Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2026: 165, Tuesday 20 October 2026

‘Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit’ (Luke 12: 35) … in Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese on Wine Office Court off Fleet Street, London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, and the week began with the Tentieth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XX, 18 October 2026).

Before the day begins, I am taking some quiet time 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.

‘Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit … so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks’ (Luke 12: 35-36) … an open door in the church in Piskopianó in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 12: 35-38 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 35 ‘Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; 36 be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. 37 Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. 38 If he comes during the middle of the night, or near dawn, and finds them so, blessed are those slaves.’

‘They may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks’ … Holman Hunt’s ‘The Light of the World’ in a side chapel in Keble College, Oxford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

Have you ever been burgled?

It is a frightening and a traumatic experience for anyone who has suffered it.

It is one thing to come home from a day’s work, or from a holiday, to find your house has been broken into. It is another to wake up and realise that as you were sleeping a thief has broken into your home, and is downstairs or in the next room.

It happened to me once, in a house where I was living in south Dublin.

It was in the days long before mobile ’phones and cordless ’phones. I had been working late the night before and came downstairs to answer a mid-morning call.

Unknown to me, the thieves were in the next room, having already gone through the kitchen. They were in there, having made themselves something to drink, had cut the lead to the video recorder, and were squatting on the floor in the front room, armed with the ‘kitchen devil,’ straight from the cutlery drawer, sorting through my other possessions.

They must have remained very quiet. Instead of stealing anything, they stole out the back door before I had ever put down the ’phone or realised what had happened.

It is a frightening experience, and it made me extra vigilant: extra bolts and locks, rethinking the alarm system, and so on. The police knew who the ‘likely suspects’ were, but they could offer no guarantees that the house was never going to be broken into again … and again.

It is an experience that was also a reminder of my own vulnerability, and a reminder that what I own and possess is not really mine, and not mine for very long. Finding the ‘kitchen devil’ on the floor was also a sharp reminder, literally, that even my life is not mine for very long.

And so, the image of Christ we come across at the end of this Gospel reading, of a thief coming unexpectedly to break into my house, may not be a very comforting one for those of us brought up with the image of ‘Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild.’

And yet it is an image that has echoes in the poetry of some of the great mystical writers in Anglican history. It reminds me, for example, of the words of John Donne (Holy Sonnets XIV):

Batter my heart, three-person’d God; for you
As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

I, like an usurp’d town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.

Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,

Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

It is the passionate language of love, of passionate love. But then, of course, Christ demands our passion, our commitment, our love.

Christ’s call to us in this reading, the demands Christ is making on us in this reading, are not just addressed to the Disciples.

Christ is speaking to the disciples in particular, and teaching them about the kingdom (Luke 12: 1). But as he is speaking to them, someone in the crowd – like a heckler – interrupts and asks a question (see Luke 12: 13).

The inner circle of the Disciples must have felt they were being broken into by those on the rims, those in the crowd of outsiders, the crowd or multitude following Christ but who were not among the Disciples.

So Christ’s demands are made not just of some inner circle, for some elite group within the Church, for those who are seen as pious and holy.

This is a demand he makes also to those on the margins, for the sake of those on the margins, that he makes on the whole Church for the sake of those on the margins.

We are to be ever vigilant that we do not keep those on the margins on the outside for too long. They may appear like thieves trying to break in. But when we welcome in those on the outside who we see as thieves, we may find we are welcoming Christ himself.

And in welcoming Christ himself, into our inner sanctum, we are making it a sign of the Kingdom. The Church needs to be a place not where we feel secure, but where the outsider feels welcome, where they can feast and taste what the Kingdom of God is like.

What is this Kingdom like?

Where is it?

When shall we find it?

In this Gospel reading, Christ tells the multitude – the multitude who are gathered just like the 5,000 who were gathered earlier on the hillside and fed with the multiplication of five loaves and two fish (Luke 9: 10-17) – that the kingdom is already given.

In the preceding verses, he says ‘it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom’ (Luke 12: 32), present tense. But the original Greek says ‘your Father was well pleased with you (or, took pleasure) to freely give the Kingdom to you’ (… ὅτι εὐδόκησεν ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν δοῦναι ὑμῖντὴν βασιλείαν).

God wanted to do something good for the ‘little flock’ (verse 32), and so freely gave them the kingdom – the reign of God – in which tables are open, status is upended, and all people are treated with dignity. In God’s Kingdom – on earth as it is in heaven – there is no scarcity, there are no class or gender barriers, there are no ‘insiders’ and no ‘outsiders.’

Christ compares that Kingdom of God with a wedding banquet.

When we go to a wedding, we have no control over what happens. In the first case, we have no control over who is getting married to whom. But, secondly, weddings break down all our petty snobberies and all our status-seeking.

Whatever we think of the choice of bride or groom, we have no say at all in who is going to be a new brother-in-law, a new mother-in-law, and even into the future, who is going to be a new cousin to our children’s children.

It’s enough to make you laugh.

Sarah laughed when she was told about her future family (see Genesis 18: 12). There is a hint of this story in the Letter to the Hebrews, where the writer reminds us of the faith of Abraham and Sarah (see Hebrews 11: 11, 13-16).

Despite our failings, the failings of society, the failings of politics, God’s promises of the Kingdom multiply beyond all our expectations, even beyond the expectations of modern Bible translators.

We cannot control this. Those who come into the banquet may appear to us like thieves and burglars, brazenly breaking into our own family home, into our own family.

But we may find that the thief is actually Christ trying to break into our hearts to let us know that the kingdom is already here.

The word for master here is actually κύριος (kyrios), Lord, the word used in the Greek Old Testament for the Lord God by Jews who found the use of the name of God offensive and blasphemous. But using the word master for κύριος hides away God’s work, confusing the Lord, the ‘Son of Man’ (ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, ho yios tou anthropou), with the ‘master of the house,’ the householder (οἰκοδεσπότης, oikodespótēs).

Think of how the word κύριος (kyrios), Lord, was used by Abraham as he addresses the three visitors to Abraham and Sarah at the Oak of Mamre. The strangers become angels, and the angels come to represent the Triune God.

Had Abraham treated his visitors as thieves, where would we be today? Instead he sets a banquet before the Three, and finds not once but three times that he has an encounter with the living Lord (Genesis 18: 3, 13, 14), the Triune God, an encounter that leads Abraham and Sarah to a faith that ushers in the promises of the Kingdom.

The Lord who arrives for the banquet and stands knocking at the door (Luke 12: 36) in this Gospel reading is the same Christ who says: ‘Behold, I am standing at the door knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come into you and eat with you, and you with me’ (Revelation 3: 20).

He comes in ways we do not expect, and at ‘the unexpected hour,’ the time we ‘think nothing of’ (ἧ ὥρᾳ οὐ δοκεῖτε, he hora ou dokeite, Luke 12: 40) – ‘an hour that seems like nothing.’ He does not bother trying to tear down our puny defences. He sneaks around them instead.

Welcome to the banquet.

Welcome to the kingdom.

Allow the stranger among you, and the stranger within you, to open that door and discover that Christ is not a thief trying to steal what you have, but is the Lord who is trying to batter our hearts and tear down our old barriers so that we can all feast together at the new banquet:

Batter my heart, three-person’d God; for you
As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
…
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

‘For you as yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend’ … a bust of John Donne at Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 20 October 2026):

The theme this week (18 to 24 October) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Inclusive Education in Handeni’ (pp 48-49). This theme was introduced on Sunday with a programme update from Father John George Sembuyagi, Programme Lead, Diocese of Tanga, Anglican Church of Tanzania.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Tuesday 20 October 2026) invites us to pray:

Gracious God, we pray for teachers at the Kwamkono Disabled Centre, that they may be inspired, equipped, and sustained in their work. Help the staff to create classrooms of welcome where all are valued.

The Collect of the Day:

God, the giver of life,
whose Holy Spirit wells up within your Church:
by the Spirit’s gifts equip us to live the gospel of Christ
and make us eager to do your will,
that we may share with the whole creation
the joys of 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:

God our Father,
whose Son, the light unfailing,
has come from heaven to deliver the world
from the darkness of ignorance:
let these holy mysteries open the eyes of our understanding
that we may know the way of life,
and walk in it without stumbling;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

God, our light and our salvation:
illuminate our lives,
that we may see your goodness in the land of the living,
and looking on your beauty
may be changed into the likeness of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

‘Be like those who are waiting for their master to return … so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks’ (Luke 12: 35-36) … the open West Door of Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick (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

Reading ‘The Cocktail Party’ by TS Eliot with the Stony Stratford Playreaders

The TS Eliot Theatre at Merton College, Oxford … the Stony Stratford Playreaders have been reading TS Eliot’s play ‘The Cocktail Party’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

I have been part of the Stony Stratford Playreaders group for about two years now, and we are now rehearsing our contributions to the Stony Words Festival next January.

Last night, on my suggestion, we also read The Cocktail Party, a three-act verse drama written by TS Eliot in 1948 that focuses on the themes of modern existence, identity and spiritual yearning, told through intricate dialogue and drama.

The Cocktail Party tells of a troubled married couple who, through the intervention of a mysterious stranger, settle their problems and move on with their lives. The play was first performed at the Edinburgh Festival in 1949 and first published in 1950. It was the most popular of Eliot’s seven plays in his lifetime, although his 1935 play, Murder in the Cathedral, is better remembered today.

The Cocktail Party was written while Eliot was a visiting scholar in Princeto, where he received word that he had reveived that year’s Nobel Prize for literature. The play went on to have successful runs in theatres in London and New York in 1950, with the Broadway production receiving the 1950 Tony Award for Best Play.

At its debut in Edinburgh: critics acclaimed the play as ‘the most advanced and original point yet reached in Mr Eliot’s dramatic writing.’ Reviewers delighted in the subtlety of Eliot’s verse, and the ‘spirit of early Shaw’ which elicited a ‘high-pitched intellectual giggle … frequently drowned by the full-throated roar’. Some reviewers, however, found the play ‘insufficiently poetic’ and ‘perhaps the weakest poetry that Eliot has yet written.’

The Cocktail Party draws on the play Alcestis by Euripides and the Orpheus and Eurydice legend, and it has been described as ‘a play on two planes’: the level of the divine, and a drawing-room comedy.

The characters are: Edward Chamberlayne, Lavinia Chamberlayne, Celia Coplestone, with whom Edward has had an affair, Peter Quilpe, who yearns for Celia, Julia Shuttlethwaite, Alexander MacColgie Gibbs, an Unidentified Guest, later identified as Sir Henry Harcourt-Reilly, a Nurse-Secretary, who is secretary to Sir Henry, and two caterer’s men.

The characters Reilly, Julia, and Alexender are not, in fact, humans but angelic beings dedicated to the transhumanisation of the human soul. Two paths lie open to humans: the first is the way of companionable self-deception (‘the hearth’) embraced by the vast majority – as epitomised in the relationship between Edward and Lavinia; and the second is that of the saint, embraced by a few.

The Faber and Faber office at 24 Russell Square in Bloomsbury, where TS Eliot was working when he was writing ‘The Cocktail Pary’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The drama of the first act revolves around Edward Chamberlayne, who is hosting a cocktail party, all the while disguising the fact that his wife Lavinia has left him.

In the course of the play a mysterious guest, originally played by Alec Guinness, turns out to be a Harley Street psychologist, Sir Henry Harcourt-Reilly. He returns Lavinia to Edward, and teaches the two that their lives are better together, though superficial.

Simultaneous to the main drama of the play is the story of Edward’s mistress, Celia, who has been described as ‘Eliot’s most moving character’. She journeys beyond the drawing room and leaves to become a missionary in the East. At a second cocktail party, two years later, it is revealed that she died horribly, crucified in the service of God and eaten by ants on a cross in a far-off land.

Eliot may have based the character of Julia on a woman who was born in Stony Stratford and who helped Eliot when he was writing the play. Mary Trevelyan (1897-1983), who was born in Stony Stratford, was the eldest of six children of the Revd George Philip Trevelyan (1858-1937), Vicar of Saint Mary’s, Wolverton (1885-1897).

They had first met in Swanwick, Derbyshire, at a conference of the Student Christian Movement (SCM). She helped Eliot to transcribe the song ‘One-eyed Reilly’, a song he had heard in his youth. Eliot sometimes referred to Mary as Jullia, and it is said he modelled the character Julia in The Cocktail Party on her.

The name of Celia Coplestone seems to be Eliot’s homage to Father Frederick Coplestone (1907-1994), the Jesuit philosopher who had recently referred to Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral in a celebrated BBC broadcast debate with Bertrand Russell on the existence of God. Celia’s choice of a missionary life may be an oblique reference to Copleston’s two uncles who were SPG-supported Anglican missionaries: Reginald Stephen Copleston, who was Bishop of Calcutta and Ernest Copleston, was Bishop of Colombo.

Celia’s choice of missionary destination, Kinkanja, may also refer to Mary Trevelyan’s work in North Borneo (today’s Sabah), with a terrifying description of the indigenous culture that was still circulating at the time in England.

In The Cocktail Party, Eliot reconciles the drawing room and divinity, bringing the play its most praise, with one review describing Eliot as both ‘a literary craftsman and a moral prophet.’

There is a sense too in which Eliot seems to have used the play to exorcise his own personal demons, including his own questioning of his ability and recognition as a poet. The way Edward and Lavinia sett;e for a passionless coexistence, their marital spats and Edward’s guilty remorse echo Eliot’s anguished relationship with his wife Vivienne, who had died in 1947. In addition to exploring his private hell, Eliot suggests that the only alternative to the bleak materialism of the post-war world is some form of ecstatic sacrifice.

I was intrigued many years ago by the way a production of the play was part of the assessment of a module at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and thought at one time (albeit momentarily) of borrowing the idea in one module I taught at the Church of Ireland Theological College.

Barry Spurr, in Anglo-Catholic in Religion: TS Eliot and Christianity, recalls that when an Episcopalian priest suggested to Eliot that The Cocktail Party was ‘covertly all about the Mass, Eliot responded: ‘I really wanted to write a damn good play, and I hope I did.’

One critic summarised the play succinctly: ‘know yourself; choose, come to terms with your insignificance, or, if you happen to be one of the saintly few, face the full consequences of your choice.’

‘The best of a bad job is all any of us make of it’, Sir Henry says in his final lines, ‘Except of course, the saints.’

A journey back to Narnia, visiting the grave and home of CS Lewis in Headington and his links with Oxford

The grave of CS Lewis and his brother Warnie Lewis in the churchyard at Holy Trinity Church in Headington Quarry, Oxford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

During two recent visits to Headington in Oxford, I visited some of the churches in the area, including Saint Andrew’s Church, Headington, Headington Baptist Church, Corpus Christi Catholic Church, and Saint Michael and All Angels, New Marston.

In a posting on Sunday afternoon,I also described visiting Holy Trinity Church in Headington Quarry, which is known particularly for its associations with the Belfast-born writer CS Lewis (1898-1963), who lived and worked for most of his life in Oxford, and who was a regular parishioner in Holy Trinity Church for more than 30 years.

As I walked around Headington I found more associations with CS Lewis, including The Kilns, the house where he lived on a street off Kiln Lane now known as Lewis Court, the CS Lewis Nature Reserve, and the house in Headington where his wife Joy Davidman once lived.

CS Lewis was a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, for almost 30 years (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

In the past, I have introduced a tutorial group to CS Lewis and his spirituality, written about him for American magazines to mark the 50th anniversary of his death, listened to lectures in Cambridge by Metropolitan Kallistos on the meaning of love in the writings of CS Lewis, visited churches and houses in Belfast that were part of his childhood, and visited places in Oxford associated with academic life and his work as a writer.

The Belfast-born writer, Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) is known for his literary criticism, children’s literature, fantasy literature and, essays, as well as his works in theology and as a Christian apologist. His great works include Mere Christianity, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Screwtape Letters, The Four Loves and Surprised by Joy.

CS Lewis was an undergraduate at at University College, Oxford, then taught as a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, for almost 30 years, from 1925 to 1954. He met JRR Tolkien for the first time 100 years ago, on 11 May 1926. They remained lifelong friends and key figures in the Inklings, the literary group that meet each week in the Eagle and Child on St Giles in Oxford, and Tolkien was influential in his decision to return to Christianity and the Anglicanism of his birth.

In 1954, he moved from Oxford to Cambridge as the first Professor of Mediaeval and Renaissance English and a fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge. But he never had the same impact on Cambridge as he had on Oxford.

Joy Davidman Gresham was living at 10 Old High Street, Headington, when she married CS Lewis 70 years ago in 1956 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Lewis married the American writer Joy Davidman Gresham, then living at 10 Old High Street, Headington. She was 17 years his junior and they were married 70 years ago at the register office, 42 St Giles, Oxford, on 23 April 1956. Their friend, the Revd Peter Bide, provided a church blessing at her bed in the Churchill Hospital on 21 March 1957, despite a decree by Harry Carpenter, Bishop of Oxford, that the Church’s prohibition of remarriage for divorcees should be upheld in his diocese. Joy she moved into his home, The Kilns, in Headington in April 1957.

The couple had a brief holiday in Greece and the Aegean shortly before she died of cancer at the age of 45 on 13 July 1960. In A Grief Observed, Lewis describes his experience of bereavement in a raw and deeply personal way.

While Lewis attended the chapel in Magdalen College during the week, he never attended Choral Evensong there and went to the early Sunday morning service in his local parish church, Holy Trinity Church in Headington Quarry, probably from some time in 1930. The Kilns, his home from 1930, is a ten-minute walk from the church. He took communion for the first since he was a boy at Holy Trinity Church on Christmas Day 1931.

Lewis Close leads to The Kilns, where CS Lewis lived from 1930 and to the CS Lewis Nature Reserve (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

He had a lifelong dislike of organ music and preferred to attend the 8 am said Communion service. Sunday after Sunday, for more than 30 years, he sat in the same pew, close to a pillar where he could observe the service but was shielded from the view of other people in the congregation.

On 15 July 1940, having been unwell, he decided to have a lie-in and attend the 11 am service instead. He did not get on particularly well with the vicar of that time and found his sermons tedious. On that Sunday his mind started to wander, but his wandering was productive: during the sermon and as he walked back to The Kilns, the concept and outline for The Screwtape Letters was almost completely formed in his mind.

Lewis died three years after Joy, on 22 November 1963, a week before his 65th birthday, and is buried in the churchyard in the churchyard in Headington.

The Narnia window in the north aisle of Holy Trinity Chuurch, Headington, was dedicated in 1991 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

CS Lewis was a regular parishioner in Holy Trinity for more than four decades and is commemorated in the Narnia window in the north aisle and also has a simple grave is in the churchyard. CS Lewis and his brother Warren Lewis began attending the church in 1930 and remained active in the church until their deaths, CS Lewis in 1963 and WH Lewis in 1973.

The Narnia window in the north aisle by Sally Scott in the north includes images from CS Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia and was installed in 1991.

The window depicts the Garden of Eden as CS Lewis described it: a landscape of talking animals, speaking trees, courage and kindness, shot through with the light from outside and physically very accessible. Above, the lantern in the trefoil, the holy dove seems to shed peace on all that happens below.

The Narnia window was created as a memorial at once to the writer who sat in the pew by the window, and a bequest in remembrance of two local children who are buried in the churchyard. The Howe Bequest was made by George and Kathleen Howe, lived at Grovelands Road in Risinghurst, close to the Lewis brothers, as a memorial to their children, William George Howe (1938-1954) and Gillian Margaret Howe (1945-1947).

The artist and sculptural glass engraver Sally Scott was commissioned to create the window. After receiving the Narnia brief, she reread the books and drew inspiration too from the clear-glass engraved doors of Coventry Cathedral, and. Because the window is at eye level, she could fill her pictures with activity at a scale that is right for children.

The images include: Aslan, the great lion and creator, from whose mane streams light; two boys on a flying horse; a small girl flying on a talking owl; a and the castle Cair Paravel, which became the seat of good government on earth. Below are the heads of a unicorn, a bearded dwarf, an antlered stag, a mouse and a small bird. Along the bottom are the magic gifts made to the children by Aslan: a bottle of healing elixir, a sword and shield, bow and arrow, and the horn that summons divine help.

The top corners display the coat of arms of John Williams, Lord Williams of Thame, who founded Lord Williams’s School, where Willie was at school when he died. Three local children modelled the Narnia children and the window was dedicated on 2 July 1991.

CS Lewis died at his home, The Kilns, on 22 November 1963 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

CS Lewis died at his home, The Kilns, on 22 November 1963, the same day as the assassination of John F Kennedy. He was buried a few days later in the churchyard at Holy Trinity, the parish church he had attended for many years. Many of his friends and colleagues were unaware of his death and his funeral. JRR Tolkien was one of only 30 or so people at his funeral.

His brother Warren Hamilton Lewis, who died on 9 April 1973, is was buried in the same grave. The grave is marked by a modest headstone, their names, dates of birth and death, and a brief inscription. The epitaph, chosen by his Warren Hamilton Lewis, is from Shakespeare’s King Lear: ‘Men must endure their going hence.’ This quotation was the quotation on the family calendar the day their mother died, 23 August 1908.

Other graves in the churchyard include those of Mrs Janie Moore, the ‘adopted mother’, of CS Lewis, who died on 12 January 1951; William Kimber, the ‘father of English Morris’ as his gravestone describes him; and six war graves of soldiers from World War I.

The former register office at 42 St Giles, where CS Lewis and Joy Davidman married 70 years ago, is now a private dental practice (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The Kilns on Lewis Close is a short walk from Holy Trinity Church, and I retraced the route CS Lewis may have walked back home that Sunday morning in 1940 as he developed the concept and outline for The Screwtape Letters in his mind.

The bus from Headington back into Oxford brought me past Magdalen College where he had been a fellow for much of his life.

On St Giles, the former register office at No 42, where CS Lewis and Joy Davidman were married 70 years ago, is now a private dental practice.

The Eagle and Child at 49 St Giles, where Lewis, Tolkien and the Inklings met regularly, has long been covered in cladding and scaffolding, with promises from the developers that it will reopen some time in 2027.

The Eagle and Child, where the Inklings once met regularly, is covered in cladding and scaffolding (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

For my guide to churches, chapels and religious buildings and sites in Oxford, visit here

61 million sq m in Sinai, 61 million with a disability, £61 million for the Ashmolean, and 61 million blog readers

The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford completed a £61 million redevelopment in 2009 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

This blog reached a new record, with a total of 61 million readers or hits by about 9 pm last night (11 October 2026). This is the second time this month that this blog has passed the million-reader mark, having reached 60 million readers or hits a week earlier (4 October 2026). Before this, last month (September 2026) was an exceptionally busy time on this blog, with a steady, overwhelming rise in viewing and reading figures, passing the million mark on 10 occasions last month alone.

These viewing and readership figures continue to be overpowering as this blog continues to reach volumes of readers I never expected when I first started blogging 16 years ago. At the end of last year, this blog had 21 million hits (31 December 2025). So far this year, there have been more than 40 million hits or visitors in 2026 alone, and more than 10.4 million last month (September), the highest total in any single month since I began blogging.

Half of all hits or reader figures have been within a little more than six months or so, with 30.5 million hits since early April 2026. I first began blogging in 2010, and it took almost two years until July 2012 to reach half a million readers. Throughout this year, the daily figures have often been overwhelming, with an average of 130,000 to 140,000 so far this month.

Some curious though random statistics help to put this new figure of 61 million into perspective:

Results from a randomised controlled trial of political mobilisation messages delivered to 61 million Facebook users during the US congressional elections in 2010 show that the messages directly influenced political self-expression, information seeking and real-world voting behaviour of millions of people. The messages not only influenced the users who received them but also the users’ friends, and friends of friends.

A £61 million redevelopment of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford was completed in November 2009 and officially reopened by Queen Elizabeth II in December 2009. The project, designed by Rick Mather Architects, replaced poor 19th-century additions behind the 1845 Grade I-listed Charles Robert Cockerell Greek revival building.

An estimated 61 million adults in the US – about 1 in 4 adults – are living with a disability. They have described as the largest and fasted growing minority in the US, yet they are constantly jeered and mocked by Donald Trump at public events.

Amid fears of renewed conflict in Northern Ethiopia, the EU is providing €61 million in humanitarian funding to help the most vulnerable people in Ethiopia affected by conflict, displacement, disease outbreaks and climate-related hazards, including the impact of El Niño.

A £61 million fund to encourage people to save treasured local assets was launched in June as part of a set of reforms aimed at putting more power in the hands of communities in the UK. The £61 million fund is aimed at encouraging local people to step in and save pubs, shops and other community gems.

61 million metres is 61,000 km and 61 million square metres is 61,000 sq km. The Sinai Peninsula between the Gulfs of Suez and Aqaba at the north end of the Red Sea, has an area of 61,000 sq km (approximately 23,500 sq miles), or about 6 % of Egypt’s total area.

Voyager 1 has a Sun relative velocity of about 17 km/s which is about 61,000 km/h. Voyager 1 has been traveling at 38,000 mph since 1977 and will keep drifting through interstellar space for millions of years.

Switzerland has around 61,000 km of rivers and streams and 1,500 lakes.

61 million minutes is equal to 115 years, 11 months, and 23 days, which means that if this blog was receiving just one hit a minute, I would need to have started blogging back in November 1910.

I retired from active parish ministry over 4½ years ago, on 31 March 2022. These days, though, about 150 people on average are reading my daily prayer diary posted on this blog each morning, or more than 1,000 people each week. As this blog moves beyond 61 million hits, I am truly grateful today to the real readers among that 61 million. In particular, I am thankful for the faithful core group of people who join me in prayer, scripture reading and reflections each day.

Saint Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai … the Sinai Peninsula has an area of 61,000 sq km or 61 million square metres

Holy Trinity Church, a Gothic church in Headington Quarry, Oxford, designed by Gilbert Scott and with links with CS Lewis

Holy Trinity Church in Headington Quarry, Oxford, was designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott and was built in 1848-1849 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

During two recent visits to Headington in Oxford, I visited some of the churches in the area, including Saint Andrew’s Church, Headington, Headington Baptist Church, Corpus Christi Catholic Church, and Saint Michael and All Angels, New Marston.

But, perhaps, the best-known church in the area is Holy Trinity Church in Headington Quarry, known particularly for its associations with the Belfast-born writer CS Lewis (1898-1963), who lived and worked for most of his life in Oxford, and who was a regular parishioner in Holy Trinity Church for more than 30 years.

Inside Holy Trinity Church, Headington Quarry, facing the east end (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

At first sight, Holy Trinity Church may look like a mediaeval church. But, in fact, it only dates back less than 200 years to April 1849. It is built in the 15th century decorated style, with a nave, north aisle, south porch, and a gable bell-cote with two bells at the west end.

The church was designed by the prolific Gothic Revival architect, Sir George Gilbert Scott (1811-1878), who is known for designing, building and renovating churches and cathedrals in the Gothic style. He was born in Gawcott, on the outskirts of Buckingham, and designed he Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras Station, the Albert Memorial, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London, Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Glasgow, Glasgow University, Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Edinburgh, and King’s College Chapel, London. His work in Oxford includes the Martyrs’ Memorial and Exeter College Chapel.

Holy Trinity Church, Headington Quarry, was built in 1848-1849 to serve the needs of people living and working in the then-active quarry.

Inside Holy Trinity Church, Headington Quarry, looking west from the chancel and east end (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford (1845-1869), was instrumental in getting the church built in Quarry, which he described in a sermon on 9 June 1847 as a ‘hamlet’ in a ‘wild, rural district’. He claimed Headington Quarry had been ‘long cursed by the neighbourhood of Oxford vice’ and said its ‘peculiar circumstances’ demanded ‘the sympathy and assistance of … Christian neighbours’.

Early subscriptions towards building the church included £50 from Charles Tawney, who also gave the site for Headington National School. There were large donations too from the Revd Thomas Henry Whorwood, Vicar of Saint Andrew’s, Headington, and Lord of the Manor of Headington (£25); John Matthews of Headington Manor House (£21); George Ballachey of Bury Knowle House (£20); and Digby Latimer of Headington House (£20).

Other contributors included the heads of Worcester College, University College, New College, Queen’s College, Trinity College, All Souls’ College and Exeter College, the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, and the Revd Edward Pusey. Later subscribers included Magdalen College (£200) and Queen Victoria (£20), as well as Oriel College, Brasenose College, Corpus Christi College, Lincoln College, Merton College, Wadham College and Worcester College.

The stone was quarried from Quarry Farm Pit, and the contractors were Wyatt’s of Oxford.

The chancel, High Altar and East Window in Holy Trinity Church, Headington Quarry (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Bishop Samuel Wilberforce laid the foundation stone of the church on 19 June 1848, and consecrated the new church on 22 November 1849. The first Vicar was the Revd Thomas Masterman in 1849-1851. The vicarage house at 42 Quarry Road was built in 1868 for the Revd Arthur Dalton. It was designed by the architect Arthur Blomfield, who designed Saint Barnabas’s Church, Jericho, the following year. The vicarage was converted into flats in 1992.

Holy Trinity Church is a Grade II listed building, with a nave that includes an east window by Sir Ninian Comper, a chancel, a north aisle with the Lady Chapel, a large double bellcote and diagonal buttresses. It is built in coursed rubble limestone with ashlar detailing and stone locally quarried at Quarry Farm Pit, and has red tile roofs.

There are two-light, three-light and lancet windows and a tall south-west porch with two windows. The low north aisle has squat, square-headed windows in a late mediaeval style.

The East Window designed by Sir Ninian Comper (1864-1960) depicts Christ in Glory and was installed in 1951 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Inside, the chancel is the same height as the nave, there is a stone arcade, a chancel arch, and a stone pulpit and font, with plain benches in the nave and aisle. Above the altar, the East Window was designed by Sir Ninian Comper (1864-1960) and depicts Christ in Glory. The window was installed in 1951 as a memorial to parishioners who died in World War II.

The symbol at the top of the East Window is that of the Holy Trinity with the heraldic symbols of the Diocese of Oxford and the Oxford industrialist Lord Nuffield below. Comper’s distinguishing strawberry mark is in the bottom right-hand corner of the window.

The first piece of stained glass in the church, a window depicting the Crucifixion, was placed in the East Window by the Revd Arthur Dalton, vicar of the parish in 1867-1870. The centrepiece has since been installed in the Lady Chapel.

The tapestry behind the altar was designed by Father Elias Polomski and is inspired by Andrei Rublev’s icon of the Holy Trinity (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The church was refurbished and redecorated in the early 1990s, at the initiative of the vicar, the Revd Christopher Hewetson. The altar area and the chancel were remodelled, when the old curtain that hung in front of the east window was swept away, the stone work was cleaned, much of the floor was renewed, new lighting was installed, and the bosses were regilded. Two clergy stalls were added, and the roof was boarded because of the decay of the original plaster.

At the same time, the altar was moved from the east wall in the chancel, allowing west-facing celebrations of the Eucharist.

During the refurbishment and redecoration, old and decaying curtains were removed, and a new tapestry was hung behind the altar in 1994. It was designed by Father Elias Polomski, curate of the parish in 1990-1994. It is inspired by Andrei Rublev’s icon of the Holy Trinity and depicts the three angels who visited Abraham in Genesis 18. The other panels of the tapestry depict the rocks, oak trees and ponds of Shotover, to the east of the parish, with a scattering of Greek long-necked sheep.

It took volunteers from the parish over 2,000 hours and two years to complete the tapestry. The completed tapestry was dedicated by the Bishop of Oxford on 17 July 1994.

The chancel window depicting Saint Andrew and Saint Philip confuses the Gospel scenes associated with each saint (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The chancel two-light window depicting Saint Andrew, the patron saint of Headington, and Saint Philip, are in memory of a former vicar, the Revd Philip Doyne (1916-1924). But the windows were assembled incorrectly in the workshop, so that each saint has the Gospel scene associated with the other.

The chancel organ was built by Kenneth Tickell of Northampton and was installed in 1992. The colours and pipe shades were also designed by Father Elias Polomski.

The chancel also has a credence table in memory of a former vicar, the Revd Eric Bleiben, and a piscina in memory of a former sacristan, Anne Kimber.

The Lady Chapel at the east end of the north aisle was added in the 1990s (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The Lady Chapel at the east end of the north aisle was added in the 1990s as a memorial to the Revd Ronald Heald, vicar in 1956-1990. The altar and chairs were also designed by Father Elias Polomski and made by Hugh Croft of Devon. Other furnishings include the carpet, chandelier, icon from Athens, and an antique Persian lamp and chain.

The Athens icon was bought by Father Charles Smith of Corpus Christi Church when he was in Athens in May 1994 for the Greek Orthodox Easter. The Trinity icon was a gift from Bishop Malkhaz Songulashvili of the Georgian Baptist Church, who had studied in Oxford, and was blessed by him on Trinity Sunday 2010. The statue of the Virgin Mary and Christ Child is a copy of a French Gothic statue in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The iconof the Theotokos was bought in Athens in May 1994 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The stained glass by the pulpit depicts the Archangel Gabriel and was installed in 1910 in memory of the Revd Charles Longland, who died in 1908 and his daughter Mary Elizabeth who had died in her teens. The scroll has Gothic script with the words ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son’ (John 3:16).

The Baptistry window shows the Holy Spirit descending on the font. It was installed in 1916 in memory of Kate Johnston, wife of the Revd Charles Johnston (Vicar in 1891-1916).

The Narnia window in the north aisle by Sally Scott in the north aisle includes images from CS Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia and was installed in 1991.

The vestry, which is a 20th century addition, is single-storeyed with a flat roof and extends north from the east end of the aisle.

The Narnia window by Sally Scott in the north aisle was installed in 1991 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Holy Trinity Church, Headington Quarry, is still remembered today for its associations with the writer CS Lewis, who was a regular parishioner for more than three decades. He is commemorated in the Narnia window and in his simple grave is in the churchyard. CS Lewis and his brother Warren Lewis, began attending the church in 1930 and remained active in this church until their deaths, CS Lewis in 1963 and WH Lewis in 1973. But more about CS Lewis and Headington Quarry in the days to come, hopefully.

• The Revd Martin Little is the Vicar of Holy Trinity, Headington Quarry. Sunday services are 8 am, Holy Communion (Book of Common Prayer); 10 am, Parish Communion; 6 pm, evening service once a month, varying from Choral Evensong to seasonal celebrations, to informal worship. Midweek services include Holy Communion at 10 am, Wednesday, and Morning Prayer at 9 am, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

Holy Trinity Church, Headington Quarry, was built in the 15th century decorated style (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

For my guide to churches, chapels and religious buildings and sites in Oxford, visit here

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2026: 152, Wednesday 7 October 2026

Saint Matthew’s version of the Lord’s Prayer (bottom left) on the reredos in Saint Mary Woonoth Church in the City of London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, and this week began with the Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XVIII, 4 October). Today is the third anniversary of the horrific attacks on kibbutzim close to the border between Israel and Gaza on 7 October 2023.

Later this evening, I hope to take part in the choir rehearsals in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford. Before today begins, however, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, and 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.

‘Lord, teach us to pray’ (Luke 11: 1) … prayer books and prayer shawls in the Kadoorie Mekor Haim in Porto (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 11: 1-4 (NRSVA):

1 He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.’ 2 He said to them, ‘When you pray, say:

Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
3 Give us each day our daily bread.
4 And forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
And do not bring us to the time of trial.’

‘Give us each day our daily bread’ (Luke 11: 3) … bread in the window of Knead Baker on Oxford’s High Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

The version of the Lord’s Prayer in Saint Luke’s Gospel (Luke 11: 2-4) is not the same as the familiar text we use, based on the version in Saint Matthew’s text.

In Saint Matthew’s Gospel, Christ teaches the Lord’s Prayer within the context of the Sermon on the Mount. But in Saint Luke’s Gospel, immediately after visiting the home of Mary and Martha in Bethany, Christ finds a private place to pray. It is then that the disciples ask him to teach them ‘to pray, as John taught his disciples.’

The disciples are already familiar not only with the prayers of Saint John the Baptist, but also with traditional Jewish prayers in the home, in the synagogue and in the Temple in Jerusalem.

As a rabbi and a religious leader, Jesus was responsible for teaching his followers how to fulfil Jewish religious commandments, including the obligation to pray at certain times and in certain forms.

Then and now, a religious community has a distinctive way of praying; ours is exemplified by the Lord’s Prayer, which is a communal rather than individual prayer, expressed in the plural and not the singular:

Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread.
And forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
And do not bring us to the time of trial.

We approach God in a personal way, as Father. We then bring before him five petitions that are not on behalf of me personally, but on behalf of us, on behalf of all.

Sometimes we miss out on the impact of the Lord’s Prayer because we are so familiar with it. But, in the public worship of the Church, we often facilitate people missing out on the impact of the Lord’s Prayer when we privatise it.

Many of us were taught to pray the Lord’s Prayer as a private personal prayer as children, perhaps even saying it kneeling by our bedside, hands joined together, fingers pointing up.

So often, in our churches, we encourage people to kneel for the Lord’s Prayer, as if this was now both the most sacred and the most personal part of the Liturgy, rather than asking them to remain standing and to continue in collective prayer.

At synods and mission conferences, we often invite everyone present to say the Lord’s Prayer in their own first language. In this way, a collective, public prayer becomes a private, personal prayer, detached from and ignoring where everyone else is at each stage in the petitions.

As someone with English as my first language, I often notice how others finish a lot later than we do – the Finns in particular, but even the Germans too. Each language has its own rhythms and cadences. And the cacophony and conflicting rhythms mean it sounds as if we are in Babel rather than praying together, collectively and in the plural.

The first two petitions place us in God’s presence (‘hallowed be your name’ and ‘your kingdom come’), the next two bring our needs before God, both physical (‘daily bread,’ verse 3) and spiritual (forgiveness, verse 4), and the final petition has an eschatological dimension, looks forward to the fulfilment of all God’s promises, in God’s own time (‘the time of trial,’ verse 4).

The ‘time of trial’ is the final onslaught of evil forces, before Christ comes again, but also refers to the temptations we experience day-by-day.

So there is a temporal and an eternal dimension to these petitions, even when we pray for ourselves in the here and now.

The privatisation of the Lord’s Prayer, even on Sundays, takes away from its impact and from the collective thrust of each of the petitions.

Jesus, when he is teaching us to pray, is responding not to one individual but to the disciples as the core, formative, collective group of the Church. God is addressed not as my Father, but our Father, and each petition that follows is in the plural: our daily bread, our forgiveness, our sins, our debts, how we forgive, and do not ‘bring us.’

When we say ‘Amen’ at the end, are we really saying ‘Amen’ to the holiness of God’s name, to the coming of the Kingdom, to the needs of each being met on a daily basis, to forgiveness both given and received, to being put on the path of righteousness and justice, to others falling into no evil or into no harm.

If we privatise the Lord’s Prayer, we leave little room for its collective impact to grab a hold of those who are praying, and we leave little room for our own conversion, which is a continuing and daily need.

And so, let the kingdom, the power and the glory be God’s as we pray together:

Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread.
And forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
And do not bring us to the time of trial.

‘Give us each day our daily bread’ … bread at a restaurant in Panormos, near Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 7 October 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, 4-10 October 2026 (pp 44-45), is ‘The Gun, The Sword, and The Bible’. This theme was introduced on Sunday with a reflection by the Revd Les Isaac OBE, founder and President of Ascension Trust and co-founder of Street Pastors.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Wednesday 7 October 2026) invites us to pray:

Father, teach us to recognise that you have called all peoples into Your Kingdom. Break down division and unite us as true brothers and sisters in Christ.

The Collect of the Day:

Almighty and everlasting God,
increase in us your gift of faith
that, forsaking what lies behind
and reaching out to that which is before,
we may run the way of your commandments
and win the crown of everlasting joy;
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:

We praise and thank you, O Christ, for this sacred feast:
for here we receive you,
here the memory of your passion is renewed,
here our minds are filled with grace,
and here a pledge of future glory is given,
when we shall feast at that table where you reign
with all your saints for ever.

Additional Collect:

God, our judge and saviour,
teach us to be open to your truth
and to trust in your love,
that we may live each day
with confidence in the salvation which is given
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

‘Give us each day our daily bread’ … bread and wine on the table at the end of the day in the Sunset Taverna in Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

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

A walk down memory lane along Jack Straw’s Lane in Oxford, looking for signs of a long-gone youth hostel

Jack Straw’s Lane in Headington still has a semi-rural, almost rustic, feeling to it (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

I was in Headington in Oxford twice last week, with an appointment for an ECG in John Radcliffe Hospital, and taking time to visit many of the churches in the Headington area and to explore some of the literary links in the area with CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien.

But there was a sentimental reason or a search for memories too during those visits. After I left school in 1969, I spent many weekends and much of my holiday time in my late teens hitchhiking around Ireland and England, usually staying in youth hostels. Some of the youth hostels in England I remember well were in Chester, Lichfield, Oxford, Cambridge, Stratford-on-Avon, Shrewsbury and London, and at Ilam Hall in Derbyshire and Wilderhope Manor in Shropshire.

I remember the youth hostel in Oxford because it was in Cowley House on Jack Straw’s Lane. In those days, youth hostelers could stay in any one hostel for no more than three nights and were expected at hostels run by An Oige and the YHA to arrive on foot or on bicycles. It seemed that among seasoned youth hostelers it was déclassé to be seen to arrive in a car, even a car one had hitched a lift in, and probably even to arrive by bus.

And so I remember arriving at the youth hostel in Oxford late in the afternoon on foot, and leaving again to enjoy an evening out in Oxford or setting out in the morning to explore the city, walking down Jack Straw’s Lane, with its peculiar name, and catching a bus into Oxford at the corner of Marston Road.

I retraced those youthful steps taken over 55 years ago last week when I walked from Headington down the hill along Jack Straw’s Hill, wondering whether I could recognise Cowley House, the former youth hostel where I stayed when I first visited Oxford in my late teens back around 1969 or 1970.

Jack Straw’s Lane is a residential road in suburban Oxford, but still has a rural, almost rustic, atmosphere to it, despite its proximity to the centre of Oxford. It runs from the north end of Pullens Lane on Headington Hill down to Marston Road.

That part of Headington was still in the parish of Saint Andrew’s Church until the 20th century, and the lands of the Lords of the Manor of Headington included the whole of Jack Straw’s Lane. Until well into the 20th century, the lane had no name. It was originally a track at the end of Pullen’s Lane that led to Jack Straw’s farmhouse or Jack Straw’s Castle. The name of the road only dates from about 1932, and was not officially adopted until 1954.

Cowley House on Jack Straw’s Lane opened as Oxford Youth Hostel 90 years ago in 1936 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

When I stayed at the youth hostel, Jack Straw was already well-known and the elected as President of the National Union of Students from 1969 to 1971, and he went on to become a prominent Labour politician and cabinet minister. But he was not the Jack Straw who gave his name of Jack Straw Lane.

Tradition says the Jack Straw of the lane had been a farmer who lived on Headington Hill. Although many highwaymen were active in the area, they had no one leader. But the story goes that when Jack Straw died, the cellars beneath his kitchen were found to have rolls of silk, gold, silver, spices and other valuable goods that had been stolen from travellers and merchants. Yet, no one named Jack Straw was ever buried at Saint Andrew’s Church.

By 1850, Jack Straw’s Castle and farmland were owned by the Lord of the Manor of Headington and leased to John Plowman, who also leased the brickyard on Marston Road and owned another house near the Britannia in central Headington.

Plowman was an architect who had lived in St Peter-in-the-East parish in Oxford, and he was a brickyard-owner rather than a farmer. By 1861, Jack Straw’s Farm covered 105 acres in Old Headington John Plowman was a farmer living in ‘Jack Straw’s Castle’ and employing five men and a boy. His son-in-law Joseph Jones Bickerton was the Town Clerk of Oxford.

The Ordnance Survey map in 1876 shows only three buildings pn Jack Straw’s Lane, with Jack Straw’s Farmhouse, popularly known as Jack Straw’s Castle, towards the north-west. The Plowman family left around 1879, and the castle was let as a private house and the land was farmed separately. The castle was renamed as Belle Vue Lodge. The Revd Charles Morris, the Vicar of Marston, lived there from 1893 until he died in 1899.

The house was known once more as Jack Straw’s Castle by 1901. Ten years later, in 1911, all the land to the north and east of Jack Straw’s Lane, including the farm, the brickworks, and six cottages on Marston Road were sold at auction. The site of Jack Straw’s Castle and Hillside is now occupied by the Rectory Homes development at No 35-43.

The former youth hostel on Jack Straw’s Lane is now a nursery for the children of university staff and children (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Cowley House and the adjoining Cowley Cottage were built on the south side of the lane in 1898. Cowley House was built in about 1898. It was occupied by Hugh Hall from 1899 to 1902, a Mrs Valpy lived there from 1903 to 1907, and Miss Michaelson from 1909 to after 1929.

YHA Oxford Regional Group was formed in the very early days of the Association, in December 1931. Cowley House on Jack Straw’s Lane in Headington had been unoccupied for four years when it was bought for £2,100 by the YHA. It opened as Oxford Youth Hostel on Maundy Thursday, 9 April 1936, with grants from the Carnegie Trust and the Cadbury Trust, and gifts of furniture from Jesus College.

A new annexe was completed in 1939, when the accommodation increased to 98. But the youth hostel was unavailable during World War II and was used as a school. To compensate for the wartime requisition a temporary summer hostel opened in a building on the corner of Mansfield Road and Holywell Street belonging to Manchester College.

The original hotels was returned to the YHA in June 1945 and reopened on 2 January 1946. For decades, it was one of the most popular youth hostels in England, often needing extra accommodation in temporary seasonal hostels in public or educational buildings that were loaned or hired.

The youth hostel on Jack Straw’s Lane eventually closed on 14 May 2001 when a purpose-built hostel opened on Botley Road near the railway station.

Bryant Homes planned to demolish the former youth hostel on Jack Straw’s Lane and replace it with flats in 2001, but this proposal was rejected. A year later, St Hilda’s College hoped to turn the building into flats in In 2002. But eventually it was converted into the college nursery, run by Kids Unlimited. It was renamed Dorothea Beale House after one of the college’s two founders, and its address is now 32B Jack Straw’s Lane.

Field House, to the right of Dorothea Beale House, was built in the late 1920s. It was designed by the architect Herbert Luck North (1871–1941), who had formerly been an assistant to Sir Edwin Lutyens.

Other houses on the lane include Hillside, now 69 Jack Straw’s Lane, was once the home of Henry Habberley Price (1899-1984), who was Wykeham Professor of Logic.

The Milham Ford School opened on a 16-acre site at Jack Straw’s Lane in 1938, and later became a maintained grammar school for girls then a girls’ comprehensive. The school closed in 2003, it was sold and became the site of the School of Health Care of Oxford Brookes University.

Today, Jack Straw’s Lane is a residential area with high-priced houses and lined with large mature trees. The former youth hostel is now Kids Planet, an exclusive nursery for staff and students at the University of Oxford.

I continued on down Jack Straw’s Lane that afternoon last week and visited Saint Michael and All Angels Church on the corner of Marston Road, before catching a bus back into the centre of Oxford.

Jack Straw’s Lane leads from Headington to New Marston in suburban East Oxford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Saint Michael and All Angels, New Marston: a 1950s church in suburban Oxford with important works of modern art

The Church of Saint Michael and All Angels on the corner of Jack Straw’s Lane and Marston Road, Oxford … today is the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

Today is the Feast Day of Saint Michael and All Angels (29 September), and in anticipation of this feast day, I visited the Church of Saint Michael and All Angels in New Marston in suburban Oxford last week when I was visiting churches in the Headington area last week.

During my two visits to Headington last week, and in between appointments in the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, I visited some of the churches in the area, including Saint Andrew’s Church, Headington, Holy Trinity Church, Headington Quarry, Headington Baptist Church, Corpus Christi Catholic Church, and Saint Michael and All Angels, New Marston.

I found Saint Michael’s Church, which was built as a chapel of ease for Saint Andrew’s Church, Headington, at the bottom of Jack Straw’s Lane on the corner with Marston Road.

Inside Saint Michael and All Angels Church, New Marston, facing the High Altar, chancel and east end (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

New Marston is a suburb about 2 km (1.25 miles) north-east of the centre of Oxford. The area is built on land that was originally part of the Manor of Headington, and it was rural until the 19th century, when housing began to develop along Marston Road from St Clement’s towards the village of Marston.

Saint Michael and All Angels Church was built 70 years ago in 1954-1956 on the corner of Marston Road and Jack Straw’s Lane as a chapel of ease for the parish of Saint Andrew, Headington. New Marston’s early Anglican needs were first met by a mission hall built on Ferry Road in 1919 until the new church was consecrated in September 1955.

Saint Michael and All Angels Church was designed in an Italianate style by the architect Thomas Lawrence Dale (1884-1959), who was the Oxford Diocesan Surveyor for 23 years. At first, Dale specialised in designing houses for private clients. From the 1930s, he was the Oxford Diocesan Surveyor and he was noted for designing, restoring and furnishing Church of England parish churches.

Like Charles Ponting (1850-1932) to whom he had been articled, Dale’s church architecture was strongly Anglo-Catholic. However, whereas Ponting continued to work in the Gothic Revival idiom long after it had passed out of fashion, Dale adopted Italianate architecture for his churches.

Inside Saint Michael and All Angels Church, New Marston, facing the west end … the church was designed in an Italianate style by the architect Thomas Lawrence Dale (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Dale was born in London and was educated at University College School, Hampstead. He began trained at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in 1900, was articled to Charles Ponting in Marlborough, Wiltshire (1901-1904), was assistant to the architect Edmund Buckle (1904-1906), and qualified as an architect in 1906.

He was a captain in the Army Cyclist Corps during World War I and was mentioned in despatches. After World War I, Dale moved to Banbury and designed a series of council houses in several villages. Two of his earlier works are Edwardian houses in Hampstead Garden Suburb, one of which has been described as ‘an excellent house of the Lutyens school’. Dale later moved to Oxford, where he designed his own house on Woodstock Road, and later moved again to Bradmore Road.

As Oxford Diocesan Surveyor, Dale designed at least four parish churches in the Oxford area, and also designed restoration work or new furnishings for a number of parish churches. His churches in the Diocese of Oxford include: Saint Francis of Assisi (1930-1931), Cowley, built on a site provided by Morris Motors as a temporary daughter church of Saint James, Cowley; Saint Alban the Martyr (1933), Oxford, replacing a chapel of ease built for Saint Mary and Saint John Church in 1889; Saint Michael and All Angels (1954-1956), New Marston, built as a chapel of ease for Saint Andrew’s Church, Headington; and Saint Swithun (1956-1958), Kennington.

The sculpted reliefs on the main front include a small figure of Saint Michael and two large reliefs of angels, by John Bunting and Michael Groser (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Dale died in 1959 and was buried in Wolvercote Cemetery, Oxford. His son Simon Dale (1919-1987) was also an architect. He was beaten to death at The Heath, the house he and Susan had restored at Hopton Castle, Herefordshire.

The only suspect, Dale’s former wife, Baroness Susan de Stempel, was cleared of his murder due to insufficient physical evidence. The case remains ‘one of West Mercia Constabulary’s relatively few unsolved murders’. But that’s a story for another evening, perhaps.

TL Dale’s churches reflect the various brands of classicism popular in church architecture in England in the mid-20th century and Saint Michael and All Angels, New Marston, is perhaps his most ambitious. It is an interesting essay in a sort of stripped Italian baroque manner, typical of Anglo-Catholic taste from the 1920s on.

The statue of Saint Michael by the sculptor Michael Groser (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Saint Michael’s was built as a chapel of ease for Saint Andrew’s Church, Headington. Although the building is slightly limited by its corner site, it is substantial in scale and has been described as being in a ‘vaguely Italian renaissance style’. Its notable features include its campanile, its elliptical windows and its tall, box-like chancel.

The sculpted reliefs on the main front include a small figure of Saint Michael in a niche at the top of the gable, and two large reliefs of angels flanking the oval window, by John Bunting (1927-2002) and Michael Groser (1918-2009). The Latin wording above the west door says: Gloria in Altissimis Deo et in Terra Pax (‘Glory to God in the Highest and on Earth Peace’).

Bunting and Groser were probably responsible for the carvings inside the church, including a suspended rood with the Crucified Christ flanked by figures of the Virgin Mary and Saint John, the frontal to the altar and the Stations of the Cross. The statue of Saint Michael is by Groser, the painting of the Annunciation and a series of reliefs are by Bunting, and the reredos above the High Altar was painted by Leon Underwood (1890-1975).

The suspended rood, with figures of the Crucified Christ, the Virgin Mary and Saint John, is by John Bunting and Michael Groser (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

John Bunting was one of Leon Underwood’s students. He later taught for many decades at Ampleforth College in Yorkshire, where his students included Antony Gormley, creator of the ‘Angel of the North’, Martin Jennings, whose works include the statue of John Betjeman at St Pancras station and the statue of Philip Larkin in Hull, and the painter Andrew Festing.

Michael Groser was born in his grandfather’s rectory in St Winnow, Cornwall. His father, the Revd St John Beverley Groser (1890-1966), was an Anglican priest and a prominent Christian socialist. He was said to be ‘the best-known priest in the East End’ and Kenneth Leech said that he was ‘one of the most significant Christian socialist figures in 20th century Britain’. He was present at the Battle of Cable Street in 1936. He was appointed the Warden of the Royal Foundation of Saint Katharine in 1948. He played Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, in the 1951 film adaptation of TS Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral, produced and directed by George Hoellering.

Michael Groser moved to London with his parents in the 1920s and attended the Mercers’ School. After a degree in English Literature at Leeds University, he studied for the priesthood at the College of the Resurrection in Mirfield, Yorkshire, where his father had once been a student. As a conscientious objector during World War II, he was sent to a coalmine near Huddersfield, but managed to study sculpture part-time at Leeds School of Art.

He later moved to Kirtlington, Oxfordshire, and then to Banbury, and sang occasionally with the choir at New College, Oxford. As an actor, he played the Third Priest in Murder in the Cathedral (1951), alongside his father. He moved to Co Cork in 2004, and when he died in Bantry in 2009, he was buried at Church Cross, near Skibbereen.

The painting of the Annunciation by John Bunting above the altar in the Lady Chapel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Saint Michael's Church, New Marston, was consecrated in September 1955 and superseded the Ferry Road mission hall, which was then deconsecrated and sold for secular use.

Saint Michael’s became a parish church in its own right in the Diocese of Oxford in 1963, with a new parish formed from parts of Headington, Marston and Saint Clement’s parishes.

The church built by Kingerlee & Sons. The ground for the new vicarage in Jack Straw’s Lane was bought in 1952, but the vicarage was not built until 1966-1967.

In recent years, a problem with subsidence has left the church needing extensive repairs and when I visited the church last week much of the south side of the building was covered in scaffolding.

The campanile at the Church of Saint Michael and All Angels, New Marston (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

• The Revd Elaine Bardwell has been the Vicar of Saint Michael and All Angels, New Marston since 1996. Saint Michael’s uses modern Catholic worship and has a smallish congregation that welcomes all comers. The main Sunday service is the Parish Eucharist at 10 am, and there is a short said Eucharist on Wednesday mornings at 10:30 am.

The tall, box-like chancel and south side of Saint Michael’s Church seen from Jack Straw’s Lane (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

For my guide to churches, chapels and religious buildings and sites in Oxford, visit here