nursing home since 1989, and the grounds have been turned into a golf club. Hawkesyard Estate is now a popular venue for civil weddings, golf, conferences, and the Wolseley National Car Rally, and is home to both Hawkesyard Hall and Saint Thomas’s Priory Golf Club, while some of the former priory buildings are now Hawksyard Priory Nursing Home.

On Friday afternoon, we recalled so many of our friends who loved going to Hawkesyard for the folk masses and the extended Sunday afternoons that inevitably followed. There were six underground tunnels at Hawkesyard, built to allow the estate workers to move quickly around the area, and two tunnels were said to lead to Lichfield and Armitage. But was I really the one who was so fearless to lead a group of us through those unexplored tunnels and vaults? And are the tunnels still there?

The Hedgehog has the charm of a country house and the comforts of a bijou hotel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

Back at the Hedgehog, a former country house, we sat on the terrace at the front for lunch on the other days, and we dined al fresco there most evenings. On the evening we ate in Lichfield, we returned to the Hedgehog, and beneath the full moon we sipped wine or lingered slowly over a pitcher of Pimm’s, one of the charming pleasures of English summers.

The terrace looks out over a former ha-ha that has been fitted with wooden steps out over undulating gardens and a rolling field that has been sensitively adapted as a beer garden and a play area. Below, in a small wooded area, in among trees, a few chairs offer a place of tranquillity and opportunities for solitude and contemplation.

The golden and green fields in the countryside beside the Hedgehog (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

An open, creaking rusty gate invited us to stroll on further into the surrounding fields of golden yellows and rich greens. We took a turn into Cross-in-Hand Lane, and took the gentle rise of the leafy lane that leads up to Abnall’s Farmhouse, the Swallows and Ashmore Brooke Dairy Farm.

Strolling under the overhanging trees on Cross-in-Hand Lane (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

Some of the farmhouses and cottages here date from the 1840s or earlier. Fruit is dropping from the over-hanging trees, there are horses in the fields, gentle sounds from streams and brooks, and friendly cyclists out in small groups for a Saturday spin.

This narrow, rural road leads on the tiny villages of Farewell and Chorley, and on out into Cannock Chase. There is more to explore during another stay at the Hedgehog.