Twining House on Banbury Road recalls the grocer who developed the suburbs of north Oxford

Twining House at 294 Banbury Road, Oxford, built by TH Kingerlee for Francis Twining in 1909 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

I stayed overnight in Oxford at the end of last week in the Summertown area at the north end of Banbury Road. This is a major road leading north out of the city centre, running from Saint Giles at the south end, through the leafy suburbs of North Oxford and Summertown. Woodstock Road runs parallel to and to the west of Banbury Road.

Summertown is home to several independent schools and some of the most expensive houses in Oxford. In the past, the residents of Summertown have included Iris Murdoch and John Bayley. Summertown is also home to much of Oxford’s broadcast media, including the BBC Oxford studios on Banbury Road.

Most of North Oxford came into being the university decided in 1877 to allow college fellows to marry and live in private houses rather living in college rooms in college, and large houses were built on Banbury Road and Woodstock Road on land that once belonged to Saint John’s College.

I had stayed before at the south end of Banbury Road, when I was a guest in Wycliffe Hall. But this was my second time to stay at this end of Banbury Road in Summertown: we stayed there overnight after I was discharged from the John Radcliffe Hospital following a stroke in 2022; and I was back there again last week, three years later, for yet another medical procedure.

This stretch of Banbury Road in Summertown is known for its shops, from boutique book shops and niche stationery shops to bakeries, cafés and estate agents, as well as branches of Marks and Spencer, Tesco and Sainsbury.

Breckon and Breckon must have the most attractive premises for any estate agents in Summertown. But their premises, Twining House, was also one of the earliest grocer’s shop on Banbury Road.

When I saw Twining House and the former United Reformed Church side-by-side on Banbury Road last week, I thought one had been the church hall for the other. But, instead, I found they told the story of Alderman Francis Twining, an enlightened and benevolent philanthropist and entrepreneur who had risen from began life as an impoverished child, became a grocer’s boy at a young age and rose to being the Mayor of Oxford and one of the main property developers in late Victorian and Edwardian north Oxford.

The builder Thomas Henry Kingerlee (1843-1929), who designed Summertown Congregational Church, was a Liberal city councillor and he too was the Mayor of Oxford, in 1898-1899 and 1911-1912.

Kingerlee built a number of prominent buildings in Oxford, including the Rivermead Hospital, Headington Junior School, the original New Theatre, Elliston & Cavell (later Debenhams) and the Oxford Marmalade Factory. He used patterns similar to Summertown Congregational Church a decade later when he built the grocery shop for Twining in 1902 next door at 294 Banbury Road, now known as Twining House.

Francis Twining (1848-1929) was born in Thompson Buildings, St Aldate’s, Oxford, and was baptised in Saint Aldate’s Church on 7 May 1848. His mother, Mary Ann, was born in Evesham, Worcestershire, in 1811; his father Robert Twining was a stonemason and was distantly related to the Twining’s Tea family. The Twining family originated in Gloucestershire, where they were weavers and fulling millers. Recession drove the family to London in 1684, bringing with them nine-year-old Thomas Twining, later the founder of the tea business.

Francis was only nine when his father Robert Twining, who was working on Addington Church, was killed in an accident near Winslow railway station while trying to catch the last train back to Oxford on 30 January 1858. Soon after, the young Francis Twining began working as a grocer’s boy for Grimbly Hughes at 55-56 Cornmarket.

By the age of 22, Francis Twining was a grocer’s assistant and living in Victor Street, Jericho, when he married Elizabeth Ann Smith (26) in the newly-oepned Saint Barnabas Church, Jericho, in 1870. Two years later, in 1872, they were living over his own grocer’s shop at 23 Saint Ebbe’s Street.

When a vacancy arose in the West Ward of the city in 1879, Twining was the only candidate and was elected to the council; he was still in his 20s. Although he was not a freeman, he was elected Sheriff of Oxford in 1885.

Around this time, he moved to Llantrisant House at 78 Kingston Road, near the corner of St Margaret’s Road. By 1890, he had moved into a new home, Summertown House on the Banbury Road, and this was his address when he was elected as a Liberal member of the town council.

Twining bought 25 acres at Hawkswell Farm in 1895, and combined this with 25 acres at Stone’s Estate for a major housing development in North Oxford, building 350 houses in all. He also laid out Portland, Lonsdale, King’s Cross, Victoria, Hamilton and Lucerne Roads in 1901. He also bought the White Hart Hotel at Cornmarket in 1899.

Meanwhile, Twining donated the site for Summertown Congregational Church – later the United Reformed Church – that was built on this stretch of the Banbury Road in 1893. He lived in Summertown House, a 15-roomed mansion at the junction of Apsley Road and Banbury Road. He opened the Summertown branch of his grocery chain in 1902, and at one time he had six shops throughout Oxford.

Twining’s new purpose-built branch at 294 Banbury Road, Summertown, opened in 1902. But later that year, he handed over his wholesale and retail grocery businesses to three of his sons. By 1915, there were six Twining Brothers branches throughout Oxford: the original shop at 23-24 St Ebbe’s Street, 53 Cornmarket Street, 16 North Parade Avenue, 46 High Street, 56 St Aldate’s Street and 294 Banbury Road.

Twining was a member of the city council in Oxford for 50 years, first as a councillor and then as an alderman, and in 1905 he was elected Mayor of Oxford for 1905-1906. As Mayor, he welcomed the Chinese Imperial Commissioners to Oxford in 1906.

Twining donated the site for Saint Michael and All Angels, a new Church of England parish church for Summertown, in 1909.

During World War I, his youngest son, Sidney Twining, died of his wounds in Thessaloniki on 27 February 1917. After the war, Alderman Twining gave £500 to buy the site of the Summertown War Memorial in 1919.

Elizabeth Twining was 84 when she died at Summertown in 1927; Francis Twining was 81 when died at Summertown House in 1929; they are buried at Wolvercote Cemetery.

His sons Ernest, Gilbert, and Francis Twining, continued to run Twining Bros. There were still six Twining’s shops in 1935, but some were in larger premises: 15-19 George Street, 164 Cowley Road, 15 North Parade Avenue, 83-84 High Street, 294 Banbury Road and 3 Woodstock Road. All of these except the High Street branch were still open in 1955.

By 1971, the shop on Banbury Road had become Moore’s wineshop, and by 1976 the only Twining’s branches that survived in Oxford were at North Parade Avenue and Woodstock Road.

Summertown House was sold at auction in 1939, and is now graduate housing known as Mansion House, with three blocks of graduate flats in the grounds.

Oxford city council decided to rename George Street in Summertown as Twining Street in 1955. But 62 residents signed a petition, saying they did not want to live on a street named after a grocer. What must those (presumably) Tory voters have thought in the decades that followed when Ted ‘Grocer’ Heath and the grocer’s daughter Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister? Instead, the street was named Middle Way. But the name of Francis Twining is still celebrated in Twining House and the offices of Breckon and Breckon.

As for the church next door, that is a story for another day, I hope. [see here]

The façade of Twining House retains the symbols of Twining’s once prosperous grocery business (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Two windows in Pusey House remember an Irish-born architect and his son who died on the ‘RMS Leinster’

Pusey House, Oxford, was designed by the architect Temple Lushington Moore (1856-1920), who was born in Tullamore, Co Offaly (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

During my two recent days in hospital in Oxford – the John Radcliffe Hospital and the Churchill Hospital – over the past two weeks or so, I have ended each day attending Evensong in the Chapel of the Resurrection in Pusey House.

Last Friday evening, I noticed two sets of two-light windows near the chapel that commemorate two architects, father and son, with intimate links with Pusey House and with strong Irish identities.

Temple Lushington Moore (1856-1920), the architect of Pusey House, was born in Tullamore, Co Offaly. His only son, Richard Temple Moore (1891-1918), was killed when the RMS Leinster was torpedoed and sunk off Dublin a mere month before the end of World War I.

The Irish-born architect Temple Lushington Moore was commissioned to design the chapel and college buildings at Pusey House in 1911 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Pusey House on St Giles’, Oxford, is firmly rooted in the Anglo-Catholic tradition, and is celebrating its 140th anniversary throughout the academic year 2024-2025. It was founded in 1884 in memory of Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800-1882), Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford, a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, and, for 40 years, a leading figure in the Oxford Movement.

The first principal of Pusey House was Charles Gore (1853-1932) in 1884-1893. Gore edited Lux Mundi in 1889, delivered the Bampton Lectures in 1891, and founded the Community of the Resurrection at Pusey House in 1892. Later, he became Bishop of Worcester and the first Bishop of Birmingham, before returning to Oxford as Bishop of Oxford.

At first, Pusey House occupied two townhouses on the present site on St Giles’ from 1884 to 1912. In 1903, a Leeds solicitor, John Cudworth, left a bequest of £70,000 to Pusey House, which then had a growing ministry to the university. When Darwell Stone (1859-1941) was Principal (1909-1934), the Irish-born architect Temple Moore was commissioned in October 1911 to design new college and chapel buildings.

Two pairs of two-light windows by Henry Victor Milner in Pusey House commemorate Temple Lushington Moore and his only son Richard Temple Moore (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Temple Moore has been described as ‘England’s leading ecclesiastical architect from the mid-Edwardian years’. The architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner said that he was ‘always sensitive in his designs and often interesting.’

His designs reflect his Anglo-Catholic practice and values. His work can be seen across England, particularly in the North. He is known for a series of fine Gothic Revival churches built about 1890 and 1917 and he also restored many churches and designed church fittings.

He designed about 40 new churches, including the Anglican cathedral in Nairobi, restored older churches, and made alterations and additions to others, and designed fittings and furniture for many church interiors. He also designed and altered country houses, schools, vicarages, parish halls, a court house, and memorial and churchyard crosses.

The windows by Henry Victor Milner in Pusey House commemorating Temple Lushington Moore (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Temple Lushington Moore (1856-1920) was born in Tullamore, Co Offaly, on 7 June 1856, the son of an army officer, Major-General George Frederick Moore (1817-1884), and Charlotte Reilly (1827-1922), the youngest daughter of John Lushington Reilly, of Scarvagh House, Co Down, and Louisa Hancock Temple of Watertown, Co Westmeath. Charlotte Reilly was also related to Power Le Poer Trench (1770-1839), the last Church of Ireland Archbishop of Tuam, and to Archbishop William Alexander of Armagh.

So the names Temple and Lushington come from his mother’s side of the family, with ancestral roots in Co Down, Co Westmeath and Co Galway.

Moore grew up in Scotland, moved to London in 1875, and was articled to the architect George Gilbert Scott jr (1839-1897), known as ‘the Middle Scott’. Although Moore set up his own practice in 1878, he continued to work closely with Scott, helping to complete his works when Scott’s health deteriorated.

From the early 1880s he travelled widely studying buildings on the continent, chiefly in Germany, France and Belgium. He was particularly impressed by the great mediaeval brick churches of north Germany, echoes of which can be found in some of his own impressively austere designs.

Moore married Emma Storrs Wilton (1856-1938), the eldest daughter of the Revd Richard Wilton of Londesborough, in 1884.

Moore is known for his Gothic Revival churches built in 1890-1917. He also restored many churches and designed church fittings. The National Heritage List for England designates at least 34 of Moore’s new churches as listed buildings. Two of these, Saint Wilfrid’s Church, Harrogate, and All Saints, Stroud, are listed at Grade I, and at least 16 of the others are at Grade II*. His other works include the restoration of the Treasurer’s House and Saint William’s College, York.

Stuart Kinsella of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, has also identified at least two cathedral and two churches in Ireland, one of each in Co Armagh and Co Galway, where Moore designed repairs and improvements: Dumore, Church, Co Galway (1887), Acton Church, Poyntzpass, Co Armagh (1890-1891), the Bishop’s Chapel in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh (1890-1891), and Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Tuam (1894).

Moore was elected a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (FRIBA) in 1905, and his pupils included Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (1880-1960), son of George Gilbert Scott jr.

The windows by Henry Victor Milner in Pusey House commemorating Richard Temple Moore (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Moore designed a large Gothic building around a quadrangle for Pusey House. The centrepiece is the two vaulted chapels separated by a stone pulpitum, based on those found in ‘mediaeval Franciscan priories.’

Moore’s only son, Richard Temple Moore (1891-1918), was articled to his father, worked with him on his designs for Pusey House, and was expected to continue the practice. The Chapel and part of the Library were complete by 1914, and most of the remaining portions of the building were finished in 1918.

But Richard Moore was killed in the closing days of World War I. He had enlisted as a private in the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry and was a military passenger on the RMS Leinster when it was sunk by torpedoes in the Irish Sea on the morning of 10 October 1918. The Kingstown-Holyhead mailboat, was 16 miles out of Dublin that morning heading for Holyhead when it was torpedoed and sunk by German U-boat 123.

The RMS Leinster was carrying 771 passengers and crew. They included a crew of 76, 22 postal sorters from Dublin working in the ship’s onboard postal sorting room, and 180 civilian passengers, men, women, and children. The greatest number of passengers on board, however, were service personnel. Many of them like Richard Moore were going on leave.

Richard Moore was just 27 and was buried in Grangegorman Military Cemetery, Dublin. Officially, 501 people died in the sinking, making it both the greatest ever loss of life in the Irish Sea and the highest ever casualty rate on an Irish owned ship. The dead are remembered at the RMS Leinster Memorial in Dun Laoghaire, and for many years by the Leinster Memorial Church at the Seamen’s Institute (1919-1923) on the corner of Eden Quay and Marlborough Street, Dublin, designed by WM Mitchell & Sons.

One of the inscriptions on the paired windows in Pusey House reads: ‘To the Glory of God and in loving memory of Richard Temple Moore, Royal Wilts Yeomanry, Drowned on SS Leinster Oct 10 1918 aged 27 years. Only son of Temple Moore, Architect, and his partner on this building.’

The inscription on the windows in Pusey House commemorating Richard Temple Moore (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Temple Moore had lived his later life in Hampstead, in Downshire Hill and then at 46 Well Walk, where he died on 30 June 1920. He was buried in the churchyard at Saint John’s Church, Hampstead, which he had altered in 1912. His son-in-law Leslie Thomas Moore continued his practice and completed some of his commissions.

The second set of wording on the paired windows in Pusey House reads: ‘ADMG and in memory of Temple Moore, Architect of this building. Died June 30 1920 aged 64.’

Temple Moore’s south range of the quadrangle at Pusey House remained unexecuted at the time of his death, and was only finished in 1925 to sympathetic designs by John Duke Coleridge (1879-1934).

The smaller Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament was reordered between 1935 and 1939 by Sir Ninian Comper (1864-1960). Comper and Moore were both invested in medievalism and, more broadly, in the richness of architectural revivalism. Comper’s work in the chapel includes a gilded baldacchino surmounted by the Risen Christ and attendant angels, and the stained glass in the east window.

The inscription on the windows in Pusey House commemorating Temple Moore (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The two two-ight windows in Pusey House commemorating Temple Moore and his son Richard are by Henry Victor Milner (1866-1944), who painted windows and church furnishings for many of Moore’s churches.

Milner worked for Burlison and Grylls for some time, and his work with Moore in his churches from 1887 on seems to have been commissioned independently.

The architectural historian Harry Goodhart-Rendel once described Pusey House as the best specimen of Gothic design in the city of Oxford. Pusey House continues its work as the centre of Anglo-Catholicism in Oxford but, far from being an architectural showpiece, Pusey House Chapel remains a place of living worship, where the offices are chanted and the Mass is celebrated every day.

The former Leinster Memorial Church on Eden Quay in Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Daily prayer in the Kingdom Season: 14, Thursday 14 November 2024

‘The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed … in fact, the kingdom of God is among you’ (Luke 17: 20-21) … a November setting sun at Burano in the Venetian Lagoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are in the Kingdom Season, the time between All Saints and Advent, and this week began with the Third Sunday before Advent, which was also Remembrance Sunday.

The Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today (14 November) remembers Samuel Seabury (1729-1796), the first Anglican Bishop in North America.

I am hoping to go for a swim later this morning in the Marian, the boutique hotel on Wayang Street where we stayed during our first week in Kuching last month. Before today begins, however, before having breakfast or that swim, I am taking some quiet time early this morning to give thanks, and for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, 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.

‘For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of Man be in his day’ (Luke 17: 24) … lightning on the Parthenon in Athens (Photograph: courtesy Tripadvisor)

Luke 17: 20-25 (NRSVA):

20 Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, ‘The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; 21 nor will they say, “Look, here it is!” or “There it is!” For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.’

22 Then he said to the disciples, ‘The days are coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it. 23 They will say to you, “Look there!” or “Look here!” Do not go, do not set off in pursuit. 24 For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of Man be in his day. 25 But first he must endure much suffering and be rejected by this generation.’

The chapel in Magdalen College, Oxford … waiting for the son of God? John Betjeman was an undergraduate, and CS Lewis was his tutor (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Today’s reflection:

The English Poet Laureate John Betjeman loved to tell the story of a Japanese prince who arrived at Magdalen College, Oxford, as an undergraduate in 1925, the same year as Betjeman came up.

The President of Magdalen, Sir Thomas Herbert Warren (1853-1930), was known as a poet too, albeit a bad poet although he was Professor of Poetry at Oxford. He was also an insufferable snob, and Jeremy Paxman says he ‘was perhaps the greatest snob in England.’

When Prince Chichibu arrived at Magdalen in 1925, Warren hoped he would soon be followed by his elder brother, the future Emperor Hirohito. The prince told Warren he was a direct descendant of the sun goddess Ametarasu, and let him know: ‘At home I am called the son of God.’

Warren took a deep breath, coughed and put the prince in his place: ‘You will find, your highness, that we have the sons of many famous fathers here.’

The Gospel reading at the Eucharist today (Luke 17: 20-25) is one of the stories about preparing for the kingdom of God and the arrival of the Son of God on earth, not only as the incarnate Christ Child at Christmas in nativity story or in a decorative crib, but also as Christ the King.

As we prepare for the Feast of Christ the King in ten days’ time (Sunday 24 November) and for Advent, we should expect many of our readings to have apocalyptic themes, looking forward to that Coming of Christ the King at his second coming.

The apocalyptic images in today’s reading anticipate some of these themes. But, perhaps surprisingly, today’s reading cautions us against looking for too many portents or for inappropriate signs, telling us instead to live in the real world: ‘The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed … For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you’ (Luke 17: 20-21).

But, as we prepare for the coming of Christ, are we trapped?

Are we trapped in the commercialism of Christmas?

There are 12 days of Christmas. But not one of them is in November. Yet for many weeks now, we have been inundated with Christmas catalogues and advertising. Already, here in Kuching, the Christmas trees are up and lit in the main shopping centres and many of the shops are displaying bright Christmas decorations.

Does the decoration of our shops, even of our churches, lead our eyes to the coming Christ or away from him?

To return to John Betjeman: he spent time in Dublin during World War II as the British press attaché, and was an active parishioner in Saint John’s, Clondalkin. In a lecture to Church of Ireland clergy in 1943, he said the ‘fabric of the church is very much concerned with worship. The decoration of a church can lead the eye to God or away from him.’

Betjeman’s poems are often humorous, with a wry, comic verse often marked by satire. He is one of the most significant literary figures of our time and was a practising Anglican, and his beliefs and piety inform many of his poems.

It is appropriate then, this morning, to re-read Betjeman’s poem ‘Christmas.’ In the first few verses, he describes the frivolous ways we prepare for Christmas:

The bells of waiting Advent ring,
The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
Has caught the streaks of winter rain
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hookers Green.

The holly in the windy hedge
And round the Manor House the yew
Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,
The altar, font and arch and pew,
So that the villagers can say
‘The church looks nice’ on Christmas Day.

Provincial Public Houses blaze,
Corporation tramcars clang,
On lighted tenements I gaze,
Where paper decorations hang,
And bunting in the red Town Hall
Says ‘Merry Christmas to you all’.

And London shops on Christmas Eve
Are strung with silver bells and flowers
As hurrying clerks the City leave
To pigeon-haunted classic towers,
And marbled clouds go scudding by
The many-steepled London sky.

And girls in slacks remember Dad,
And oafish louts remember Mum,
And sleepless children’s hearts are glad.
And Christmas-morning bells say ‘Come!’
Even to shining ones who dwell
Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.

And then, In the last three stanzas of this poem, Betjeman proclaims the wonder of Christ’s birth in the form of a question: ‘And is it true …?’

And is it true, This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window’s hue,
A Baby in an ox’s stall?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me?

And is it true? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,

No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare –
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.

‘God was man in Palestine / And lives today in Bread and Wine’ (John Betjeman) … communion vessels at the Eucharist (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Thursday 14 November 2024):

Samuel Seabury, who is remembered in the church calendar in Common Worship today (14 November), was born in Connecticut in 1729 and, after graduating from Yale, was ordained priest in England and assigned by SPG (the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, now USPG) to a church in New Brunswick, in New Jersey.

During the American War of Independence, he was a chaplain in the British army. After the war, at a meeting of the clergy in Connecticut, he was chosen to seek consecration as bishop. However, after a year of fruitless negotiations with the Church of England, he was ordained bishop by the nonjuring bishops in the Scottish Episcopal Church 240 years ago, on 14 November 1784.

Returning to America, he held his first Convention in Connecticut in August 1785 and the first General Convention of the Episcopal Church in 1789. The church adopted a version of the Scottish Eucharist. Samuel Seabury died on 25 February 1796.

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), is ‘A Look at Education in the Church of the Province of Myanmar’. This theme was introduced on Sunday with a Programme Update by Nadia Sanchez, Regional Programme Coordinator, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Thursday 14 November 2024) invites us to pray:

Lord, we commit to you, programmes across the world that seek to educate and support children so that they can stay in school instead of having to work.

The Collect:

Almighty Father,
whose will is to restore all things
in your beloved Son, the King of all:
govern the hearts and minds of those in authority,
and bring the families of the nations,
divided and torn apart by the ravages of sin,
to be subject to his just and gentle rule;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Post Communion Prayer:

God of peace,
whose Son Jesus Christ proclaimed the kingdom
and restored the broken to wholeness of life:
look with compassion on the anguish of the world,
and by your healing power
make whole both people and nations;
through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Additional Collect:

God, our refuge and strength,
bring near the day when wars shall cease
and poverty and pain shall end,
that earth may know the peace of heaven
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

Samuel Seabury in a stained-glass window in Saint Giles Church, Cambridge … he is remembered in Common Worship on 14 November (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

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 the Kingdom Season: 8, Friday 8 November 2024

The Unjust Steward … part of the East Window in Saint Michael’s Church, Limerick, made 1878 by Mayer & Co and illustrating 10 parables (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are in the Kingdom Season, the time between All Saints and Advent. The Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers the Saints and Martyrs of England (8 November).

Before today begins, before having breakfast, I am taking some quiet time early this morning to give thanks, and for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, 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 Unjust Steward,’ by the Kazakhstan Artist, Nelly Bube (Bubay)

Luke 16: 1-8 (NRSVA):

1 Then Jesus said to the disciples, ‘There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. 2 So he summoned him and said to him, “What is this that I hear about you? Give me an account of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.” 3 Then the manager said to himself, “What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. 4 I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.” 5 So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, “How much do you owe my master?” 6 He answered, “A hundred jugs of olive oil.” He said to him, “Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.” 7 Then he asked another, “And how much do you owe?” He replied, “A hundred containers of wheat.” He said to him, “Take your bill and make it eighty.” 8 And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.’

A ‘Shop To Let’ sign within view of Sidney Sussex College chapel, Cambridge … can we reconcile the values of the Kingdom and the demands of commercial life? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s reflection:

In the Gospel reading for the Eucharist today, we the parable of ‘the Unjust Steward’ or the ‘Parable of the Dishonest Manager’.

Whatever name you give it, this morning’s reading is about ignoring and exploiting the plight of the oppressed and the poor tells us that this amounts to turning away from God and turning towards idolatry. We are called to turn around, and in turning to the needs of the poor we find that we are turning to God.

So, let me tell this morning’s Gospel story (Luke 16: 1-13) in another way. When I left school, I started training as a chartered surveyor and estate manager. I never finished that training, but I can visualise some of the characters in this story.

A very, very rich man lives in a big city, let’s say it is Dublin. He has a luxurious lifestyle made possible by the income from the apartments, hotels and office blocks he owns in the city centre. He has been a major property developer, and a key shareholder in one of the business banks lending to developers.

He has hired an estate manager to run his property holding company, his building society, and his insurance agency while he spends most of his time in his large country house in Co Kildare or Co Meath, or in Marbella playing golf and on his yacht.

All the work of painting, maintaining the lifts and the plumbing in his apartment blocks, working the bar and servicing the rooms in his hotels, and working at the call centres in the office blocks, is done by people who travel in and out from the rims of the city, people whose grandparents probably once lived in the small terraced houses that once stood along the docks or the canal banks but were levelled to build those apartments, office blocks and hotels.

They pay their mortgages to the bank that financed the apartment blocks and similar developments. Their overdrafts are from the same bank. Their mortgage, insurance and life assurance policies are from an agency he owns. They find themselves increasingly in debt, paying school fees, running a car or two cars, meeting hire purchase payments for fridges, freezers, TVs, the children’s school fees and laptops … What they earn is never enough to pay off their mortgages, their overdrafts, their term loans.

These families are slipping further and further into debt, working harder and harder to pay what cannot be paid.

But they never meet the rich developer. The immediate face of this system, of his companies and his investments, is the face of the estate agent who manages the blocks – a man whose grandparents came from the same families as the people who now suffer under his management.

However, his parents had escaped the system, he got a good education, and then got sucked into the system.

The developer hears rumours that the estate manager, who is also his insurance agent, has been squandering the developer’s resource, and gives him his dismissal notice. Now, remember that ‘squandering’ is not necessarily a bad word here – the sower in another parable squanders seed by tossing it on roads and in bird-feeding zones, and the shepherd in one of this week’s parables potentially squanders 99 sheep by running after the lost one; the widow searching for her lost coin risks losing her other nine as she sweeps everything out.

Meanwhile, the estate agent has to work out his notice, but is no longer authorised to let, to rent, to buy, to sell, to do anything at all in the developer’s name.

He probably shares the same background only a generation or two ago with the maintenance workers, the tenants, the workers in the office blocks. But when he is out on his ear, they are not going to help him to find a place to live, or find a new job, given that up to now he has allied himself with the developer’s interests, collecting high rents, refusing to bring down rents when the reviews are due, managing the work rotas for the maintenance workers, forcing them to work longer hours rather than taking on the staff needed for the job, dealing unjustly with both tenants and workers.

He has been demanding higher rents and premiums, and longer working hours, yet providing fewer and fewer services – doing what certain economists have advised him to do: increasing profit margins and productivity and cutting costs at one and the same time.

He may be shrewd, but that is why he is called ‘the dishonest manager’ (verse 8).

The the agent does something that is extraordinarily clever.

He gathers all the tenants and workers who owe him money, and he declares that their debts have been written down, more than the courts could ever write them down, to something that might be repaid, freeing families from heart-breaking choices. He has been upping their rents and their premiums; now he brings them all back to a payable rate. And in doing this, he manages to wipe out the arrears that have been mounting up.

The smart agent manages not to tell the tenants or the workers that he has been sacked. Nor does he tell them that the developer has not authorised any of his largesse. But the tenants and the workers now think the developer, their landlord, is more generous than anyone else in his position could be. The developer is now a hero in their eyes – and, by extension, the agent is too.

The developer comes back for his quarterly or annual visit to pick up the income the agent has collected for him, and he gets a surprise that is exhilarating and challenging. The people are delighted to see him. Workers shake his hands, tenants lean out of the balconies to wave at him, children want to have ‘selfies’ taken with him.

Then, as he inspects the books in the small office the agent has worked from in the complex, he finds out what the agent has done in telling the tenants and the workers that the developer has forgiven their debts.

He has a choice to make.

He can go and tell them that it was all a terrible mistake, that the agent’s ‘stroke’ amounted not to generosity but to theft, or at least to dishonesty, and has no legal basis – he can tell them they are still responsible for the unpaid rent, for the overdrawn loans.

The warm welcome could quickly turn to nasty protests.

Or, the developer can go outside, bask in the unexpected welcome he has received, and take credit for the agent’s actions. At least he has cash in his hand where once he might have had nothing because of defaulting tenants and clients. That would save him going to court, but has he to take the agent back to work for him?

What would you do?

Picture yourself in this dilemma, both as the agent and as the developer.

From the agent’s point of view, does it matter any more what the developer decides to do? Whatever decision the developer makes, his future is safe – either he gets his job back, or his own people are going to look after him.

But here is the big problem: what the agent did is clearly dishonest. He has taken the landlord’s property and squandered it – even after he was sacked and had no right to do anything in the developer’s name.

What is it that the agent has done, without permission? Who has he deceived?

The agent forgives. He forgives things that he had no right to forgive. He forgives for all the wrong reasons, for personal gain and to compensate for his past misconduct. But that decisive action that he undertakes redeems him from a position to which it seems he could not be reconciled, to the developer any more than to the tenants and workers.

So what is the moral of the story?

This story is unique to Saint Luke’s Gospel, and for him there is a significance that is important throughout the third gospel: Forgive. Forgive it all. Forgive it now. Forgive it for any reason you want. Forgive for the right reason. Forgive for the wrong reason. Forgive for no reason at all. Just forgive.

Remember, Saint Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer includes the helpful confusion: καὶ ἄφες ἡμῖν τὰς ἁμαρτίας ἡμῶν, καὶ γὰρ αὐτοὶ ἀφίομεν παντὶ ὀφείλοντι ἡμῖν: καὶ μὴ εἰσενέγκῃς ἡμᾶς εἰς πειρασμόν (‘and forgive us our sins for indeed we ourselves are forgiving everyone who is [monetarily] indebted to us’) (Luke 11: 4) – the monetary indebtedness is obvious in the original Greek.

We pray it, but do we put it into practice?

The arrival of the Kingdom of God is no occasion for score-keeping of any kind, whether monetary or moral.

Why should I forgive someone who has sinned against me, or against my sense of what is obviously right? I don’t have to do it out of love for the other person.

I could forgive the other person because of what I pray in the Lord’s Prayer every Sunday if not every morning.

I could forgive because I know I would like to be forgiven myself.

I could forgive because I know what it is like to be me when I am unforgiving.

I could forgive because I am, or I want to be, deeply in touch with a sense of Christ’s power to forgive and free someone just like me.

Or I could forgive because I think it will improve my life and sense of well-being.

It boils down to the same thing: deluded or sane, selfish or unselfish, there is no bad reason to forgive.

Extending the kind of grace God shows me in every possible arena – financial and moral – can only put me more deeply in touch with God’s grace.

If a crafty agent, a dishonest manager, an unjust steward, the sort of person we meet in this Gospel reading, can forgive to save his job or give himself a safety net when he is sacked, then those of us who have the experience of real grace, we have been invited to the Heavenly Banquet, have a better reason than most people to forgive.

Where is the place for Christian values in today’s world of finance and debt? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Friday 8 November 2024):

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), is ‘Conflict, Confluence and Creativity’. This theme was introduced on Sunday with reflections by Rebecca Boardman, former Operations Manager, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Friday 8 November 2024) invites us to pray:

We give thanks to all who have answered your call to ministry and for all who educate and support them to shape them for your service. May you challenge and nurture them with your Word.

The Collect:

God, whom the glorious company of the redeemed adore,
assembled from all times and places of your dominion:
we praise you for the saints of our own land
and for the many lamps their holiness has lit;
and we pray that we also may be numbered at last
with those who have done your will
and declared your righteousness;
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, the source of all holiness
and giver of all good things:
may we who have shared at this table
as strangers and pilgrims here on earth
be welcomed with all your saints
to the heavenly feast on the day of your kingdom;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

The memorial to the Martyrs of the Reformation, both Catholic and Protestant’ in the University Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, Oxford (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 the Kingdom Season: 2, Saturday 2 November 2024, All Souls’ Day

The reredos in the chapel of All Souls College, Oxford … a reminder of the ‘Faithful Departed’ on 2 November (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We have moved in the Church Calendar from Ordinary Time to the Kingdom Season, the time between All Saints and Advent, and tomorrow is the Fourth Sunday before Advent (3 November 2024). Today in the Church Calendar is All Souls’ Day (2 November), or the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed.

All Souls’ Day is being marked later today in Saint Thomas’s Cathedral, Kuching, with an All Souls’ Day service this evening (7:30), when the celebrant is Canon Roannie W Cannidy, canon precentor of Saint Thomas’s Cathedral, and the preacher is the Revd Peter Augustine, one of the cathedral priests.

People have been invited to write the name or names of their faithful departed and drop them into a special box at the front of the chancel steps in the cathedral. Although only the names of past bishops and clergy will be read out during the intercessions this evening, all submitted names will be shown on the screens during the service. In addition, many people are expected to visit the graves and tombs of family members during the day.

Before today begins, before having breakfast, I am taking some quiet time early this morning to give thanks, and for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, 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.

All Souls College, Oxford … its full, official name is: the Warden and the College of the Souls of All Faithful People deceased in the University of Oxford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 6: 37-40 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 37 ‘Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and anyone who comes to me I will never drive away; 38 for I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. 40 This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day.’

‘I will raise them up on the last day’ (John 6: 40) … an unlabelled carving in All Souls College, Oxford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

November is a month when we traditionally remember the saints, the Communion of Saints, those we love and who are now gathered around the throne of God, those who have died and who we still love.

As the evenings close in, as the last autumn leaves fall from the trees, it is natural to remember the dead and the fallen, with love and affection.

All Saints’ Day yesterday (1 November) is one of the 12 Principal Feasts of the Church. In many parts of the Anglican Communion, today (2 November) is All Souls’ Day or the ‘Commemoration of the Faithful Departed’ (Common Worship, p 15). In Ireland, 6 November traditionally recalls ‘All Saints of Ireland.’ This year we mark Remembrance Sunday next Sunday (10 November), and Remembrance Day is on 11 November.

In recent days, Charlotte and I have wandered through some of the Chinese graveyards in the Kuching area, but have yet to find the place where her grandparents are buried.

At this time of the year – especially this year – there are a number of people in my own family I am remembering, including: my mother, Ellen (Murphy) Comerford, who died 10 years ago, on 20 May 2014;
my father, Stephen Edward Comerford, who died 20 years ago on 27 December 2004; my brother, Stephen Edward Comerford, who died on 18 December 1970;
my foster mother, Peggy Kerr, who died on 27 July 2010, and my foster father George Kerr;
and, at this time of the year, my ‘Gran’, Mary (McCarthy) Hallinan, who died on 6 November 1961; and ‘Granddad’ Edmond Hallinan, who died on 8 March 1963.

Hallowe’en, which was even marked in many places in Kuching this week, is the day before we remember the Hallowed, not as the dead but as the blessed, the saints, who are models for our lives, our Christian lifestyle today.

When he was Dean of Liverpool, Archbishop Justin Welby organised a Hallowe’en service he labelled ‘Night of the Living Dead’. At first, it sounds ghoulish. But that’s what it is … the ‘Night of the Living Dead’. We believe the dead we love are still caught up in the love of God and are alive in Christ.

Indeed, saints do not need to be dead to be examples of ‘holy living and holy dying’ (Jeremy Taylor).

Saint Paul regularly refers in his letters to fellow Christians as ‘saints.’ Saints Alive!

In the past, I have realised how many people and parishes have been shy, reluctant, perhaps even fearful, in the Church of Ireland when it comes to recalling, commemorating and celebrating the saints. A comparison of the calendars of the Church of Ireland and the Church of England is very telling.

Perhaps the people who decided on the calendar in the Church of Ireland were too afraid in the past of being seen to pray to the saints, or to pray for the dead. But, really, these are quite different to finding examples of godly living among Christians from the past, and expressing confidence that the dead we have loved are now committed to God’s love.

Yet the Church of England sees the calendar of saints as a living calendar, something that is added to as we find more appropriate examples of Christian living for today.

Saints do not have to be martyrs. But in recent years Oscar Romero was canonised and there was a major commemoration in Westminster Abbey of Oscar Romero in 2017 to mark his 100th birthday.

Saints do not have to be canonised. Modern martyrs may include Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King, or Heather Heyer, the civil rights activist killed by far-right neo-Nazis and racists in Charlottesville, Kentucky, in 2017.

Many of us we know people who handed on the faith to us – teachers, grandparents, perhaps neighbours. Even though many may be long dead, they remain part of our vision of the Communion of Saints.

Saints do not have to live a perfect life … none of us is without sin, and none of us is beyond redemption. Some of the saints carved on the West Front of Westminster Abbey might have been very surprised to know they were going to appear there. But their lives in sum total are what we are asked to think about.

They are: Maximilian Kolbe, Manche Masemola, Archbishop Janani Luwum, Grand Duchess Elizabeth, Martin Luther King, Oscar Romero, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Esther John, Lucian Tapiedi, and Wang Zhiming.

Some years ago, I asked students to share stories of their favourite ‘saints and heroes.’ They included an interesting array of people, some who were the still living at the time, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

In the back-page interviews in the Church Times, people are sometimes asked who they would like to be locked into a church with for a few hours.

Who are your favourite saints?

Who would you like to learn from a little more when it comes to living the Christian life?

In the Apostles’ Creed, we confess our faith which includes our belief in ‘the communion of saints’ and ‘the resurrection of the body.’ In Nicene Creed, we express our belief in ‘the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.

In the introduction to the Church Calendar and this in-between time, the time between All Saints and Advent, the resources for Common Worship remind us that ‘No Christian is solitary. Through baptism we become members one of another in Christ, members of a company of saints whose mutual belonging transcends death’. The resources then quote Charles Wesley:

One family, we dwell in him,
one Church, above, beneath;
though now divided by the stream,
the narrow stream of death.

Who are the saints in your life, in your own personal calendars? Who are those you recall whose souls we have committed to God’s love and who are part of ‘the communion of saints’?

Throughout the month of November, there are opportunities to remember their names as we are reminded in the first reading today that ‘The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, no torment will ever touch them’ (Wisdom 3: 1).

The Library at All Souls College, Oxford, with a sundial designed by Sir Christopher Wren (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Saturday 2 November 2024, All Souls’ Day):

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), has been ‘All Saints’ Day’. This theme was introduced last Sunday with a programme update by the Revd Dr Duncan Dormor, General Secretary, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Saturday 2 November 2024, All Souls’ Day) invites us to pray:

We give thanks for those who gone before us in the faith, may they rest in the mercy of God.

The Collect:

Eternal God, our maker and redeemer,
grant us, with all the faithful departed,
the sure benefits of your Son’s saving passion
and glorious resurrection
that, in the last day,
when you gather up all things in Christ,
we may with them enjoy the fullness of your promises;
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 of love,
may the death and resurrection of Christ,
which we have celebrated in this Eucharist,
bring us, with all the faithful departed,
into the peace of your eternal home.
We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ,
our rock and our salvation,
to whom be glory for time and for eternity.

Collect on the Eve of the Fourth Sunday before Advent:

Almighty and eternal God,
you have kindled the flame of love
in the hearts of the saints:
grant to us the same faith and power of love,
that, as we rejoice in their triumphs,
we may be sustained by their example and fellowship;
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 Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

All Souls College, Oxford, founded in 1438 by Henry Chichele, Archbishop of Canterbury, with King Henry VI as its formal co-founder (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

All Saints’ Church, a former church in Oxford converted into a college library

All Saints’ Church, a former church on the north side of the High Street in Oxford, is now the library of Lincoln College (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

I have been visiting many of the churches and college chapels in Oxford over the past two or three years. But one of the striking church buildings in the centre of Oxford is a former church that was converted into a college library half a centre ago.

All Saints’ Church is a former parish church on the north side of the High Street in central Oxford, on the corner of the High Street and Turl Street, with the Mitre on the facing side of the corner. The former church is now the library of Lincoln College and is a Grade I listed building.

The original All Saints’ Church was founded on the site in 1122. However, the spire of the church collapsed on 8 March 1700, destroying most of the building. After an appeal for funds, the present building, with a seating capacity of 350, was completed in 1720.

Four of the original church bells survived the collapse. The repairs to the church were expensive and donations were received from most of the Oxford colleges and from Queen Anne and the Duchess of Marlborough.

All Saints’ Church, Oxford, was designed by the Dean of Christ Church, Henry Aldrich (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The church was designed by Henry Aldrich (1648-1710), the Dean of Christ Church, Oxford. Aldrich was a theologian, philosopher, architect and composer, and was the Dean of Christ Church from 1689. Evidence of his skill as an architect is seen in the church and campanile of All Saints’ Church and in three sides of the so-called Peckwater Quadrangle of Christ Church, which were built to his designs.

Nicholas Hawksmoor is thought to be responsible for the tower and spire of All Saints’ Church.

The altar piece, which was of stone, coloured in imitation of marble, was donated by Nathaniel Crew (1633-1721), 3rd Lord Crew, who was the Rector of Lincoln College from 1668 and Bishop of Oxford (1671-1674) and Bishop of Durham (1674-1721). Bishop Crew’s arms as Bishop of Durham are still visible on the south wall of the church, close to the south porch.

Nicholas Hawksmoor is said to have designed the tower and spire of All Saints’ Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Bishop Samuel Wilberforce wrote in his Diocese Book in 1857 and 1860, describing the Vicar of All Saints’ Church, the Revd WW West, as ‘a clever man. Strong head & not apparently religious or a pleasant man.’

When Saint Martin’s Church at Carfax was demolished, except for its tower, in 1896, All Saints’ Church became the official City Church in Oxford, where the Mayor and Corporation were expected to attend church services.

A Union flag that had been draped over the coffins of prisoners of war at Batu Lintang camp in Sarawak, was placed in the church in 1946 along with two wooden memorial plaques. They were later moved to Dorchester Abbey.

Bishop Nathaniel Crew’s arms as Bishop of Durham, beside the south porch of All Saints’ Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

All Saints’ Church was declared redundant on 1971 and the City Church moved to Saint Michael at the North Gate. All Saints was then deconsecrated and offered to Lincoln College, immediately to the north of the church. The church was converted by Robert Potter, the architect also responsible for refurbishing the Radcliffe Camera in 1969. Since 1975 the building has been Lincoln College’s library.

The only major change to the interior of the church during its conversion into a library involved raising the original floor by over 4 ft to provide space for the lower reading rooms.

The upper reading room is known as the Cohen Room and has an elegant plastered ceiling. The decorations include the shields of the major donors who contributed to the cost of the 18th century rebuilding.

The lower reading room is the science library and the senior library, holding older books.

The science section is named after a former Lincoln College Fellow, Howard Florey (1898-1968), who was instrumental in the development of penicillin and for which he received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.

The Library still has a full peal of eight bells that are regularly rung by the Oxford Society of Change Ringers, founded in 1734. They are also rung for special occasions, such as the election of a new Rector of Lincoln College.

There is another All Saints’ Church in the suburb of Headington to the east of central Oxford, on Lime Walk. It was consecrated in 1910, and there is also All Saints’ Church in Cuddesdon, which has close links with Ripon College Cuddesdon, the Anglican theological college five miles south-east of Oxford.

All Saints’ Church was converted into Lincoln College Library by the architect Robert Potter in the 1970s (Photograph © Lincoln College Oxford)

Returning to the chapel in Keble College, Oxford, to see Holman Hunt’s ‘The Light of the World’

‘The Light of the World’ by William Holman Hunt (1827-1910) in a side chapel in Keble College, Oxford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

I have visited Keble College, Oxford, a number of times recently. When I was in Oxford last week, I returned to the chapel in Keble College to see The Light of the World, a painting by the Pre-Raphaelite artist William Holman Hunt (1827-1910) depicting Christ about to knock at an overgrown and long-unopened door.

Christ stands in front of a door covered in growth holding a light and waiting patiently to enter. There is no handle on the door, and he can enter only when the person inside opens the door. The work is inspired by a passage in the Book of Revelation: ‘Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me’ (Revelation 3: 20).

This is my favourite Pre-Raphaelite painting. Copies of it hang in churches and vestries, rectories and vicarages, church halls and homes, throughout the Anglican Communion. It is the first image of Christ I remember being shown as a small child by my grandmother in her house near Cappoquin, Co Waterford.

Despite the enduring popularity of this painting, few know what the artist was trying to say or the spiritual depths he searched as he worked on this painting. Yet it is regarded by many as the most important and culturally influential rendering of Christ of its time and it remains one of the great artistic expressions of Anglican spirituality.

Holman Hunt was a founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood – young artists and poets who reacted vigorously against ‘the frivolous art of the day,’ including Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his sister Christina Rossetti. Their paintings of religious or romantic subjects were clear and sharply focused. They believed that art is essentially spiritual in character and that mediaeval culture had a spiritual and creative integrity lost in later eras.

But their work often caused offence. For example, when Christ in the House of His Parents by John Everett Millais was exhibited in 1850, it was condemned as blasphemous. Charles Dickens claimed it made the Holy Family look like alcoholics and slum-dwellers with contorted, absurd poses.

William Holman Hunt received his middle name through a clerical error at his baptism in Saint Mary’s Church, Ewell, near Epsom. He was raised in Cheapside in an evangelical family, and spent much time in his childhood reading the Bible. He left school at 12, but persuaded his parents to send him to the Royal Academy Schools to train as a painter.

Hunt began painting The Light of the World in 1851, while he was still in his early 20s. It was harshly criticised when it was displayed in 1853, but John Ruskin defended Hunt and curiosity about the painting reached such a level that it went on a national tour.

Hunt later recalled: ‘I painted the picture with what I thought, unworthy though I was, to be by Divine command, and not simply as a good subject.’ To achieve realism, he did much of this painting at night.

The painting is in oil on canvas, and Hunt is said to have painted it at night in a makeshift hut at Worcester Park Farm in Surrey and in the garden of the Oxford University Press. It has been suggested that he found the dawn light he needed outside Bethlehem on one of his visits to the Middle East.

The painting is full of symbolic meaning, with the contrast between light and dark, and between luxuriant, abundant plants and the thorns and weeds. Christ, the Light of the World (John 8: 12), is knocking on an overgrown and long-unopened door. ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice, and opens the door, I will come in to him, and will eat with him, and he with me’ (Revelation 3: 20).

In this passage, Saint John was writing of the Church in Laodicea, which was out of fellowship with Christ and the Church.

There are two lights in the picture: the lantern is the light of conscience and the light around Christ’s head is the light of salvation; the bright light over the figure has also been interpreted as the morning star, the dawn of the new day.

Hunt later told the banker and writer Edward Clodd (1840-1930) that he used a cast from a clay model he had made with a variety of male sitters, including his father, Millais and John Capper. Once he had ‘secured the male character in the head’, Christina Rossetti then sat for the head.

Christ’s head bears two crowns: the earthly crown of shame and his heavenly crown of glory. The thorny crown is beginning to bud and blossom. These are not thorns from a hawthorn hedge, or briars from an overgrown garden. These are thorns from branches thrown by soldiers in Palestine on a barrack-room brazier, with spikes three to four inches long, twisted into a rough-and-ready crown set firmly on Christ’s head, each sharp spike drawing blood.

Christ’s loving eyes look directly at you wherever you stand, but the sadness of his face is painful. His listening aspect shows that even at the eleventh hour he knocks hoping for an answer. His hands are nail-pierced, his half-open right hand is raised in blessing, but his feet are turned away, as if he is about to go, for he has been knocking and left waiting.

For Christ’s royal mantle, Hunt draped his mother’s best tablecloth around his model, but the symbolism was lost on many. Christ who knocks at the door invites us to his table and to the heavenly banquet. The mantle might be a cope, linking this scene with the eschatological promise in the Eucharist. This cope or mantle is secured by the Urim and Thummim, clasped by the Cross in a symbol of Judaism and Christianity being brought together. The robe is seamless, symbolising the unity of the body of Christ.

Christ’s lantern lights up his features, the doorway, and the way ahead. ‘Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.’ (Psalm 119: 105). To those living in darkness, Christ is waiting to enter their lives. The cords of the lamp, twisted around Christ’s wrist, symbolise the intense unity between Christ and the Church.

The door is overgrown with dead weeds and trailing ivy that would not be there if the door had been kept open. All the plants have been overtaken by brambles, because this a place to which the gardener has not come.

The shut door has no latch, no handle, no keyhole – it can only be opened from inside. The ironwork is rusted, for it is long since the door has been opened. The door to our hearts has to be opened from within, through repentance and faith.

The door represents the human soul, which cannot be opened from the outside. The door has no handle, and the rusty nails and hinges overgrown with ivy denote that the door has never been opened and that the figure of Christ is asking for permission to enter.

Above flies a bat, blind and unable to see in the darkness, long associated with ruin and neglect. Below, the fruit has fallen to the ground and some are rotten. The autumn weeds and fallen fruit represent the autumn of life. Yet the light from the lamp shows this fruit has come from a good tree.

The words below the picture, which are difficult to read, are from Revelation 3: 20: ‘Behold I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear my voice and open the door I will come in to him and will sup with him and he with me.’

‘The Light of the World’ is in the side chapel in Keble College designed by John Thomas Micklethwaite (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1854, before being acquired by Thomas Combe (1796-1872), Printer to the University of Oxford, and his wife Martha. Combe was a supporter of the Oxford Movement and a patron of the Pre-Raphaelites.

Thomas and Martha Combes were a generation older than the Pre-Raphaelite artists, but with no children of their own they became like surrogate parents to the young artists, especially Holman Hunt and Millais. The young artists would come and stay at their home in Oxford while they supported them by buying and commissioning works.

The Combes funded the building of Saint Barnabas Church in Jericho, Oxford, and the patronage was given to Keble College.

The painting gave rise to much popular devotion in the late Victorian period and inspired several musical works, including Arthur Sullivan’s 1873 oratorio The Light of the World. Engraved reproductions were bought for nurseries, schools and church buildings.

Thomas Combe died in 1872, and a year later his widow Martha Combes (1806-1893) donated the painting to Keble College on the understanding that it would hang in the college chapel, which was built in 1873-1876.

However, William Butterfield (1814-1900), the architect of Keble College and the architect of the Oxford Movement, was opposed to the painting hanging in the chapel and made no provision for it in his designs.

When the college library opened in 1878, Hunt’s painting was placed there. It was moved to its present position after the side chapel was built to accommodate it in 1892-1895 by another architect, John Thomas Micklethwaite (1843-1906), who had a long association with Westminster Abbey.

Hunt painted a second, smaller version between 1851 and 1856. This was bought by Manchester City Art Gallery in 1912 and has been on display there ever since. There are small differences between the first and second versions, such as the angle of the gaze, and the drape of the corner of the red cloak.

Keble College was charging a fee to view his picture, and so Hunt was persuaded to paint yet another, larger, life-sized, version towards the end of his life. He began working on it in about 1900 and finished it in 1904. Due to his increasing infirmity and glaucoma, he was assisted in completing this version by the painter Edward Robert Hughes, who also assisted with Hunt’s version of The Lady of Shalott. The third version of The Light of the World diverges more from the original ithan the second one.

This third version was sold on condition that it first toured the world to preach the Gospel and that the purchaser provided cheap colour reproductions. The social reformer Charles Booth (1840-1916) bought the painting in 1904 and donated it to Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London. It drew large crowds when it went on a world tour in 1905-1907, and it was said that four-fifths of Australia’s population viewed it. It was dedicated in Saint Paul’s Cathedral in 1908.

The Light of the World, in its three versions, in Oxford, Manchester and London, remains ‘a painted text, a sermon on canvas.’

Willem Key’s ‘The Deposition’ in the side chapel in Keble College (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Two other works of art in the side chapel in Keble College are also worth seeing. On the left wall is The Deposition, or The Dead Christ Mourned by his Mother, by the Flemish Renaissance painter Willem Key (1516-1568). It was presented to the college in memory of its previous owner, Dr William Hatchett-Jackson, the father of one of the tutors.

The icon of the Holy Trinity in the side chapel was given to Keble College by its author, Ian Knowles, in gratitude for his time as an undergraduate at Keble and as a sign of his continuing support.

Ian is the principal of the Bethlehem Icon School, part of the Bethlehem Icon Centre that he founded in 2012, and I am familiar with his icons in Lichfield Cathedral and in Saint John’s Church, Tamworth.

William Butterfield (1814-1900), the architect of Keble College, opposed Holman Hunt’s painting hanging in the chapel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)