Daily prayer in Easter 2026: 19, Thursday 23 April 2026, Saint George

Saint George’s flag flying from the church tower in Stony Stratford … how can the Church of England find a healthy way to challenge the misuse and hijacking of this sacred symbol? (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). Today (23 April) is the feast of Saint George (Martyr, Patron of England, ca 304). Saint George’s Day continued is being celebrated in many ways today, including Saint George’s flag flying from the tower of Saint Mary and Saint Giles in Stony Stratford throughout the day, a Saint George’s Day Eucharist in All Saints’ Church, Calverton, this morning, celebrations in Saint George’s Church, Wolverton, at 7 pm, and the traditional Saint George’s Court at Noon in the Guildhall in Lichfield, now held in a light-hearted manner but which still appoints the ancient officers of the Manor.

Meanwhile, 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.

Saint George depicted in an icon by Alexandra Kaouki in Rethymnon (Photograph © Alexandra Kaokui)

John 15: 18-21 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 18 ‘If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you. 19 If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world – therefore the world hates you. 20 Remember the word that I said to you, “Servants are not greater than their master.” If they persecuted me, they will persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also. 21 But they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me.’

An icon of Saint George by Hanna-Leena Ward in her recent exhibition in Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Today’s Reflection:

Saint George may be the patron saint of England, but it seems that every town in Greece has a church dedicated to Saint George, and Rethymnon has at least two.

The Greek name Georgios means ‘farmer’ or ‘worker of the land’. Saint George was the son of a rich and aristocratic family in Cappadocia in Asia Minor. He became an officer in the Roman army at the end of the third century and lived during the reign of the Emperor Diocletian in the early fourth century. After his father Gerondios died, his mother Polychronia, who was from Lydda in Syria Palaestina, returned with George to her hometown, present-day Lod between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv in Israel.

The story of Saint George rescuing the princess from the dragon is set in the city of Silene in Libya. In later Greek tellings of the story of Saint George, the dragon came to symbolise Turkey and the princess he rescues symbolised a Greece that was struggling for liberation.

Saint George is revered by many Muslims too, especially in the Balkan region, Turkey and parts of Lebanon and Syria. According to some Muslim traditions, Saint George is associated or confused with a Muslim saint who died multiple times. Turks have known him as Hidir Elez, and there are traditions that Hidir or Hizir was a prophet contemporary with Moses.

Over the past four decades, I have visited many churches in Greece dedicated to Saint George, including two contrasting churches in Rethymnon: a tiny, ancient church in a hidden corner off Patriárchou Grigroíou Street, and a large modern church on Egeou Street in the eastern suburbs, close to the landmark tower of the former Bio olive oil factory and facing onto an open, expansive square.

Among the other churches in the Rethymnon area named in honour of Saint George, the one I am most familiar with is the modern church dedicated to the Ascension and Saint George.

Saint George is also the patron saint of Portugal, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Ukraine, Malta, Ethiopia, as well as Catalonia, Aragon and Moscow. The Council of Oxford in 1222 declared Saint George’s Day a public holiday in England, but his feast day only became truly popular after the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, and the Saint George cross was not used to represent England until the reign of Henry VIII.

In recent months, many far-right extremists in England hijacked the flag of Saint George in a particularly nasty expression of nationalism, hatred and racism. In their feigned zeal, they fail to realise how inappropriate is their use of Saint George’s flag.

Saint George was born a Greek-speaker, spent his early childhood in what we now call Turkey and his later childhood in Israel or Palestine, spent much of his military career in Egypt, the story most associated with him is set in Libya, and he was executed and buried in the Middle East.

Should Saint George come to England today, many of those who wave Saint George flags as they play around with dangerous slogans such as ‘Stop the Boats,’ I imagine, would want to send George and the princess back, and probably keep the Dragon in England.

Saint George flags popped up everywhere last summer, on lampposts, street crossings and roundabouts and in windows, and the flag became part of the far-right protests outside asylum hotels. Against this backdrop, many church leaders are wondering whether they should fly the flag for Saint George’s Day.

Saint George’s Day should be used to consider how to foster a healthy kind of patriotism, the Bishop of Leicester, Martyn Snow, wrote in the Church Times last week (17 April 2026). He suggested the day and the flag should be used as an opportunity to reflect on how the Church of England can foster a healthy kind of patriotism. Healthy patriotism, he argues, has three marks: honesty, particularity without exclusion, and an orientation towards the common good.

A patriotism that is healthy, he writes, is willing to look at wrongdoing carried out in the nation’s name as well as its genuine achievements, it refuses to draw hard lines around who truly belongs, and it is oriented towards the common good and the responsibilities the nation has to the wider world, serving the well-being of creation and people around the world who are suffering.

He identifies what he describes as ‘two characteristic pathologies of nationalism’: nostalgia or the mythologising of a golden past that never quite existed, which underwrites a politics of grievance and loss; and a rootless progressivism that severs a people from its history and leaves it without the resources of memory.

He agrees that if a church raises the flag without explanation, some people will read it as a statement that they find troubling. ‘Church leaders, in this political climate, will need to speak about this directly to both their congregation and the wider community, explaining that love of place is a gift to be received with gratitude and held with humility; that it goes alongside, not against, the welcome of the stranger; and that the cross at the centre of the flag speaks not of national superiority, but of sacrifice, suffering, and the redemption of all things.’

‘If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you … If they persecuted me, they will persecute you’ (see John 15: 18, 20).

Χριστὸς ἀνέστη!
Christ is Risen!

Saint George depicted on the sign outside the George and Dragon on Beacon Street in Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Thursday 23 April 2026, Saint George):

‘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 on Sunday 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 (Thursday 23 April 2026, Saint George) invites us to pray:

Lord, we pray for the Anglican Church in Zimbabwe in its wider work combatting HIV stigma. Bless the dioceses and programmes that restore dignity, offer support, and educate communities with compassion.

The Collect:

God of hosts,
who so kindled the flame of love
in the heart of your servant George
that he bore witness to the risen Lord
by his life and by his death:
give us the same faith and power of love
that we who rejoice in his triumphs
may come to share with him the fullness of the resurrection;
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.

Post Communion Prayer:

God our redeemer,
whose Church was strengthened
by the blood of your martyr George:
so bind us, in life and death, to Christ’s sacrifice
that our lives, broken and offered with his,
may carry his death and proclaim his resurrection in the world;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

Saint George depicted on the sign outside the George and Dragon in Eaton Socon in Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire (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

Reminders of legends, highwaymen and long journeys along the Great North Road

The Great North Road is merely a memory … but there are reminders of it along the old A1 route (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

There is a Great Northern Road in Cambridge, close to Station Square and Station Road, and I had always thought it was part of the Great North Road that was once the main highway between England and Scotland from mediaeval times until the 20th century.

The Great North Road was link a spine that linked most of England, and it later became a coaching route used by stagecoaches and mail coaches travelling from London to York and Edinburgh. Local lore and embellished myths made it the main stomping ground of the legendary highwayman Dick Turpin.

But the Great North Road is merely a memory – albeit a cherished memory – for people today, since it was replaced by the modern A1, upgraded, realigned and brought up to motorway standards in recent decades, bypassing towns and villages that once thrived on the trade and traffic.

Still, I was reminded in Eaton Socon in Cambridgeshire last week, the route of the Great North Road can traced in many places, and some of the coaching inns and staging posts have survived here and there, reminders of the days when horses were changed and travellers stayed overnight.

Like many of the ancient Roman roads and routes that cross England – such as Watling Street (A5) from south-east to north-west, and Ryknild Street from south-west to north-east – there is evidence for the route of the Great North Road in Roman accounts and in the archaeological record of towns, forts, bridges and the road itself.

Ermine Street and Dere Street are the names later given to the Roman roads from London to York, and from York to Hadrian’s Wall near Corbridge and on towards Scotland.

But the river crossings established by the Romans were not maintained in many placed and many of the routes were neglected By the Middle Ages, long distance routes had become difficult to follow. Many monarchs, religious leaders and others travelling from London and the south to York and the north found an alternative to the Great North Road, opting for a more westerly route along Watling Street through Stony Stratford and then on through Northampton and Leicester.

In time, wooden bridges were built along the main roads, and then replaced by stone bridges, by the 14th century the standard route to York had reverted towards the Roman line of Ermine Street in the south, and via Grantham, Newark and Doncaster through Lincolnshire and Yorkshire.

The road was mapped described in detail by John Ogilby in 1675. A century later, the classic coaching route along the Great North Road came into its own with the stagecoaches and post coaches in the 18th century. The turnpikes and their planned improvement to the roads opened up the route out of London though Hatfield, Stevenage and Baldock, displacing the earlier ‘Old North Road’ via Royston.

The traditional starting point for the Great North Road was Smithfield Market on the edge of the City of London. The Great North Road followed St John Street to the junction at the Angel Inn where the local road name changes from St John Street to Islington High Street.

Dick Turpin’s flight from London to York on Black Bess in less than 15 hours is the best-known legend associated with the Great North Road. Various inns along the route claim he ate there or stopped there to rest his horse. The legendary ride is now questioned by historians, but became popular through Harrison Ainsworth’s romantic novel Rookwood (1834).

55 miles to London … a fading milestone on the Great North Road (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Of course, the Great North Road was never the only route from London to the north. Many coaches continued to run along the Old North Road.

The Great North Road joined the Old North Road at Alconbury, an older route that followed the Roman Ermine Street. There a milestone records mileages to London along both routes: 65 by the Old North Road and 68 by the Great North Road.

In Yorkshire, the route was through Selby, York and Northallerton. Further north, the route to Edinburgh from Newcastle was by the coastal route through Berwick.

In Sir Walter Scott’s The Heart of Midlothian, Jeanie Deans travels through several places on the Great North Road on her way to London. Charles Dickens also features the road in The Pickwick Papers.

When the General Post Office at St Martin’s-le-Grand in Aldersgate ward was built in 1829, coaches started using an alternative route, beginning at the Post Office and following Aldersgate Street and Goswell Road before joining the old route close to the Angel. In the Golden Age of Coaching, between 1815 and 1835, coaches could travel from London to York in 20 hours, and from London to Edinburgh in 45½ hours.

But just as the stagecoach routes were at their most successful in the 1830s, the arrival of the railways undermined their relevance and viability. The last coach from London to Newcastle left in 1842 and the last from Newcastle to Edinburgh in July 1847. By the second half of the 19th century, the Great North Road had become something to look back on with nostalgia.

The arrival of cars brough the roads back to life in the late 19th and early 20th century, and the great roads of the past were rediscovered. When Britain decided to follow France with a national road numbering system in 1921, the Great North Road became the A1. But in the century since, repeated improvements and realignments have seen the A1 by-pass virtually all the cities, towns and villages along the route.

The Great North Road once passed by the village green in Eaton Socon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Last week, when I was in Eaton Socon on the edges of St Neots in Cambridgeshire, I realised it was once a major stop on the journey from London to the North. Eaton Socon is aligned on the north-south axis, formed by the original Great North Road, where it is now designated the B1428.

Some stage coaches in the late 18th and early 19th century diverted through St Neots, but the majority continued on the Great North Road through Eaton Socon, were inns provided refreshments and overnight accommodation for travellers, and feed and rest facilities for horses.

The Great North Road is named by JB Priestley in The Good Companions, by Dorothy L Sayers in her Lord Peter Wimsey short story ‘The Fantastic Horror of the Cat in the Bag’, by Nevil Shute in Ruined City, by HG Wells in The War of the Worlds, and by George Orwell in his essay ‘England Your England’.

But, slowly – and, for many, sadly – the Great North Road of folklore is a distant memory from the past, has faded away or even has died. Many of the inns, taverns, cafés and truck stops that gave it character to the Great North Road and then the A1 are now gone.

The Great North Road of folklore is a distant memory from the past (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Eaton Socon and Eaton Ford, former Bedford villages now part of Cambridgeshire

Eaton Socon and Eaton Ford … two villages on the fringes of St Neots … once in Bedfordshire, they are now part of Cambridgeshire (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

As a child and teenager in the 1960s, I thought Eaton Square, near my grandmother’s house in Terenure, and Eaton Square in London, were both misspelled – we even joked about the misspelling being a proper ‘Eaton Mess.’

Eaton was also the name of a shop in Terenure, and recently became the clever name of a restaurant in the heart of the south Dublin suburban village.

Of course, both Eaton Squares take their names from Eaton Hall, the country house of the Duke of Westminster near Chester. But last week, after visiting St Neots in Cambridgeshire, I found myself in the twin villages of Eaton Ford and Eaton Socon, once rural villages in Bedfordshire, but now neighbouring suburban, residential areas of St Neots, close to the banks of the River Great Ouse and Riverside Park.

Both Eaton Socon and Eaton Ford were once part of Bedfordshire. But they were incorporated into St Neots in 1965 and were transferred to Huntingdonshire. Huntingdonshire, in turn, was abolished as a county in 1974, and since then Eaton Socon and Eaton Ford been part of Cambridgeshire.

Saint Mary’s Church in Eaton Socon was built in the 14th century and was rebuilt in 1930-1932 after a devastating fire in 1930 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Eaton Socon has a conservation area and the listed buildings include some thatched cottages.

Small settlements grew up on the west side of the River Great Ouse in Anglo-Saxon times. A small village near the water’s edge was called Ea-tun, meaning waterside-village, while a smaller settlement to the northwas known as Forda, later simply Ford.

In time, Ea-tun became Eaton, and as part of a soke or local administrative unit, it became Eaton Socon, while the village at the important ford to the north became Eaton Ford.

A thatched cottage in the conservation area in Eaton Socon (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The monastic foundation at Eynesbury, with relics of Saint Neot attracted pilgrims and visitors, making the ford at Eaton an important river crossing, and slowly the name Eaton Ford came to be used.

The first bridge across the River Great Ouse at St Neots was probably built in the 11th or 12th century to bring traders and pilgrims into the market place established by the monks of St Neots Priory. The old bridge had 72 arches, was 704 ft long and 7 ft 6 in wide. A new town bridge with masonry piers was built in 1588.

The river formed the boundary between Bedfordshire and Huntingdonshire, and both counties contributed to the costs and labour.

The town bridge was replaced again, probably in 1617. The River Ouse (Bedfordshire) Navigation Act in 1670 enabled improvements to the River Ouse so that the river was navigable as far as Bedford.

The bridge was widened in the 19th century and the old stone bridge survived well into the 20th century, until the present bridge was built in 1964.

The east end of Saint Mary’s Church in Eaton Socon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Ulmar was the local landholder at Eaton at the time of the Norman Conquest. The manor of Eaton was allocated at first to Lisois de Moutiers, but by the time of the Domesday Book in 1086 it had been transferred to Eudo Dapifer, a steward in the royal household, who held Eaton Socon ‘with the Manors of Wyboston and Sudbury’.

William of Colmworth and a group of monks not affiliated to any particular order were given a site at Bushmead by Hugh de Beauchamp ca 1195. This became an Augustinian priory after 1215, but it never rivalled the prestige of St Neot’s Priory.

Hugh de Beauchamp built a castle in Eaton Socon ca 1140. The castle may have been demolished when Henry II succeeded in 1154, and the earth mound is known today as the Hillings.

In time, the area became known as Soka de Eton by 1247. It was known as Eton cum Soca in 1645, and it had become Eaton Socon in the 19th century.

Eaton Socon, often known as ‘Eaton Town’ or ‘Eaton’, was the main settlement in the Parish of Eaton Socon. The parish was once the largest in Bedfordshire and included many hamlets such as Wyboston, Duloe, Staploe, Bushmead, Basmead, Honeydon, Bergwary, Tythe, Goodwick, Eaton Ford, Cross Hall, Cross Hall Ford and other vanished hamlets.

The Waggon and Horses in Eaton Socon … Eaton Socon was a major stop for stagecoaches on the journey from London to the North in the 18th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

In the days of stagecoach travel, Eaton Socon became a major stop on the journey from London to the North in the 18th century, with inns providing refreshments and overnight accommodation for travellers, and feed and rest facilities for horses.

The inns included the White Horse pub, dating from the 13th century, the Waggon and Horses and the Cock Inn.

By 1754, coaches were travelling from London as far as Edinburgh. At the height of stagecoach activity, 20 coaches were passing through Eaton Socon daily, collecting mail and passengers and changing horses.

In Charles Dickens’s novel Nicolas Nickleby, Squeers and some boys are making their way from London to Yorkshire by stagecoach, and stop at Eton Slocomb, evidently a pseudonym for Eaton Socon. The reference is noted on a blue plaque on the White Horse Public House in Eaton Socon.

The south side of Saint Mary’s Church in Eaton Socon … rebuilt after a devastating fire in 1930 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The parish church of Saint Mary the Virgin stands on the green in the centre of Eaton Socon. Saint Mary’s was built in the 14th century and enlarged and completed in the 15th century. It was once famed for its poppy headed pew ends.

Saint Mary’s Church was substantially destroyed by a fire on 8 February 1930. Most of the timber and the six bells were destroyed, and the north wall collapsed the following afternoon. The tower was restored, the church was rebuilt, and a new altar was made from a slab of Derbyshire stone, weighing 600 kg.

The reconstruction was designed by the architect Albert Richardson, using local craftsmen. The chancel suffered least and its delicate perpendicular windows were repaired. The rebuilding included a rood screen, choir benches, parclose screens, roofing, and the organ case, all in Suffolk oak.

The stone carving includes many symbolical corbel groups and portraits. Among the faces are those of the Bishop of St Albans, the Archdeacon of Bedford, the Vicar of Eaton Socon, the churchwardens, the architect, the clerk of the works, and the builders’ foreman. After rebuilding, the church was rededicated in 1932.

Manor Cottage is a surviving part of the Manor House … the Cock Inn was renamed the Manor House but was demolished in the 1960s (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The railways brought an end to the stagecoach trade. The Cock Inn stood to the north of Eaton Socon Green, between the church and the corner of Peppercorn Lane. It was a large, elegant building of brick with a clay-tiled roof, and double bay windows, and was a large well-known coaching inn on the Great North Road.

A large cookery book was produced by the proprietors in 1830, and it is said Princess Victoria, later Queen Victoria, visited the Cock Inn in the 1830s.

The Cock Inn was later renamed the Manor House. Most of it was demolished in the 1960s and redeveloped in the 1960s as Manor House Close, although Manor Cottage, once part of the house, remains on the corner of Peppercorn Lane, leading to the local cricket club.

The former Eaton Socon Academy on Peppercorn Lane(Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

A large house on Peppercorn Lane was the Eaton Socon Academy in the 19th century. Later it was a private house and then a glove factory, then offices and a music centre. It has since been converted into private housing.

Eaton Socon, on the west side of St Neots, and between the River Great Ouse and the A1, has a population of over 9,000. The Little End Industrial Estate and the Quora Industrial Estate in Eaton Socon have a range of light industrial units.

Ford House is said to be the oldest building in Eaton Ford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Eaton Ford was once a small hamlet and an extension of Eaton Socon. By the 1500s, it had several timber-framed houses, including some built with stone from Saint Neot’s Priory after its dissolution during the Tudor Reformation.

Ford House was one of those timber-framed houses, and today it is said to be the oldest building in Eaton Ford. At the time of the Enclosure Act in 1799, it was described as the Mansion House and it was owned by George James Gorham, who founded St Neots Bank.

Ford House was a boys’ boarding school in the 1850s and the 1860s, and the Addington family lived there from the 1890s to the 1920s. During their time, wooden panelling from Netherstead Priory was installed in the house.

The Barley Mow in Eaton Ford was built in 1830, and was run for generation by the Osborne family (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The Barley Mow was built in 1830, and the public house was run by the Osborne family from the mid-1830s until 1915. They strongly influenced the development of Eaton Ford.

Eaton Ford expanded quickly under the London overspill programme in the 1960s, and was separated from Eaton Socon in 1963.

Much of the housing in Eaton Ford dates from the period of London overspill from the 1960s on. Today, Eaton Ford stands by the River Great Ouse and its facilities include the Riverside Park, St Neots Golf Club and the marina. It still has the feeling of a village, with its village green, village pub – the Barley Mow – and little or no industry.

The Chequers was a public house in Eaton Ford from the 1820s to 1911, and was run for generation by the Osborne family (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)