Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2026: 95, Monday 10 August 2026

A traditional fishing boat by the old Venetian Harbour in Rethymnon … Izaak Walton points out that fishing can teach us patience and discipline (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and the week began with the Tenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity X, 9 August 2026). The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Saint Laurence (258), Deacon at Rome, Martyr.

Later today, I have GP appointments for my regular injections needed because of my severe Vitamin B12 deficiency, for my sarcoidosis symtoms, and to follow up on my stroke four years ago. But, before the day begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

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

‘Go to the lake and cast a hook; take the first fish that comes up’ (Matthew 17: 27) … a variety of fish on display in a seafood restaurant at the harbour in Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 17: 22-27 (NRSVA):

22 As they were gathering in Galilee, Jesus said to them, ‘The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into human hands, 23 and they will kill him, and on the third day he will be raised.’ And they were greatly distressed.

24 When they reached Capernaum, the collectors of the temple tax came to Peter and said, ‘Does your teacher not pay the temple tax?’ 25 He said, ‘Yes, he does.’ And when he came home, Jesus spoke of it first, asking, ‘What do you think, Simon? From whom do kings of the earth take toll or tribute? From their children or from others?’ 26 When Peter said, ‘From others’, Jesus said to him, ‘Then the children are free. 27 However, so that we do not give offence to them, go to the lake and cast a hook; take the first fish that comes up; and when you open its mouth, you will find a coin; take that and give it to them for you and me.’

‘Fishing Trips’ … fishing boats and tourist trips in Georgioupoli in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

I have been a vegetarian most of my life, which has contributed to the health issues surrounding my severe B12 deficiency. But I still find the rewards of fishing at the Lake in Capernaum in this morning’s Gospel reading are worth working with. Ernest Hemingway, in The Old Man and The Sea, says ‘Il faut (d’abord) durer … It is necessary, above all else, to endure. It is necessary to endure.’

Over half a century ago, when I hitchhiking in the Peaks on the borders of Staffordshire and Derbyshire in my late teens, and staying in Ilam Hall, I came across the work of the great Anglican writer Izaak Walton (1593-1683), known for his biographies of John Donne, George Herbert and Richard Hooker, and also as the author of The Compleat Angler.

In The Compleat Angler, Izaak Walton points out that fishing can teach us patience and discipline. Fishing takes practice, preparation, discipline; like discipleship, it has to be learned, and learning requires practice before there are any results. And sometimes, whether it is fishing in a river, fishing in a lake or fishing in the sea, the best results can come from going against the current.

Walking along the piers in coastal fishing towns and villages or on holidays on Greek islands, I sometimes watch the careful early morning work of the crews in the trawlers and fishing boats, and I am reminded that good fishing does not come about by accident. It also requires paying attention to the nets, moving them carefully, mending them, cleaning them after each and every use, hanging them out to dry.

And fishing is also about noticing the weather, watching the wind and the clouds. Good fishing takes account of contexts … it is incarnational.

Time and again in the Gospels, the Kingdom of God is compared to a huge net cast over different numbers of people and species. We are the ones called to cast that net, and we cannot hang any sign outside on our office doors saying: ‘Gone Fishin’.

Nor can we stand by the bank or on the shore, content with two sizes of fish. We are called to go after the ones that others let get away, not just those who come to Church regularly, but also those people who sit in darkness and in the region of the shadow of death.

Peter is sent to go fishing in the lake. He is told to take the first fish that comes up and that he is going to find a treasure beyond his expectations. It is an image of what working for the kingdom of God can be like.

There are days when fishing seems pointless, and there will be days when we are happy with our work together. And as we work together, hopefully, there will be days when we are surprised with what we can achieve together, all in Christ’s name and all for the sake of the one that otherwise might get away.

A fishing boat and fishing nets on the Greek island of Samos (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Monday 10 August 2026):

In Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), the theme this week (9-15 August 2026, pp 28-29), is ‘Mission to the Mangyans’. This theme was introduced yesterday with a Programme Update by the Revd Jewel B Tumaliuan, Programme Director, Iglesia Filipina Independiente (IFI).

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Monday 10 August 2026) invites us to pray:

Lord, we pray for communities in remote areas where distance shapes daily life. May connection, support, and opportunity grow, and may your presence bring encouragement and hope.

The Collect of the Day:

Almighty God,
who made Laurence a loving servant of your people
and a wise steward of the treasures of your Church:
fire us with his example to love as he loved
and to walk in the way that leads to eternal life;
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:

Eternal God,
who gave us this holy meal
in which we have celebrated the glory of the cross
and the victory of your martyr Laurence:
by our communion with Christ
in his saving death and resurrection,
give us with all your saints the courage to conquer evil
and so to share the fruit of the tree of life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s reflectionss

Continued tomorrow

‘Gone Fishin’ … fishing boats and nets by the harbour in Iraklion (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

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 Bertelin’s Chapel is part of the story of early Stafford, but archaeologists disagree about interpreting the site

The site of Saint Bertelin’s Chapel, in front of Saint Mary’s Collegiate Church, Stafford, is said to date from the year 700 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

I was writing yesterday about my visit to Stafford last week and to Saint Mary’s Collegiate Church in the centre of the town. At the west end of the church is the site of a chapel associated with Saint Bertelin or Saint Beorhthelm, who is said to have established a hermitage ca 700 CE that is said to mark the beginnings of Stafford.

Saint Bertelin was an obscure Anglo Saxon saint. He is said to have established his hermitage ca 700 CE on the Isle of Bethnei in the marshes around the River Sow. Bertelin – whose name gradually took the form Bertram in some areas – later moved his hermitage to Ilam in Derbyshire, where his shrine and well made Ilam a popular place of pilgrimage.

The first building on the site in Stafford seems to have been a Late Saxon timber chapel, commemorating Saint Bertelin, although The first historical reference to Saint Bertelin at Stafford appears in a list of tombs of saints for pilgrims by Hugh Candidus of Peterbrough, who died ca 1175, in a reference ‘in Stefford sanctus Berthelmus martyr’.

Saint Mary’s Church was rebuilt in the late 12th and early 13th century, and was joined to Saint Bertelin’s chapel through a doorway in the west wall. The chapel became a shrine to Saint Bertelin, and was a place of pilgrimage throughout the Middle Ages.

The chapel was later used as a council chamber and a school, before it was pulled down in 1801 to allow more room for burials in the churchyard. Following the demolition, the site of Saint Bertelin’s Chapel was destroyed largely by burials in the 19th century and only patches of wall and floor and several early graves definable.

The blocked former west entrance into Saint Mary's was the only surviving evidence for the existence of the chapel until the local authority decided to clear the gravestones and create a garden of remembrance.

Saint Bertelin’s Chapel was pulled down in 1801 to provide more space for burials in Saint Mary’s churchyard (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Before the clearance work began, an archaeological investigation was carried out in 1954 at the site of Saint Bertelin’s Chapel by Adrian Oswald (1908-2001), curator of archaeology at Birmingham City Museum.

Oswald found a set of stone foundations interpreted as belonging to Saint Bertelin's mediaeval chapel. Beneath the stone was a set of post-holes with a central grave-shaped pit in the centre of the structure containing a large lump of oak with a cylindrical base that had been placed in a pit.

The archaeologist and historian CA Ralegh Radford (1900-1998) initially interpreted this as a 1,000-year-old a wooden cross of the Mercian period and a later reconstruction was put on the site.

In the popular retelling of these interpretations, it was said that the remains of a timber cross buried 5 ft below the surface, and from this it was deduced that ‘it is entirely possible that this cross was the one used by Saint Bertelin himself. Beneath the cross were the remains of a timber building, which it seems reasonable to assume was the one built by Bertelin.’

The site of Saint Bertelin’s Chapel at the west front of Saint Mary’s Church, Stafford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

However, a re-assessment of the site was made in in 1984 by Professor Martin Carver, who considered the finds in the context of other archaeological investigations at Stafford. Carver is Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at the University of York and director of the Sutton Hoo Research Project. He founded the Birmingham University Field Archaeology Unit (BUFAU), later called Birmingham Archaeology, at the University of Birmingham, and is the author of The Birth of a Borough. Archaeological studies of Anglo-Saxon Stafford (2010).

Carver argues that the shape of the wood lump, with a cylindrical base, and the leather attached inside to the top, all suggest that this was a coffin, not a cross, resembling the tree-trunk coffins known from the seventh century onwards in East Anglia.

The general sequence reported by Oswald was largely endorsed, seeing the site as one of a timber structure succeeded by a later stone chapel. However, the earliest part of the sequence associated with the timber structure and coffin was found to be inverted in respect of the dates. A layer of ninth century charcoal (830-845 CE) lay above the layer containing a Saxon farthing of Athelred II (971-1016) lost before 1000 CE, which in turn lay above the 12th century log coffin.

From this evidence, it could be argued that the coffin was buried in a late 12th century stone chapel, and the coffin was simply part of a late 12th century foundation process.

Carver suggests the log coffin was buried within a timber structure dated to the period 800-1000, and so too late to be used to support legends of an eighth century foundation associated with an ‘Isle of Bethnei’.

The timber chapel, or possible mortuary house, may have burnt down in the ninth century, which would account for the charcoal layer. Carver rejected the date 1180 for the log coffin. The timber chapel was superseded by a stone chapel with a truer east-west alignment. The floor of this stone chapel would have sealed the log coffin and the layers above it.

This stone chapel appears to have fallen into disuse and was probably demolished around the time of the Conquest and then rebuilt in stone on an improved alignment. A layer of brown soil, interpreted as a layer of ‘disuse’ appears to separate the floor of the first stone chapel from the second, later stone chapel rebuilt on the same site, slightly offset to the south, laid out in dressed stone indicating a small nave and a narrower chancel, with a tiled floor laid in the 14th century.

The muddled evidence may suggest the first chapel was built of timber between 800 and 1000. A tree-trunk burial was placed centrally in this structure, and presumed to be an object of veneration. The date range of other finds allows the construction of the timber chapel to belong to the foundation of the burh by Æthelflæd in 913 CE, and it seems likely the chapel was built during the reconquest of English Mercia.

The plaque marking the site of Saint Bertelin’s Chapel at Saint Mary’s Church, Stafford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Still, local publications continue to maintain this was Saint Bertelin’s preaching cross and this is echoed on the plaque at the site:

‘Site of St. Bertelin’s Chapel

‘This site was excavated in 1954 AD. The foundation stones have been restored upon the exact plan of the chapel built about 1000 AD.

‘The wooden cross is a replica of the cross lying five feet below with indications of a wooden building of much earlier date. The position of the cross indicates that it was regarded with great sanctity and may be the preaching cross of St. Bertelin the founder of the town of Stafford circa 700 AD.’

Meanwhile, the name of the early hermit and saint is continued in Saint Bertelin’s Church, the parish church for the north end of Stafford, on the corner of Holmcroft Road and Eccleshall Road.

Saint Chad’s Church is the oldest surviving building in Stafford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

After visiting Saint Mary’s Church and Saint Bertelin’s Chapel, I went to see Saint Chad’s Church opposite the Ancient High House on Greengate Street. Saint Chad’s is the oldest surviving building in Stafford, with a story stretching back to the 12th century, and perhaps even back to the time of Saint Chad, the first Bishop of Lichfield (669-672).

Saint Chad’s was built ca 1150-1190 and an inscription names the founder as Orm: Orm vocatur qui me condidit (‘He who made me is called Orm’). Orm was a major landowner of Danish origin and the dragons in the carvings are a pun on his name ‘Orm’ or ‘Worm’.

Saint Chad’s was restored from a forgotten and ruinous state in the mid-19th century. The restoration was carried out by Henry Griffiths, Robert Ward and George Gilbert Scott, who also built the Norman-Romanesque front and donated the statue of Saint Chad in the central niche. At the same time, Scott was carrying out extensive restorations of Lichfield Cathedral.

Saint Paul’s Church, which I passed on the way to Rugeley and Lichfield, is a Grade II building on Lichfield Road. It was designed by Henry Ward and built in 1844. The steeple was added in 1887 by Robert Griffiths. The stained glass includes late 19th and early 20th century work by Hardman and Co, AJ Davies of Bromsgrove, and Smith of St John’s Wood, including a particularly good 19th century east window.

I had visited four churches and chapels in Stafford – Saint Mary’s, Saint Bertelin’s Chapel’s Chapel, Saint Chad’s Church and Saint Paul’s Church. But before leaving Stafford last week I also visited Sir Martin Noel’s Almshouses on Earl Street, which still has its chapel.

As for Saint Bertelin, his feast day is celebrated on 10 August.

Saint Paul’s Church on Lichfield Road, Stafford, was designed by Henry Ward and built in 1844 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Peter Walker’s sculpture of Izaak Walton in Stafford and the missing rod of the ‘Compleat Angler’

Peter Walker’s statue of Izaak Walton on the banks of the River Sow in Victoria Park, Stafford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

The sculptor and artist Peter Walker’s work can be seen in towns, cities and cathedrals throughout England and around the world. His art includes large-scale sculptures, commissioned and bespoke sculptural works, as well as paintings, drawings, film, and sound and light installations.

He has had a major impact in recent decades on Lichfield and Lichfield Cathedral, and is singularly responsible for transforming Lichfield into the City of Sculpture. I often take the opportunity to appreciate another aspect of his sculpture and work in Lichfield, where he has undertaken, developed and commissioned artistic projects since 2006.

When I was in Stafford earlier this week, I saw his one of Peter Walker’s earlier works. His statue of Izaak Walton (1593-1683) stands on the banks of the River Sow in Victoria Park, close to Stafford Station, and was made as part of a millennium project in 2000.

Izaak Walton, best-known for The Compleat Angler (1653), was born in Stafford in 1593 and baptised in Saint Mary’s Church, Stafford, on 21 September 1593. He left Stafford in his teens to serve an apprenticeship in London, and by 1624 he was running a linen and drapery shop in the city. He lived in Chancery Lane, which gave him access to the River Thames and River Lea to go fishing.

Walton was related by marriage to both Archbishop Thomas Cranmer and the nonjuror Bishop Thomas Ken. He got to know the poet-priest John Donne while the future Dean of Saint Paul’s was the vicar of Saint Dunstan-in-the-West Church, Fleet Street, and Walton was a churchwarden and vestry member there in 1632-1644.

As a strong supporter of both the Anglican church and the Royalist cause during the Civil War, Walton was forced to sell his business following the Royalist defeat at Marston Moor in 1644 and move from the Parliamentarian-controlled City of London to Clerkenwell.

Walton also returned to his home county of Staffordshire, and bought Halfhead Farm in Shallowford, five miles outside Stafford, in 1655. He regularly visited his friends in Staffordshire, including Charles Cotton of Beresford Dale on the banks of the River Dove, and I first got know of him and his works in my late teens when I visited Dovedale and stayed at Ilam Hall.

The restoration of the monarchy in 1660 brought new roles for Walton. Bishop George Morley appointed him as his steward first in Worcester and later in Winchester. He died in Winchester on 15 December 1683 at the age of 90.

Walton wrote a biography of the priest-poet John Donne in 1640, and later published biographies of Richard Hooker (1665) and George Herbert (1670). These books earned him a place in Anglican theology and church history, although he is best known for The Compleat Angler, first published in 1653. It was not just a guide to fishing but also offered a window into life in 17th century England, particularly during the English Civil War. It secured Walton’s place in literary history, and became one of the most reprinted books in the world. His friend Cotton wrote a supplement on fly fishing for the final edition of The Compleat Angler.

In The Compleat Angler, Walton points out that fishing can teach us patience and discipline. Fishing takes practice, preparation, discipline; like discipleship, it has to be learned, and learning requires practice before there are any results. And sometimes, the best results can come from going against the current.

Izaak Walton, best-known for The Compleat Angler (1653), was born in Stafford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Peter Walker was a student at Stafford College and his sculpture of Izaak Walton in Victoria Park was cast in 2000 by Morris Singer Art Foundry, founded in 1927. The statue was presented to the town by the Staffordshire Newsletter to mark the Secon Millennium, and was funded by staff and readers of the Staffordshire Newsletter, with support from Staffordshire County Council’s Public Art Fund. It was unveiled by the newspaper proprietor Lord Illife on 5 September 2000.

Victoria Park in the centre of Stafford is close to Saint Mary’s Church, the High House on Greengate and the train station, with the River Sow, a tributary of the Trent, running through the park.

Izaak Walton Walk was developed in the 1880s as part of Stafford Corporation’s river improvement scheme. Seats and railings were put in place, and trees were added around 1900 to improve the appearance of what was a marshy area prone to flooding.

The corporation bought the land In 1903 and raised its level by 3 ft. The area was laid out as Victoria Park, the bandstand was moved to the park from Market Square. The park was created by T Fobbs & Co of Wolverhampton and opened on 15 June 1908.

Peter Walker’s bronze sculpture of Izaak Walton was unveiled on 5 September 2000. A quarter of a century later it is one of only a handful of survivors from Statues in the Park, planned then as a millennial sculpture walk. The life-size figure originally originally held a sculpted fishing rod but this has since been removed. The missing rod is replaced on occasion by a real fly rod – appropriate, I suppose for a writer best remembered for The Compleat Angler.

The half-timbered cottage where Walton lived in Shallowford is now maintained by Stafford Borough Council as a museum. There is a wall tablet to Walton in Saint Mary’s Church, Stafford, where he was baptised, with a marble bust in the north aisle. The bust was created by RC Bett in 1878 after a public fundraising drive.

I was back in Stafford this week hoping to see inside Saint Mary’s, thinking there was a mid-day celebration of the Eucharist there on Tuesdays. However, I had not counted on the town centre parish church being closed after all the busy-ness of Holy Week and Easter.

I never got to see the monument to Izaak Walton in the church. But more about Saint Mary’s Church tomorrow, hopefully, and more in the days to come about some of the other places I visited in Stafford, Wolseley and Rugeley this week.

The River Sow and Victoria Park, Stafford, with Peter Walker’s sculpture of Izaak Walton to the right, on the river bank (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2025: 94, Monday 11 August 2025

A traditional fishing boat by the old Venetian Harbour in Rethymnon … Izaak Walton points out that fishing can teach us patience and discipline (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and the week began with the Eighth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity VIII). The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Saint Clare of Assisi (1193-1253), Founder of the Minoresses or Poor Clares, and John Henry Newman (1801-1890), Priest and Tractarian, who is being proclaimed a Doctor of the Church by Pope Leo.

Before the day begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

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

‘Go to the lake and cast a hook; take the first fish that comes up’ (Matthew 17: 27) … a variety of fish on display in a seafood restaurant at the harbour in Rethymnon in Greece (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Matthew 17: 22-27 (NRSVA):

22 As they were gathering in Galilee, Jesus said to them, ‘The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into human hands, 23 and they will kill him, and on the third day he will be raised.’ And they were greatly distressed.

24 When they reached Capernaum, the collectors of the temple tax came to Peter and said, ‘Does your teacher not pay the temple tax?’ 25 He said, ‘Yes, he does.’ And when he came home, Jesus spoke of it first, asking, ‘What do you think, Simon? From whom do kings of the earth take toll or tribute? From their children or from others?’ 26 When Peter said, ‘From others’, Jesus said to him, ‘Then the children are free. 27 However, so that we do not give offence to them, go to the lake and cast a hook; take the first fish that comes up; and when you open its mouth, you will find a coin; take that and give it to them for you and me.’

‘Fishing Trips’ … fishing boats and tourist trips in Georgioupoli in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

This morning’s reflection:

I have been a vegetarian most of my life, but the rewards of fishing at the Lake in Capernaum in this morning’s Gospel reading is worth working with. Ernest Hemingway, in The Old Man and The Sea, says ‘Il faut (d’abord) durer … It is necessary, above all else, to endure. It is necessary to endure.’

Over half a century ago, when I hitchhiking in the Peaks on the borders of Staffordshire and Derbyshire in my late teens, and staying in Ilam Hall, I came across the work of that great Anglican writer, Izaak Walton (1593-1683), known for his biographies of John Donne, George Herbert and Richard Hooker, and also as the author of The Compleat Angler.

In The Compleat Angler, Izaak Walton points out that fishing can teach us patience and discipline. Fishing takes practice, preparation, discipline; like discipleship, it has to be learned, and learning requires practice before there are any results. And sometimes, whether it is fishing in a river, fishing in a lake or fishing in the sea, the best results can come from going against the current.

Walking along the piers in coastal fishing towns and villages or on summer holidays on Greek islands, I sometimes watch the careful early morning work of the crews in the trawlers and fishing boats, and I am reminded that good fishing does not come about by accident. It also requires paying attention to the nets, moving them carefully, mending them, cleaning them after each and every use, hanging them out to dry.

And fishing is also about noticing the weather, watching the wind and the clouds. Good fishing takes account of contexts … it is incarnational.

Time and again in the Gospels, the Kingdom of God is compared to a huge net cast over different numbers of people and species. We are the ones called to cast that net, and we cannot hang any sign outside on our office doors saying: ‘Gone Fishin’.

Nor can we stand by the bank or on the shore, content with two sizes of fish. We are called to go after the ones that others let get away, not just those who come to Church regularly, but also those people who sit in darkness and in the region of the shadow of death.

Peter is sent to go fishing in the lake. He is told to take the first fish that comes up and that he is going to find a treasure beyond his expectations. It is an image of what working for the kingdom of God can be like.

There are days when fishing seems pointless, and there will be days when we are happy with our work together. And as we work together, hopefully, there will be days when we are surprised with what we can achieve together, all in Christ’s name and all for the sake of the one that otherwise might get away.

A fishing boat and fishing nets on the Greek island of Samos in Greece (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Monday 11 August 2025):

The theme this week (10 to 16 August) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Serving God in the Gulf’ (pp 26-27). This theme was introduced yesterday with reflections from Joyaline Rajamani, Administrator at the Church of the Epiphany, Doha, Anglican Church in Qatar.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Monday 11 August 2025) invites us to pray:

Heavenly Father, in the stillness of waiting, teach us patience. In the act of welcoming, grant us hearts of hospitality. And in every step of our journey, strengthen our faith.

The Collect:

God of peace,
who in the poverty of the blessed Clare
gave us a clear light to shine in the darkness of this world:
give us grace so to follow in her footsteps
that we may, at the last, rejoice with her in your eternal glory;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

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

‘Gone Fishin’ … fishing boats and nets by the harbour in Iraklion (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

A return to ‘Happy Valley’ and a journey with Samuel Johnson

Ilam Hall in the Staffordshire Moorlands … Ilam became the inspiration for Samuel Johnson’s ‘Happy Valley’ (Photograph: YHA/Ilam Hall)

Patrick Comerford

Having watched the third and final series of Happy Valley on BBC, two of us have sat up into the late night throughout the last few days rewatching the first series from 2014, and the second series from 2016. Each series and each episode remain compelling and gripping viewing.

The name ‘Happy Valley’ is what local police in the Calder Valley call the area because of its drug problem, and we are now talking about taking a few days off in West Yorkshire in a few weeks’ time.

I regularly take a few days off in Lichfield, often with all the ingredients and benefits of a retreat, including time for prayer, for silences, for walks in the countryside, either along Cross in Hand Lane or in Comberford, and for visits to Lichfield Cathedral and the chapel in Saint John’s Hospital, two places that have shaped my faith and my spirituality since my teens, over half a century ago.

In the past, I also tried to begin Lent with a retreat. One year, I spent Ash Wednesday on a retreat in Saint Patrick’s College, Maynooth, when part of my retreat reading included Samuel Johnson’s novel Rasselas, about another ‘Happy Valley.’

During Lent this year, I am taking time each morning to reflect on words from Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), the Lichfield-born lexicographer and writer who compiled the first authoritative English-language dictionary.

Samuel Johnson often visited Ilam Hall in rural Staffordshire, on the edge of the Peak District, and went fishing at Dovedale, and these visits probably had the same value as retreats. A part of the grounds in Ilam is known as Paradise Walk, and it is said this valley inspired Johnson when he was writing Rasselas.

This is the story of a fictional Abyssinian prince who lived in Happy Valley, and Johnson wrote the story hastily in 1759 to raise money for his mother who was seriously ill and to pay for her funeral in Saint Michael’s Church, Lichfield. His story is far removed from the storyline in the BBC series Happy Valley.

Johnson was back in Ilam again in July 1774, and with his biographer James Boswell in 1779, when they walked there from Ashbourne and were guests of the Port family.

Boswell would recall in biography of Johnson: ‘Ilam has grandeur tempered with softness: the walker congratulates his own arrival at the place, and is grieved to think he must ever leave it.’

I spent a delightful few days in Ilam over 50 years ago when I was in my late teens. I had hitch-hiked from Lichfield, where I was staying, to Ashbourne. From there, following in the footsteps of Samuel Johnson, it was another four or five-mile walk to Ilam, where I stayed at Ilam Hall, which has a stately tale to tell but was then (and still is) a youth hostel.

Ilam Park is a country park owned by the National Trust and stretching to 158 acres on both banks of the River Manifold in Dovedale.

The first Ilam Hall was built in 1546 by John Port and the Port family continued to own the estate for over 250 years.

Both William Congreve and Samuel Johnson stayed at Ilam Hall when it was owned by the Port family. Here Congreve wrote his first play, The Old Bachelor, first staged in 1693. In a later play, The Mourning Bride, he wrote the now-famous lines:

Heaven has no rage, like love to hatred turned,
Nor hell a fury, like a woman scorned.

Ilam Cross in Ilam Village (Photograph: Rob Bendall/Wikipedia/CCL)

Before I returned to Lichfield from Ilam all those years ago, I was introduced for the first time to the writings of Izaak Walton (1594-1683). Like Samuel Johnson, he too fished in Dovedale, and he is remembered in the name of the Izaak Walton Hotel between Ilam and Dovedale.

Out of his experiences in Ilam and Dovedale, Izaak Walton first published The Compleat Angler in 1653, and he continued to add to it for a quarter of a century. There was a second edition in 1655, a third in 1661, a fourth in 1668 and a fifth in 1676. In this last edition the original 13 chapters had grown to 21, and a second part was added by his friend Charles Cotton.

In the following century, an annotated edition of Izaak Walton’s Compleat Angler was published in 1760 by Sir John Hawkins (1719-1789). Hawkins was among Johnson’s closest friends and was an executor of Johnson’s will. His biography of Johnson, published with his 1787 edition of Johnson’s works, was superseded only by Boswell’s.

But I became more interested in Walton’s Lives, a collection of short biographies published as Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich’d Hooker, George Herbert, &c.

As a young man living in London, Walton befriended John Donne, who was then the Vicar of Saint Dunstan in the West on Fleet Street, London. Walton also married into interesting Church circles: his first wife, Rachel Floud, was a great-great-niece of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, while his second wife, Anne Ken, was a half-sister of Thomas Ken, later bishop of Bath and Wells, and then a leading Nonjuror.

Walton had contributed an Elegy to the 1633 edition of Donne’s poems, and he completed and published his biography of Donne in 1640. His biography of Sir Henry Wotton was published in 1651, his life of Richard Hooker in 1662, that of George Herbert in 1670, and that of Bishop Richard Sanderson in 1678. At least three of these subjects – Donne, Wotton and Herbert – were anglers.

Izaak Walton visited Rome in 1674 with Thomas Ken, who was then teaching at Winchester and a canon of the cathedral.

In The Compleat Angler, Walton points out that fishing can teach us patience and discipline. Fishing takes practice, preparation, discipline; like discipleship, it has to be learned, and learning requires practice before there are any results. And sometimes, the best results can come from going against the current.

Writing about the value of a retreat, Johnson wrote in The Rambler (No 7) on 10 April 1750: ‘To facilitate this change of our affections it is necessary that we weaken the temptations of the world, by retiring at certain seasons from it; for its influence arising only from its presence is much lessened when it becomes the object of solitary meditation. A constant residence amidst noise and pleasure inevitably obliterates the impressions of piety, and a frequent abstraction of ourselves into a state where this life, like the next, operates only upon the reason, will reinstate religion in its just authority, even without those irradiations from above, the hope of which I have no intention to withdraw from the sincere and the diligent.’

Today, the principal landmarks in Ilam are Ilam Hall, Holy Cross Church, Ilam Cross, the Swiss chalet-style cottages built by the Watts-Russell family and Dovedale House.

Holy Cross Church has Saxon origins, but was restored and rebuilt in the 17th and 19th centuries.

Ilam Cross or the Mary Watts-Russell Memorial Cross is a Grade II* landmark commemorating the wife of Jesse Watts-Russell, who inherited and rebuilt Ilam Hall. This is an ornate, gothic-style, obelisk in the style of an Eleanor Cross. Standing on a three-step plinth, it has two tiers of statues surmounted by a spire with a cross at the top. In style, it has some resemblance to the decorated façade of Lichfield Cathedral. It was restored in 2011.

The former vicarage, Dovedale House, is now run as a residential and retreat centre managed by the Diocese of Lichfield. It is a large old house near the entrance of Ilam Hall. It opened as a residential centre in 1967.

Holy Cross Church seen from Ilam Hall (Photograph: YHA/Ilam Hall)

A journey through Lent 2016 with Samuel Johnson (38)

Ilam Hall in remote Staffordshire … Ilam became the inspiration for Samuel Johnson’s ‘Happy Valley’ (Photograph: YHA/Ilam Hall)

Patrick Comerford

During Lent this year, I am taking time each morning to reflect on words from Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), the Lichfield lexicographer and writer who compiled the first authoritative English-language dictionary.

I try to begin Lent each year with a retreat, and this year I spent Ash Wednesday on a retreat in Saint Patrick’s College, Maynooth, when part of my retreat reading included Samuel Johnson’s novel Rasselas. Then, earlier this month, I had a few days back in Lichfield, with all the ingredients and benefits of a retreat, including time for prayer, for silences, for walks in the countryside, and for visits to a cathedral and a church that have played important roles in the development of my faith and my spirituality.

Samuel Johnson often visited Ilam Hall in rural Staffordshire, on the edge of the Peak District, and went fishing at Dovedale, and these visits probably had the same value as retreats. A part of the grounds in Ilam is known as Paradise Walk, and it is said this valley inspired Johnson when he was writing Rasselas. This is the story of a fictional Abyssinian prince who lived in Happy Valley, and Johnson wrote the story hastily in 1759 to raise money for his mother who was seriously ill and to pay for her funeral.

The story is far removed from the storyline in the BBC television drama series, Happy Valley, which takes its title from the name from local police give to the Calder Valley area in West Yorkshire because of its drug problems.

Johnson was back in Ilam again in July 1774, and with his biographer James Boswell in 1779, when they walked there from Ashbourne and were guests of the Port family.

Boswell would recall in biography of Johnson: Ilam has grandeur tempered with softness: the walker congratulates his own arrival at the place, and is grieved to think he must ever leave it.

I spent a delightful few days in Ilam over 40 years ago when I was in my late teens. I had hitch-hiked from Lichfield, where I was staying, to Ashbourne and from there, following in the footsteps of Samuel Johnson, it was another four or five-mile walk to Ilam, where I stayed at Ilam Hall, which has a stately tale to tell but was then (and still is) a youth hostel.

Ilam Park is a country park owned by the National Trust and stretching to 158 acres on both banks of the River Manifold in Dovedale.

The first Ilam Hall was built in 1546 by John Port and the Port family continued to own the estate for over 250 years.

Both William Congreve and Samuel Johnson stayed at Ilam Hall when it was owned by the Port family. Here Congreve wrote his first play, The Old Bachelor, first staged in 1693. In a later play, The Mourning Bride, he wrote the now-famous lines:

Heaven has no rage, like love to hatred turned,
Nor hell a fury, like a woman scorned.

Before I returned to Lichfield from Ilam all those years ago, I was introduced for the first time to the writings of Izaak Walton (1594-1683). Like Samuel Johnson, he too fished in Dovedale, and he is remembered in the name of the Izaak Walton hotel between Ilam and Dovedale.

Out of his experiences in Ilam and Dovedale, Izaak Walton first published the The Compleat Angler in 1653, and he continued to add to it for a quarter of a century. There was a second edition in 1655, a third in 1661, a fourth in 1668 and a fifth in 1676. In this last edition the original 13 chapters had grown to 21, and a second part was added by his friend Charles Cotton. In the following century, an annotated edition of Izaak Walton’s Compleat Angler was published in 1760 by Sir John Hawkins (1719-1789). Hawkins was among Johnson’s closest friends and was an executor of Johnson’s will. His biography of Johnson, published with his 1787 edition of Johnson’s works, was superseded only by Boswell’s.

But I became more interested in Walton’s Lives, a collection of short biographies published as Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich’d Hooker, George Herbert, &c.

As a young man living in London, Walton befriended John Donne, who was then Vicar of of Saint Dunstan’s. Walton also married into interesting Church circles: his first wife, Rachel Floud, was a great-great-niece of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, while his second wife, Anne Ken, was a half-sister of Thomas Ken, later bishop of Bath and Wells, and then a leading Nonjuror.

Walton had contributed an Elegy to the 1633 edition of Donne’s poems, and he completed and published his biography of Donne in 1640. His biography of Sir Henry Wotton was published in 1651, his life of Richard Hooker in 1662, that of George Herbert in 1670, and that of Bishop Richard Sanderson in 1678. At least three of these subjects – Donne, Wotton and Herbert – were anglers.

In 1674, Izaak Walton visited Rome with Thomas Ken, who was then teaching at Winchester and a canon of the cathedral.

In The Compleat Angler, Walton points out that fishing can teach us patience and discipline. Fishing takes practice, preparation, discipline; like discipleship, it has to be learned, and learning requires practice before there are any results. And sometimes, the best results can come from going against the current.

Writing about the value of a retreat, Johnson wrote in The Rambler (No 7) on 10 April 1750:

To facilitate this change of our affections it is necessary that we weaken the temptations of the world, by retiring at certain seasons from it; for its influence arising only from its presence is much lessened when it becomes the object of solitary meditation. A constant residence amidst noise and pleasure inevitably obliterates the impressions of piety, and a frequent abstraction of ourselves into a state where this life, like the next, operates only upon the reason, will reinstate religion in its just authority, even without those irradiations from above, the hope of which I have no intention to withdraw from the sincere and the diligent.

Continued tomorrow.

Yesterday’s reflection.

Eyam’s ‘pastor, to this human-flock no more Shall the long flight of future days restore!’

The Tapestry in Eyam Museum recalling the brave and sacrificial story of the plague in 1665/1666

Patrick Comerford

Last week, as I was preparing my sermon for the Day of Pentecost [24 May 2015] in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, I found my mind wandering between Elam in remote Persia in Apostolic Days to Ilam in the Staffordshire Peaks and my wanderings there in my late teens in the early 1970s.

But in a conversation yesterday, someone confused picturesque Ilam (pronounced Eye-Lamb) in Staffordshire with the “plague village” of Eyam (pronounced Eem, to rhyme with seem), about 40 km further north in the Derbyshire Peaks.

I visited Eyam later in the 1970s while I was attending peace conferences at Swanwick and went on tours that also brought me to neighbouring places like Bakewell, Buxton, Chatsworth, Chesterfield and Matlock.

Years later, Eyam still tells a memorable tale from the 17th century of self-sacrifice and bravery that remains an outstanding and unique story of redemptive self-sacrifice. It is a story that I am often reminded of in Lichfield when I hear the story of Anna Seward and her poetry.

Eyam is a village in the Derbyshire Dales and in the Peak District. The village is noted for an outbreak of the plague in 1665, when the villagers chose to isolate themselves rather than let the infection spread.

Eyam was founded and named by Anglo-Saxons, although before that the Romans had mined lead in the area. Today, Eyam depends on the tourism and its reputation as “the plague village.”

Eyam was also badly affected by the Great Plague of 1665, although the plague is usually associated with London. The sacrifices made by the villages of Eyam is said to l have saved many places throughout the Midlands and northern England.

The Plague Cottage in Eyam (Photograph: Mickie Collins/Wikipedia)

At the time of the plague, Eyam had a population of about 350. The most important person in the village was the Rector, the Revd William Mompesson (1639-1709), who moved to Eyam with his wife Catherine and their children in 1664.

In the summer of 1665, the village tailor received a flea-infested bundle of cloth from his supplier in London. This parcel contained the fleas that caused the plague. Within a week, the tailor’s assistant, George Vicars, had died from the plague. More began dying in the household soon after; by the end of September, five more villagers had died; 23 died in October.

As the plague spread, the villagers turned to their rector and his predecessor, the Revd Thomas Stanley. When some villagers wanted to flee to Sheffield, Mompesson feared they would bring the plague with them and persuaded them to cut themselves off from the outside would.

From May 1666, precautious measures were introduced to slow the spread of the plague. Families buried their own dead and church services were moved to the natural amphitheatre at Cucklett Delph, allowing villagers to separate themselves and reduce the risk of infection.

The villagers voluntarily quarantined themselves although this would mean certain death for many of them. The village was supplied with food by people living outside who left supplies at the “plague stones” marking the boundary that separated Eyam from the outside world.

The villages left money in a water trough filled with vinegar to sterilise the coins. In this way, the people of Eyam were not left to starve to death, and the people who supplied the village with food did not come into contact with the plague.

Eyam continued to suffer from the plague throughout 1666. William Mompesson had to bury his own family in the churchyard. When his wife died in August 1666, he decided to hold her services outdoors to reduce the chances of people catching the disease.

By November 1666, the plague had come to an end. In all, 260 out of 350 villagers had died in Eyam. But their selfless sacrifice saved many thousands of lives in the north of England.

Mompesson survived. He wrote at the end of the ordeal: “Now, blessed be God, all our fears are over for none have died of the plague since the eleventh of October and the pest-houses have long been empty.”

The plague ran its course over 14 months but when it came to an end it had killed most of the villagers. The parish records provide the names of 273 people who were victims. Only 83 villages survived out of a population of over 350.

Those who survived did so randomly and there is no explanation for their survival. Many of the survivors had close contact with those who died yet never caught the disease. Elizabeth Hancock buried six children and her husband within eight days, but was never infected herself. The village gravedigger Marshall Howe survived even though he handled many infected bodies.

Every Plague Sunday a wreath is laid on Catherine Mompesson’s grave in the churchyard. Plague Sunday has been marked in Eyam since the bicentenary of the plague in 1866. It now takes place in Cucklett Delph on the last Sunday in August, at the same time as Wakes Week and the Well Dressing ceremonies.

Eyam Hall, built shortly after the plague (Photograph: Dave Pape/Wikipedia)

The Jacobean-style Eyam Hall was built by the Wright family in 1671, soon after the plague, and local mining helped Eyam to recover in population and to prosper economically. Today, many of the village houses and cottages are marked with plaques listing the names and ages of residents who died as victims of the plague, and the story of the plague village is told in Eyam Museum.

There is a plague window in the parish church. But Eyam and its church and churchyard are much older than the plague. The name of Eyam comes from Old English and first appears in the Domesday Book as Aium. The name probably means a cultivated island in the moors, although it may also refer to Eyam’s location between two brooks.

A Mercian-style Anglo-Saxon cross in the churchyard in Eyam dates back to the eighth century, and is covered in complex carvings. Saint Lawrence’s Church dates from the 14th century, but a Saxon font and Norman window are evidence of an earlier church on the site.

Some of the Rectors of Eyam had colourful stories. The Revd Sherland Adams was an ardent royalist, and was removed from office by the parliamentarians, although he returned again briefly in 1664 after the Caroline Restoration and the resignation of Adams.

The tithe from the lead mines was paid to the rectors, who received one penny for every dish of ore and 2¼d for every load of hillock-stuff. When a new rich vein was discovered in the 18th century, Eyam became a rich living.

Canon Thomas Seward (1708–1790) was Rector of Eyam for half a century from 1740 until his death in 1790, and his daughter, the poet Anna Seward, who was born in Eyam in 1747. While he was still Rector of Eyam, he moved with his family 90 km south to the Bishop’s Palace in the Cathedral Close in Lichfield in 1754, and became Prebendary of Pipa Parva in Lichfield Cathedral.

Although she was born in Eyam, Anna Seward became known as the “Swan of Lichfield.” She returned from Lichfield to Eyam in 1788 and her poem ‘Eyam’ is filled with nostalgia for her birthplace, tearfully recalling the story of the plague:

For one short week I leave, with anxious heart,
Source of my filial cares, the Full of Days,
Lur’d by the promise of Harmonic Art
To breathe her Handel’s soul-exalting lays.
Pensive I trace the Derwent’s amber wave,
Foaming through umbrag’d banks, or view it lave
The soft, romantic vallies, high o’er-peer’d
By hills and rocks, in savage grandeur rear’d.
Not two short miles from thee, can I refrain
Thy haunts, my native Eyam, long unseen? –
Thou and thy lov’d inhabitants, again
Shall meet my transient gaze. – Thy rocky screen,
Thy airy cliffs I mount; and seek thy shade,
Thy roofs, that brow the steep, romantic glade;
But, while on me the eyes of Friendship glow,
Swell my pain’d sighs, my tears spontaneous flow.

In scenes paternal, not beheld through years,
Nor view’d, till now, but by a Father’s side,
Well might the tender, tributary tears,
From keen regrets of duteous fondness glide!
Its pastor, to this human-flock no more
Shall the long flight of future days restore!
Distant he droops, – and that once gladdening eye
Now languid gleams, ’en when his friends are nigh.

Through this known walk, where weedy gravel lies,
Rough, and unsightly; – by the long, coarse grass
Of the once smooth, and vivid green, with sighs
To the deserted Rectory I pass; –
Stray through the darken’d chambers’ naked bound,
Where childhood’s earliest, liveliest bliss I found;
How chang’d, since erst, the lightsome walls beneath,
The social joys did their warm comforts breathe!

Ere yet I go, who may return no more,
That sacred pile, ’mid yonder shadowy trees,
Let me revisit! – Ancient, massy door,
Thou gratest hoarse! – my vital spirits freeze,
Passing the vacant pulpit, to the space
Where humble rails the decent altar grace,
And where my infant sister’s ashes sleep,
Whose loss I left the childish sport to weep.
The gloves, suspended by the garland’s side,
White as its snowy flowers, with ribbons tied; –
Dear Village, long these wreaths funereal spread,
Simple memorials of thy early dead!

But O! thou bland, and silent pulpit! – thou,
That with a Father’s precepts, just, and bland,
Did’st win my ear, as reason’s strength’ning glow
Show’d their full value, now thou seem’st to stand
Before my sad, suffus’d, and trembling gaze,
The dreariest relic of departed days.
Of eloquence paternal, nervous, clear,
Dim Apparition thou – and bitter is my tear!

Going against the tide as I work on a sermon for the Day of Pentecost

Ilam Hall in remote Staffordshire … far from Ilam in remote Iran

Patrick Comerford

The names of people and places can be engaging and distracting, and as I was preparing next Sunday’s sermon I was distracted by the names of people and the places they come from in the account of the first Day of Pentecost in the New Testament reading (Acts 2: 1-21).

The good news is heard that day by Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and parts of Libya, visitors from Rome, Cretans and Arabs – each in our own languages.

I have been to so many of these places, including Jerusalem, Crete, Judea, Egypt, Asia Minor, Rome and – even last month – Cappadocia, or met so many of these people, including Arabs and residents of Mesopotamia.

But some of the other places are lost in time and antiquity, such as Phrygia and Pamphylia. Although I have been to the each of these too, their names have long been changed.

But, I wondered, where was Elam?

Elam was an ancient Pre-Iranic civilisation centred in the far west and south-west of what is now modern-day Iran, stretching from the lowlands of what is now Khuzestan and Ilam Province as well as a small part of southern Iraq.

Elamite states were among the leading political forces in the Ancient Near East, and in classical literature, Elam was more often known as Susiana. The Elamite civilisation was defeated and absorbed over time by its neighbours, but its memory survives today in the name of Ilam, a city and a province in western Ian, on the borders of Iraq, and the people living there are mainly Kurds.

Ilam Hall is nestled beside the River Manifold in the Staffordshire Peak District

But, distracted as I was by the names of ancient Elam and present-day Ilam, my mind also wandered back in time to Ilam (prounced Eye-Lamb) in the Staffordshire Peaks, where I spent a delightful few days many years ago in my late teens.

I had hitch-hiked from Lichfield, where I was staying, to Ashbourne and from there, following in the footsteps of Lichfield’s greatest writer, Samuel Johnson, it was another four or five-mile walk to Ilam, where I stayed at Ilam Hall, which has a stately tale to tell but was then (and still is) a youth hostel.

Ilam Park is a country park owned by the National Trust and stretching to 158 acres on both banks of the River Manifold in Dovedale.

The first Ilam Hall was built in 1546 by John Port and the Port family continued to own the estate for over 250 years.

Both William Congreve and Samuel Johnson stayed at Ilam Hall when it was owned by the Port family. Here Congreve wrote his first play, The Old Bachelor, first staged in 1693. In a later play, The Mourning Bride, he wrote the now-famous lines:

Heaven has no rage, like love to hatred turned,
Nor hell a fury, like a woman scorned.

Samuel Johnson often visited Ilam Hall, and went fishing at Dovedale. Part of the grounds is known as Paradise Walk, and it is said this valley inspired Johnson when he was writing his novel Rasselas, the story of an Abyssinian Prince who lived in Happy Valley. He wrote it hastily in 1759 to raise money for his mother who was seriously ill.

Johnson was back in Ilam again in July 1774, and with his biographer James Boswell in 1779, when they walked there from Ashbourne and were guests of the Port family.

Boswell would recall in his biography of Johnson: “Ilam has grandeur tempered with softness: the walker congratulates his own arrival at the place, and is grieved to think he must ever leave it.”

Later, Jean-Jacques Rousseau visited Ilam on his walks between Ellastone and Dovedale.

The Revd Bernard Port was both the lord of the manor and Vicar of Ilam in the 19th century. But in 1809, Ilam Hall was sold to the brewer David Pike Watts, and it was then inherited by his daughter Mary who married the wealthy industrialist Jesse Russell, who changed his name to Jesse Watts-Russell.

Ilam Hall was built in the Gothic style for Jesse Watts-Russell by James Trubshaw

Jesse Watts-Russell was High Sheriff of Staffordshire and Conservative MP for the rotten borough of Gatton. He decided to tear down the old Tudor half-timbered manor house and commissioned James Trubshaw (1777-1853) from Colwich, near Rugeley, to build a new Ilam Hall in the Gothic style (1821-1826).

As the new Gothic Hall was being built, John Edwards wrote his lengthy poem ‘The Tour of the Dove’ in 1821:

Ilam, thy ancient Hall is swept away!
A fairer soon shall lift its domes and towers;
While still thy fountain-deeps ebullient play,
And newborn rivers grace thy laurel bowers
And fossil grots. Strike on, and bring the hours,
Thou clock embosomed deep in ivy bloom!
Time holds the garland yet of Rousseau’s flowers;
Still broods antiquity o’er Bertram’s tomb,
And Congreve’s hermit cell, shrouded in sylvan gloom.

Lorde Byron once wrote of Dovedale to the Irish poet Thomas Moore saying: “I can assure you there are things in Derbyshire as noble as Greece or Switzerland.” Perhaps it was thoughts like this that led Watts-Russell to imagine that the valley and surrounding hills were like the Alps, and so he asked Sir George Gilbert Scott (1811-1878) to design new cottages in the style of Swiss chalets where he rehoused most of the villagers who were his tenants. He also built and funded the village school in 1857.

By the early 1930s, Ilam Hall had been sold for demolition. Demolition work was well under way, and all that was left was the entrance porch and hall, the Great Hall and the service wing when the flour magnate Sir Robert McDougal bought it for the National Trust.

It was agreed that the parts of Ilam Hall that had escaped demolition should be used as a youth hostel, and today Ilam Hall is a Grade II* listed building, owned by the National Trust. Since 1935, it has been run by the Youth Hostels Association.

The youth hostel at Ilam underwent an extensive £2 million refurbishment programme in 2008/2009 and now offers an excellent standard of accommodation for families, individuals and school groups. The majority of bedrooms offer en-suite accommodation with a mixture of double, four and six bedded rooms. There are two ground floor bedrooms with en-suite disabled facilities. The restaurant serves food made from produce sourced locally from Staffordshire and the Derbyshire Dales. The bar serves wines, draught and bottle beers and soft drinks and is open to non-residents. The grounds are open to the public, and are a starting point for a river walk.

It is said that Ilam dates from Saxon times or earlier. The Church of the Holy Cross was originally Saxon, although the church is now mainly 17th and 19th century. Some of its Saxon origins can be seen in its carved stone Saxon font, the round bowl carved with humans and dragons, and in two stone cross shafts in the churchyard. The base of the church tower dates from the 13th century.

The church, with three chapels, was also restored in the 19th century by Sir George Gilbert Scott. The Chapel of Saint Bertram, built in 1618 by the Meverell, Port and Hurt families, has the remains and shrine of the Saint Bertram or Bertelin. He was an eighth century son of a Mercian king who renounced his royal heritage for prayer and meditation after his wife and child were killed by wolves. He is said to have converted many to Christianity, and his shrine was a point of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages.

The church also houses a majestic mausoleum chapel for members of the Pike Watts family, with a dramatic sculpture by Francis Chantrey of David Pike Watts on his deathbed blessing his daughter Mary and her three children. Some visitors find this monument overwhelming, while the architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner has described it as “theatrical ... but not at all without meaning.” Chantrey also designed the statue of the Sleeping Children in Lichfield Cathedral.

The former vicarage, Dovedale House, stands near the entrance to Ilam Hall. This was once the vicarage where the Revd Bernard Port once lived, and has been run by the Diocese of Lichfield as a residential youth centre since 1967.

The Dovedale Fete, which takes place next Monday [25 May 2015] always takes place on the Bank Holiday Monday at the end of May, always in the country garden of Dovedale House.

Ilam Cross … ‘one of the finest Gothic revival monuments in the country’

A prominent landmark is the Grade II* listed Mary Watts Russell Memorial Cross, at a roundabout at a junction where a lane branches off towards Blore. This ornate, Gothic-style obelisk of local limestone was designed by the architect John Macduff Derick, in consultation with Scott. It stands on a three-step plinth, has two tiers of statues and is surmounted by a spire topped with a cross. The cross includes six statues of angels carved in Caen stone by Richard Westmacott (1799-1872).

llam Cross was originally erected by Jesse Watts Russell in 1841 in memory of his wife Mary, and has been described as “one of the finest Gothic revival monuments in the country.” It is in the style of an Eleanor Cross and is modelled on one of the crosses which Edward I had erected at each stopping place of the body of his queen, Eleanor of Castile, on its progress from Nottinghamshire, where she died, to her tomb in Westminster Abbey, in 1290.

It bears some resemblance in style to the decorated façade of Lichfield Cathedral, which was renovated and restored by Scott.

Before I returned to Lichfield from Ilam all those years ago, I was introduced for the first time to the writings of Izaak Walton (1594-1683). Like Samuel Johnson, he too fished in Dovedale, and he is remembered in the name of the Izaak Walton hotel between Ilam and Dovedale.

Out of his experiences in Ilam and Dovedale, Izaak Walton first published the The Compleat Angler in 1653, and he continued to add to it for a quarter of a century. There was a second edition in 1655, a third in 1661, a fourth in 1668 and a fifth in 1676. In this last edition the original 13 chapters had grown to 21, and a second part was added by his friend Charles Cotton.

But I became more interested in Walton’s Lives, a collection of short biographies published as Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich’d Hooker, George Herbert, &c.

As a young man living in London, Walton befriended John Donne, who was then Vicar of of Saint Dunstan’s. Walton also married into interesting Church circles: his first wife, Rachel Floud, was a great-great-niece of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, while his second wife, Anne Ken, was a half-sister of Thomas Ken, later bishop of Bath and Wells, and then a leading Nonjuror.

Walton had contributed an Elegy to the 1633 edition of Donne’s poems, and he completed and published his biography of Donne in 1640. His biography of Sir Henry Wotton was published in 1651, his life of Richard Hooker in 1662, that of George Herbert in 1670, and that of Bishop Richard Sanderson in 1678. At least three of these subjects – Donne, Wotton and Herbert – were anglers.

In 1674, Izaak Walton visited Rome with Thomas Ken, who was then teaching at Winchester and a canon of the cathedral.

In The Compleat Angler, Walton points out that fishing can teach us patience and discipline. Fishing takes practice, preparation, discipline; like discipleship, it has to be learned, and learning requires practice before there are any results. And sometimes, the best results can come from going against the current.

Perhaps that in itself is a message infused with the spirit of Pentecost.

Photographs: YHA Ilam Hall

Click to see The Ilam Story, an 18 metre folk art painting of the history of Ilam.