Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2026: 106, Saturday 22 August 2026

‘They love to have the place of honour at banquets’ (Matthew 23: 6) … dinner by the beach in Platanias near Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and tomorrow is the Twelfth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XII, 23 August 2026), followed by the feast of Saint Bartholomew the Apostle (24 August 2026). Today I am also remembering my eldest brother, Stephen Edward Comerford (1946-1970), who would be 80 years old today, but who died at Duke University in North Carolina almost 56 years ago, on 18 December 1970.

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

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

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

‘They love to have the place of honour at banquets’ (Matthew 23: 6) … a restaurant in Bettystown, Co Meath (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 23: 1-12 (NRSVA):

23 Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, 2 ‘The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; 3 therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practise what they teach. 4 They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. 5 They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. 6 They love to have the place of honour at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, 7 and to be greeted with respect in the market-places, and to have people call them rabbi. 8 But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. 9 And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father – the one in heaven. 10 Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. 11 The greatest among you will be your servant. 12 All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.’

Rabbi Zalman Lent in the former synagogue on Rathfarnham Road, Dublin, with tallit and teffilin, signs of keeping God’s word before us (Photograph: Orla Ryan)

Today’s Reflections:

In the Gospel reading at the Eucharist yesterday (Matthew 22: 34-06), we learned how all the Law and the Prophets – everything taught by Moses and Prophets – depends on, hangs on, the two great commandments, to love God and to love our neighbour.

His summary of those guidelines for living came in a conversation Jesus had with a lawyer in the Temple, in front of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the two groups most concerned with teaching what is meant by the Law and the Prophets.

In this morning’s Gospel reading (Matthew 23: 1-12), we are still in the Temple with Christ in Holy Week, the week leading up to his Passion, Death and Resurrection. There in the Temple, Christ has silenced his critics among the Sadducees and the Pharisees, showing their lack of understanding of the core messages of the Prophets and the Law in the Bible.

In this morning’s Gospel reading, he turns to speak ‘to the crowds and to his disciples’ about the scribes and the Pharisees, and their attitude to and teaching of the Law and the Bible.

Christ tells the people in the Temple that the Pharisees have authority to teach the Law, and he concedes that they are in an unbroken chain that goes back to Moses, for they ‘sit on Moses’ seat’ (verse 2).

But while honouring their teachings, the people should be wary of their practices. In their interpretation of the Law, they impose heavy burdens on others, yet do not follow the Law themselves.

Externally, they appear pious. They wear teffelin or phylacteries, small, black, leather boxes, on their left arms and foreheads with four Biblical passages as a ‘sign’ and ‘remembrance’ that God liberated their ancestors from slavery in Egypt (see Exodus 13: 1-10; Exodus 13: 11-16; Deuteronomy 6: 4-9; and Deuteronomy 11: 13-21). They also have lengthy fringes or tassels on their prayer shawls (tallitot, singular talit), as visible reminders of the 613 commandments in the Law (see Numbers 15: 38, Deuteronomy 22: 12).

Christ gives four examples of vanity (verse 6-7): they love places of honour at banquets, the best seats in the synagogues, being greeted with respect publicly, and being called ‘Rabbi,’ which means master and later becomes a title for the leader in a synagogue.

We are warned about the dangers built into loving honorific titles, such as ‘teacher,’ ‘father’ and instructor (see verses 8-10) – perhaps for me that means Canon and Professor – because, of course, we are all students, we are all brothers and sisters, we are all disciples, and we are all children of God.

Yet I too am a father and have been a teacher and a tutor. Is Christ warning against the position; or against seeking honours that have not been earned?

It is a truism that parents must earn the respect of their children, not seek or demand it. Most parents have, at one time or another, said to their children: ‘Do what I tell you, not what I do.’ Needless to say, children never listen to parents when we say something so silly.

All parents know, on the other hand, that actions speak louder than words.

Perhaps this morning’s reading reflects later tensions between the Jewish synagogue and the new Christian community. But, in Christ’s own days, people expected a Pharisee to be a careful observer of the Law. Unlike the Temple priests and village elders, the Pharisees did not have a high social status.

Before the destruction of the Temple in the year 70 CE, the Pharisees were a relatively modest group of people without political power and they tried to live out Jewish tradition and the Torah seriously and conscientiously in their daily lives. The Pharisees saw the Law as applying not only to every aspect of public life, but to every aspect of private, domestic, daily life too.

There is another well-worn statement: ‘It’s not where you start out but where you end up.’ The Pharisees started out with good intentions, but some of them ended by seeking to be great, seeking to be exalted (verses 11-12). They started out being concerned for holiness, but some ended at exclusion. They started out seeking to recognise God in all aspects of life, but some of them ended by seeking recognition at banquets and in the synagogue (verses 6-7).

Christ calls us to live in such a way that we can say to the world: ‘Do as we say and do as we do.’

The problem here may not so much be a conflict between words and actions, but the need to make the connection between words and actions. Words must mean what they point to, and the actions must be capable of being described in words.

Most of us, as children, learned by watching how adults behave, we learn as members of the human community. As a child, when I needed to learn how to use a fork, I did not need a lecture on the hygienic and sanitary contributions that forks have made to the benefit European lifestyles since the introduction of the fork through Byzantium and Venice to mediaeval Europe; I did not need an engineering lecture on the practicalities and difficulties of balancing the prongs and the handle; I would have been too young to read a delightful chapter by Judith Herrin in one of her books on how the fork-using Byzantines were much more sophisticated than their western allies or rivals who ate with their hands (Judith Herrin, Byzantium – the Surprising Life of a Mediaeval Empire, London: Allen Lane, 2007).

The same principle applies to everything else, as Andrew Davison, Regius Professor of Divinity, Oxford, points out in his contribution to Imaginative Apologetics (London: SCM Press, 2011), the same principle applies to how we learn about everything else in life – cups, books, bicycles and so on. He might have added love – the love of God and the love of one another.

On a number of occasions, I have visited the National Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin, Dublin. There, in the Great Palm House, are the steps on which the great 20th century German philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein regularly sat in contemplation and thought while he was living in Dublin in the late 1940s.

Even for those who find Wittgenstein difficult to read, he offers useful insights in his writings.

Wittgenstein teaches us that thinking and language must be inter-connected. ‘Words have meaning only in the stream of life,’ he says. Thinking requires language, language is a communal experience, and, as Davison points out, we learn language as members of a human community and through induction into common human practices.

We can talk about prayer, forgiveness, and most of all about love itself, to others. But if it only remains talk and has no application, then the words have no meaning.

Saint Paul reminds the members of the Church in Thessaloniki (I Thessalonians 2: 9-13) that they are witnesses to Christ not only in their beliefs but in the way they live their lives and in their conduct towards the new Church members.

Like a father teaching his children, he urges and encourages them, and pleads with them to walk in God’s ways, so that God’s word becomes made active in those who believe. In All Saints-tide, this is good advice on how to live as saints, as part of the Communion of Saints.

We might remind ourselves that when Christ tells the lawyer sent by the Pharisees and the Sadducees that the greatest commandments are to ‘love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind’ and to ‘love your neighbour as yourself.’ And, he adds: ‘On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets’ (see Matthew 22: 34-46),

If the Pharisees, the Sadducees and the young lawyer were teaching and acting in conformity with these laws, if their words and actions were inter-connected, then there would have been an unassailable ring of authenticity to their teaching.

We may say we believe in the two great commandments, but we only show we believe in them with credibility when we live them out in our lives. There must be no gap that separates what we teach and how we live out what we teach in our lives.

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s steps in the Great Palm House in the National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Saturday 22 August 2026):

In Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), the theme this week, from 16 to 22 August 2026 (pp 30-31), has been ‘Hope in the Making’. This theme was introduced last Sunday with a reflection by Grace Murray, a USPG volunteer. The prayers this week come courtesy of passersby at Greenbelt Festival 2025.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Saturday 22 August 2026) invites us to pray:

Look with compassion, Lord, on our weakness and lack of courage to act. We pray for honesty and perseverance to do what we can.

The Collect of the Day:

O God, you declare your almighty power
most chiefly in showing mercy and pity:
mercifully grant to us such a measure of your grace,
that we, running the way of your commandments,
may receive your gracious promises,
and be made partakers of your heavenly treasure;
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:

Lord of all mercy,
we your faithful people have celebrated that one true sacrifice
which takes away our sins and brings pardon and peace:
by our communion
keep us firm on the foundation of the gospel
and preserve us from all sin;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

God of glory,
the end of our searching,
help us to lay aside
all that prevents us from seeking your kingdom,
and to give all that we have
to gain the pearl beyond all price,
through our Saviour Jesus Christ.

Collect on the Eve of Trinity XII:

Almighty and everlasting God,
you are always more ready to hear than we to pray
and to give more than either we desire or deserve:
pour down upon us the abundance of your mercy,
forgiving us those things of which our conscience is afraid
and giving us those good things
which we are not worthy to ask
but through the merits and mediation
of Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Yesterday’s reflections

Continued tomorrow

The table remains bare if our words and our actions are not inter-connected … tables at a restaurant in Baker Street, London (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 reminder in Bloomsbury of the ‘Russell Paradox’ and a reminder to visit the barber for a haircut

Russell Chambers on Bury Street in Bloomsbury … Bertrand Russell lived in flat No 34 from 1911 to 1916 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

I think I need a haircut, and there is no shortage of barbers in Stony Stratford to pick and choose from. But when I was thinking about the Hotel Russell and Russell Square in a blog posting yesterday (18 August 2026), I was reminded of the ‘Barber’s Paradox’.

I ask you to imagine a village that has only one barber who shaves all men, and only those men, who do not shave themselves.

At first glance, this seems like a perfectly reasonable way to run a business in a small town. The men who want to save money shave themselves at home, and the rest go to the barber. But the scenario begins to fall apart when you ask: ‘Who shaves the barber?’

If the barber shaves himself, he violates the communal understanding that he only shaves people who do not shave themselves. Therefore, he cannot shave himself. But if he does not shave himself, he falls into the category of the men in the village who do not shave themselves.

According to the principle, the barber must shave everyone in this category. Therefore, he must shave himself. He needs to shave himself if – and only if – he does not shave himself. This creates a conundrum and an infinite, unbreakable loop of contradiction.

The reason a village with these rules cannot exist in real life has nothing to do with physics, geography, or human behaviour. It cannot exist because the rule itself is a logical contradiction.

Asking me to find such a village is like asking me to draw a four-sided triangle, to square the circle, to find a married bachelor, or to calculate the square root of -1. The words in the definition cancel each other out. The barber who is defined by such an exact, unbending parameter is a mathematical impossibility masquerading as a physical person. As soon as I define the parameters of the village, I have defined a place that cannot logically exist in the universe.

Epimenidou Street in Rethymnon … a reminder of the ‘Epimenides Paradox’ and a philosopher from Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The ‘barber’s paradox’ reminds me of Epimenides (Ἐπιμενίδης) of Knossos, the semi-mythical philosopher and poet from Crete who is said to have lived in the 7th or 6th century BCE, who gives his name to the ‘Epimenides Paradox’, a variation of the ‘Liar Paradox’.

It is said that while Epimenides was tending his father’s sheep, he fell asleep for 57 years in a cave in Crete that was sacred to Zeus. When he awoke after 57 years, Epimenides is said to have found he was endowed the gift of prophecy.

Epimenides is quoted twice in the New Testament. While speaking to a group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers in front of the Areopagus in Athens (see Acts 17: 22-34), Saint Paul quotes from Epimenides’ Cretica: ‘In him we live and move and have our being’ (verse 28). Saint Paul is citing the fourth line in the Hymn to Zeus of Callimachus, with its reference to one of ‘your own poets’ (Acts 17: 28). In the same address, Saint Paul also quotes from Aratus’ Phaenomena: ‘For we too are his offspring’ (verse 28).

When Saint Paul spoke to Saint Titus about his mission in Crete, he committed a logical fallacy by quoting Epimenides: ‘It was one of them, their very own prophet, who said, ‘Cretans are always liars, vicious brutes, lazy gluttons.’ That testimony is true’ (Titus 1: 12-13a).

The ‘lie’ of the Cretans is that Zeus was mortal, for Epimenides believed that Zeus is dead. The logical inconsistency of a Cretan asserting all Cretans are always liars may not have occurred to Epimenides, nor to Callimachus, who both used the phrase to emphasise their point, without irony.

However, Saint Paul must have thought long about the idea of a dead god and whether the god’s tomb was dead as he sought to preach the Resurrection in Crete.

Epimenides is first identified as the ‘prophet’ in Titus 1: 12 by Clement of Alexandria (Stromata 1, 14). Clement mentions that ‘some say’ Epimenides should be counted among the seven wisest philosophers.

However, it is not clear when Epimenides became associated with the Epimenides paradox, a variation of the liar paradox. Saint Augustine restates the closely related liar paradox in Against the Academicians (III.13.29), but he does so without mentioning Epimenides. In the Middle Ages, many forms of the liar paradox were studied under the heading of insolubilia, but they were not associated with Epimenides.

Epimenides Street is a street I know well in the old town of Rethymnon in Crete. Is it paradoxical that I I have found the restaurateurs and tavern owners of Epimenidou Street, like all their fellow Cretans, to be truthful and honest? Many years ago, back in the 1980s, as I entrusted someone in Rethymnon with my wallet and valuables as I went for a swim, I was advised that it was tourists and foreigners I needed to watch out for.

The British Museum on Great Russell Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The ‘barber’s paradox’, which retells the ‘liar’s paradox’ or the Epimenides paradox, is also a retelling of ‘Russell’s Paradox’, which was formulated by the philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) in 1901. Russell articulated a massive flaw he had just discovered in logic, now known as ‘Russell’s Paradox’ and, at the time, it must have seemed to many that he had broken the foundations of mathematics.

Mathematicians in those days believed that a ‘set’ could be defined by any condition you could describe. Russell used the paradox to prove that naive set theory was fundamentally broken. If you can define a set as ‘the set of all sets that do not contain themselves’, you create the exact same mathematical paradox as the barber.

Russell’s thought experiment forced the entire field of mathematics to rewrite its foundational axioms to prevent self-contradicting sets from being formed.

At times I am reminded of ‘Russell’s Paradox’ when I walk along Bury Place, close to the British Museum on Great Russell Street, and see a Blue Plaque that reads: ‘Bertrand Russell 1872-1970 Philosopher and Campaigner for Peace lived here in flat No 34 1911-1916’. The building was originally ‘No 3 Russell Chambers’ and is now labelled ‘Russell Chambers, Flats 25-36’.

Russell moved into an unfurnished flat No 34 at Russell Chambers in November 1911 to be close to Lady Ottoline Morrell (1873-1938), the literary society hostess who lived nearby at 44 Bedford Square in Bloomsbury. Ottoline met Russell for the first time since childhood at his home in Bagley Wood in September 1908, but their affair did not begin until 1911.

Much of the Bloomsbury area of London has been owned by Russell’s cousins, the Dukes of Bedford, for centuries. Russell’s grandfather, Lord John Russell, was a younger son of the sixth duke. The Bedford Estates still own large sections of Bloomsbury, and many of the names of the streets, squares, hotels, apartment buildings and a tube station reflect the family’s names and titles, including Russell, Bedford, Tavistock and Woburn.

Bertrand Russell had lived mainly at Trinity College Cambridge, where he was a fellow. But he took lodgings in Ipsden to be near Ottoline in the Chilterns in July 1911. She helped him to furnish the flat he rented in Bury Street, near the British Museum.

Russell chose the flat himself after looking at flats on Wells Street, off Oxford Street. The fourth floor flat in the red brick building measured 754 sq feet, and had a reception room, a main bedroom, a bathroom, kitchen, and a small room off the kitchen that was used as a study, a sitting room and a bedroom.

Among the guests there was the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein who stayed there on 3 October 1913. Russell wrote to Ottoline: ‘Wittgenstein stayed last night and read me bits of work he has done.’

Russell let TS Eliot and his wife Vivien use the room off the kitchen in 1915 because they were ‘desperately poor’. Vivien’s brother Maurice Haigh-Wood (1896-1980) described it as ‘a tiny cupboard room behind the kitchen’ and since Vivien had brought ‘a single cot-bed’ to furnish it, Eliot ‘slept in the hallway in a deck-chair’.

Russell was dismissed from Trinity College Cambridge in 1916 because of his opposition to World War I and so he lost his main source of income. His affair with Ottoline was also ending, and his affair with Constance (Colette) Malleson was beginning. He moved from Russell Chambers in April to rooms in 46 Gordon Square and then in August to 57 Gordon Square. He sub-let his Russell Chambers flat, and eventually went to prison that year as a pacifist.

After World War I, Russell considered keeping on the flat for his own use but concluded he could not afford it. Frank Swinnerton, an author and editor at Chatto and Windus, was a tenant at Russell Chambers until 1923, paying Russell 3 guineas a week for the furnished flat until Russell’s involvement with the first and the last home that was his alone formally came to an end.

Meanwhile, Russell was reinstated by Trinity College Cambridge in 1919, resigned in 1920, was Tarner Lecturer in 1926 and became a Fellow again in 1944-1949. He had succeeded as 3rd Earl Russell in 1931 and many of my age and generation rememember him not only as a philosopher but as active pacifist and a leading figure in CND, the Committee of 100 and the Aldermaston marches. He died on 2 February 1970.

Russell Chambers was selected by English Heritage for a blue plaque commemorating Bertrand Russell. The plaque was unveiled by his son Conrad Russell (1937-2004), 5th Earl Russell, on 6 June 2002.

As for the Barber’s Paradox, the popular retelling of Russell’s Paradox, it collapses with all its presupposition if the only barber in the village is a woman. She can shave as many men – and women – she wants to without any concerns about philosophical parameters.

I never had that haircut today. I must choose one of the barber shops in Stony Stratford to visit tomorrow.

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), 3rd Earl Russell, philosopher, mathematician and peace campaigner, remembered in the chapel in Trinity College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Visiting Westcott House, Cambridge, is like standing on the shoulders of the theological giants of Anglicanism

Westcott House on Jesus Lane is one of the two Anglican theological colleges in Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

During this week’s walking tour of Cambridge, when I showed a visiting friend from Ireland around the Cambridge I have felt a part of for almost 20 years and that has been a part of me too, we visited a number of colleges, chapels and churches, including King’s College and Jesus College and their chapels, and Sidney Sussex College and Christ’s College.

One of the theological colleges we visited was Westcott House, the Anglican theological college on Jesus Lane in the heart of Cambridge, squeezed between Sidney Sussex College to the west and All Saints’ Church to the east, and across the street on Jesus Lane from Jesus College, as well as the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies and Wesley House.

When I stayed at Sidney Sussex College on courses organised by the IOCS, I became well acquainted with Westcott House, and I have often mused that it Westcott was the one theological college in England – or, perhaps, Ripon College Cuddesdon – I would like to have trained at had I not trained in Ireland.

I stayed in Westcott House once many years ago during a residential meeting of USPG trustees, and I have been there for chapel services and for seminars organised by the IOCS, when the lecturers have included Archbishop Rowan Williams, Metropolitan Kallistos Ware and Metropolitan John Zizioulas.

Westcott House on Jesus Lane, Cambridge, is squeezed between Sidney Sussex College and All Saints’ Church and across the street from Jesus College (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Westcott House is one of two Anglican theological colleges in Cambridge, the other being Ridley Hall. Westcott stands in the Liberal Catholic tradition in Anglicanism, but the college accepts ordinands from a range of traditions in the Church of England and other Anglican churches. Its main activity is training men and women for ordained ministry in the Church of England, and it is part of the Cambridge Theological Federation.

The chapel at Westcott is at the heart of the community life. Its uncluttered simplicity provides ideal sacred space for a range of services from sung high mass to said Morning Prayer, from adoration of the Blessed Sacrament to ‘prayer and praise’ services.

As we strolled around the grounds of Westcott House, my friend and I compared notes about theological training in England and Ireland, the accommodation and facilities provided for ordinands and their families, the links theological colleges and students ought to be encouraged to have with the university, and the links the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein developed with Ireland thanks to his friendship with a former ordinand at Westcott, Maurice O’Connor (Con) Drury.

Westcott House was founded in 1881 by Brooke Foss Westcott, one of the ‘Cambridge Triumvirate’ of biblical scholars and theologians (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Westcott House was founded in 1881 as the Cambridge Clergy Training School. Brooke Foss Westcott (1825-1901), the then Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge, was its first president, and he later became the Bishop of Durham.

Westcott was a distinguished New Testament scholar and one of the ‘Cambridge Triumvirate’ of biblical scholars and theologians, alongside Joseph Barber Lightfoot (1828-1899) and Dublin-born Fenton John Anthony Hort (1828-1892). Together, they produced The New Testament in the Original Greek (1881), shaping modern Bible translations, and leading to the Revised Version, the Revised Standard Version and eventually the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) of the Bible.

Westcott House was the result of Westcott’s passionate concern to raise the standard of clergy education and to equip clergy to meet the challenges of parish ministry. He was also exercised by the way in which the Church of England was increasingly dominated by parties and factions, and he refused to be labelled with any factional affiliations or labels.

In its history, Westcott House has said: ‘As a scholar, educator, priest and prophet, Westcott’s legacy to the Church of England challenges sectarianism, ignorance, complacency and empty faith. This is the spirit which Westcott House seeks to honour today, drawing students from all backgrounds to prepare them for ministry in this historic centre of Christian learning.’

Visiting Westcott House is an experience that could be compared to standing on the shoulders of theological giants (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

I once described staying in Westcott House as an experience that could be compared to standing on the shoulders of the theological giants of the Church of England, and even of wider Anglicanism. Today, Westcott House describes itself as ‘the home of a diverse, inclusive and international community of people who share a vision of ministry to all society’.

The Revd Dr Helen Dawes has been the principal of Westcott House since 2021. Previous principals have included Peter Walker (1962-1972), later Bishop of Ely, Mark Santer (1972-1981), later Bishop of Birmingham, and Canon Chris Chivers, who chaired the Trustees of USPG. The first Irish-born principal was William Derrick Lindsay Greer (1902-1972), later Bishop of Manchester.

The boot scarpers at the entrance, depicting a rabbit and a pig, are a heraldic pun on the surname of Bertram Cunningham (1871-1944), who was the principal in 1919-1943.

Notable staff members have included Earl (Gregory) Collins, formerly of Glenstal Abbey and Abbot of the Dormition Abbey, Jerusalem, author of the Glenstal Book of Icons, and now Canon Chancellor of Chichester Cathedral; Canon John Collins and Dean Alan Webster, later of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London; Don Cupitt, later Dean of Emmanuel College, Cambridge; John Habgood, later Archbishop of York; Hugh Montefiore, later Bishop of Birmingham; Mary Tanner, later European President of the World Council of Churches; Canon Angela Tilby; and two former Archbishops of Canterbury, Robert Runcie and Rowan Williams.

Notable alumni include: the Revd Professor John Polkinghorne (1930-2021), theoretical physicist and theologian, who wrote extensively on quantum physics and theology; John Robinson, Bishop of Woolwich and author of Honest to God; Mervyn Stockwood, Bishop of Southwark; and Graham Ward, Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford until 2024.

The chapel is at the heart of daily life in Westcott House (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Dr Maurice O’Connor (Con) Drury (1907-1976), who left Westcott House after a year as an ordinand, was an Irish psychiatrist, is known for his accounts of his conversations and close friendship with the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. He studied philosophy at Trinity College, Cambridge, where his tutors included Wittgenstein. Drury and Wittgenstein remained close friend and Drury was among a group of friends present at Wittgenstein’s deathbed in 1951.

After leaving Westcott House, Con Drury studied medicine in Trinity College Dublin, thanks to financial assistance from Wittgenstein and friends, including the economist John Maynard Keynes. He took part in the Normandy landings, and later was the resident psychiatrist at Saint Patrick’s Hospital, Dublin, and a lecturer in TCD and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.

His son, Dr Luke Drury, an astrophysicist, was elected president of the Royal Irish Academy in 2011. Another son, Paul Drury, who died in 2015, edited The Star, Evening Herald, Irish Daily Mail and Ireland on Sunday, and was also deputy editor of the Irish Independent.
Con Drury’s papers are held in the library of Mary Immaculate College, Limerick.

The architects of Westcott House included Temple Lushington Moore, who was born in Tullamore, Co Offaly (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Westcott House is now Grade II listed, and visually it can look like the cloisters of All Saints’ Church, which is adjacent and was designed by George Frederick Bodley (1827-1907).

The main buildings were built in 1899-1929 around an attractive Tudor-style courtyard. The north range was designed in 1899 by the architectural practice of GE Grayson (1834-1912) and Edward Ould (1852-1909), the west range in 1912 by Hartwell Simpson, the east range and south part in 1914 by the Tullamore-born architect Temple Lushington Moore (1856-1920). Temple Moore was also the architect of Pusey House, Oxford; 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.

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; 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.

The chapel and other buildings at Westcott House were designed in 1923-1929 by the architect Percy Richard Morley Horder (1870-1944), who also worked on Chapel Court in Jesus College and designed the Jesus College boathouse (1932).

Westcott House is in an idyllic college setting in the heart of Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Since the 1985 report Faith in the City, Westcott House has retained a commitment to develop expertise and capacity in the fields of urban ministry and mission.

Through a partnership with the Diocese of Manchester, the college has pioneered patterns of context-based learning and innovative approaches to contextual theology for over twenty years. These approaches have been widely imitated and developed by other theological education institutions. The college has also developed a programme for continuing ministerial development through the Westcott Foundation.

The college provides training pathways in conjunction with the University of Cambridge and the Common Awards, validated by Durham University, as well as opportunities for independent study for undergraduate and postgraduate degrees through the wider Cambridge Theological Federation and Anglia Ruskin University.

Today, Westcott House is a collection of beautiful buildings overlooking the gardens of Old Court, and it offers a peaceful and idyllic college setting in the heart of Cambridge.

The boot scrapers at the main entrance to Westcott House, in the shape of a rabbit and a pig, are heraldic puns on the name of Bertram Cunningham (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Remembering Wittgenstein’s links with Cambridge, Dublin and Co Wicklow 75 years after his death

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) … died 75 years ago on 29 April 1951

Patrick Comerford

Today marks the 75th anniversary of the death of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century, who died in Cambridge 75 years ago, on 29 April 1951.

Wittgenstein was a Viennese-born Cambridge philosopher who had been influenced at an early stage by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. He taught at the University of Cambridge from 1929 to 1947 and worked primarily in the fields of logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language.

During his lifetime, he published just one small, 75-page book, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), one article, one book review and a children’s dictionary. His major work, Philosophical Investigations, was not published until two years after his death, yet it has become an important modern classic.

Bertrand Russell said he was ‘the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived; passionate, profound, intense, and dominating.’

A plaque at the Ashling Hotel in Parkgate Street, Dublin, recalls Wittgenstein’s time as a guest (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Ludwig Wittgenstein was born in Vienna in 1889. A family tree shows his paternal great-great-grandfather was Moses Meier, a Jewish land agent who lived with his wife Brendel Simon in Bad Laasphe in the Principality of Wittgenstein, Westphalia. Napoleon decreed in 1808 that everyone, including Jews, must adopt an inheritable family surname. Moses Meier’s son, also Moses, became Moses Meier Wittgenstein.

His son, Hermann Christian Wittgenstein (1802-1878), took the middle name Christian to distance himself from his Jewish background. He married Franziska (Fanny) Figdor (1814-1890), who was also Jewish and a first cousin of the violinist Joseph Joachim (1831-1907), who worked closely with Brahms. They both became Protestants before they married, and the couple began a successful wool trading business trading in Leipzig.

Their 11 children included the philosopher’s father, Karl Otto Clemens Wittgenstein (1847-1913), who became an industrial tycoon. By the late 1880s, he had an effective monopoly on Austria’s steel cartel and was one of the richest men in Europe. The Wittgensteins became one of the wealthiest families in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, second only to the Rothschilds.

Karl Wittgenstein married Leopoldine ‘Poldie’ Maria Josefa Kalmus in 1873. Her father, Jakob Maximilian Kalmus (1814-1870) was a Bohemian Jew from Prague; her mother, Marie Stallner (1825-1921) was a German-speaking Catholic born in Sevnica in present-day Slovenia, and was Ludwig Wittgenstein’s only non-Jewish grandparent.

Ludwig Wittgenstein was born on 26 April 1889 in the ‘Wittgenstein Palace’ at Alleegasse 16, now the Argentinierstrasse, near the Karlskirche in Vienna. He was one of nine children who were all baptised as Catholics and received formal Catholic teaching. Gustav Klimt painted Ludwig’s sister for her wedding portrait, and Johannes Brahms and Gustav Mahler gave regular concerts in the family’s many music rooms.

In an interview, his sister Gretl Stonborough-Wittgenstein said their grandfather's ‘strong, severe, partly ascetic Christianity’ was a strong influence on all the Wittgenstein children.

While Ludwig Wittgenstein was at school at the Realschule, he decided he had lost his faith in God and became an atheist. But his religious faith and his relationship with Christianity and religion in general would change over time. He resisted formal religion, saying it was hard for him to ‘bend the knee,’ although he once said, ‘I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view.

With age, his personal spirituality deepened, and he wrestled with language problems in religion. At a time when he was finding it difficult to work, he wrote in 1947, ‘I have had a letter from an old friend in Austria, a priest. In it he says that he hopes my work will go well, if it should be God’s will. Now that is all I want: if it should be God’s will.’

In Culture and Value, Wittgenstein asks, ‘Is what I am doing really worth the effort? Yes, but only if a light shines on it from above.’ His close friend Norman Malcolm later wrote, ‘Wittgenstein’s mature life was strongly marked by religious thought and feeling. I am inclined to think that he was more deeply religious than are many people who correctly regard themselves as religious believers.’

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s steps in the Great Palm House in the National Botanic Gardens, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Wittgenstein visited his Irish friend, the psychiatrist Dr Maurice O’Connor (‘Con’) Drury (1907-1976) in Dublin in August 1947. They first met in the chapel Westcott House, Cambridge, when Drury had been an Anglican ordinand.

When Wittgenstein returned to Cambridge he resigned his professorship, planning to move to Dublin. From December 1947 to April 1948, Wittgenstein lived at Kilpatrick House, the home of the Kingston family near Redcross, Co Wicklow, where he worked on one of his major treatises, Philosophical Investigations, now accepted as a classic of 20th century philosophy.

By April 1948, he had moved from Kilpatrick House to Dr Con Drury’s holiday home in the west of Ireland, Rosro Cottage in Renvyle, Co Galway, and stayed there until the following October. This is now the Killary Harbour Youth Hostel.

From Co Galway, Wittgenstein moved to Dublin and to Ross’s Hotel, now the Ashling Hotel in Parkgate Street. A plaque by steps in the Great Palm House in the National Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin recalls how Wittgenstein liked to sit and write there in the late 1940s.

He remained in Dublin until June 1949. In all he spent 18 months in Ireland before returning to Cambridge.

Kilpatrick House near Redcross, Co Wicklow … Wittgenstein lived and wrote there from December 1947 to April 1948 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Back in Cambridge, Wittgenstein became very ill on the evening of 27 April 1951. When his doctor told him he might live only a few days, he reportedly replied, ‘Good!’

Four of his former students arrived at his bedside – Ben Richards, the Limerick-born philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe, Yorick Smythies, and Con Drury, once an Anglican ordinand at Westcott House, Cambridge, and later a regular communicant at Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin.

Anscombe and Smythies were both Roman Catholics. At their request, the Dominican friar and philosopher, Father Conrad Pepler (1908-1993), also attended; he was the founding warden of the Dominican retreat centre at Spode House near Rugeley, Stafforshire, which I revisited in a posing last week (22 April 2026). Wittgenstein had asked for a ‘priest who was not a philosopher’ and had met Father Conrad several times before his death.

His friends were unsure at first what Wittgenstein would have wanted. But they remembered he had said he hoped his Catholic friends would pray for him, and so they did. He was pronounced dead shortly afterwards, 75 years ago, on 29 April 1951, and was given a Catholic burial in Cambridge.

A plaque in the chapel of Trinity College Cambridge recalls Wittgenstein’s time as a fellow and professor (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Wittgenstein’s influence reaches almost every discipline in the humanities and social sciences, and he has influenced many current Anglican theologians, including Andrew Davison and Alison Milbank.

On his religious views, Wittgenstein was said to be greatly interested in Catholicism and was sympathetic to it. However, he did not consider himself a Catholic. According to Norman Malcolm, Wittgenstein saw Catholicism as a way of life rather than as a set of beliefs he personally held.

So, did Wittgenstein see himself as Jewish?

Wittgenstein wrote repeatedly about Jews and Judaism in the 1930s, and many biographical studies present that his writings about Jewishness as a way in which he thought about the kind of person he was and the nature of his philosophical work.

On the other hand, as David Stern points out, many philosophers regard Wittgenstein’s thoughts about Jews as relatively unimportant, and many studies of his philosophy do not even mention the topic.

Yet, some writers have referred to Wittgenstein as a ‘rabbinical thinker’ and a far-sighted critic of anti-Semitism.

There is much debate about the extent to which Wittgenstein and his siblings, who were of three-quarters Jewish descent, saw themselves as Jews. The 1935 Nuremberg laws in 1935 defined as Jewish someone with three or four Jewish grandparents.

In a diary entry shortly after the German-Austrian Anschluss, he described the prospect of holding a German Judenpass or Jewish identity papers as an ‘extraordinarily difficult situation’ and compared it to hot iron that would burn his pocket.

In his writings, Wittgenstein frequently referred to himself as Jewish, at times as part of an apparent self-flagellation. For example, while berating himself for being a ‘reproductive’ as opposed to ‘productive’ thinker, he attributed this to his own Jewish sense of identity.

He wrote, ‘The saint is the only Jewish genius. Even the greatest Jewish thinker is no more than talented. (Myself for instance).’

While Wittgenstein would later claim that ‘my thoughts are 100% Hebraic,’ as Professor Hans Sluga has argued, if so, ‘His was a self-doubting Judaism, which had always the possibility of collapsing into a destructive self-hatred (as it did in [Otto] Weinberger’s case) but which also held an immense promise of innovation and genius.’

Wittgenstein once wrote, ‘Bach wrote on the title page of his Orgelbüchlein, “To the glory of the most high God, and that my neighbour may be benefited thereby.” That is what I would have liked to say about my work.’

In a letter to Bertrand Russell in 1912, he said Mozart and Beethoven were the actual sons of God – both composers died in Vienna.

The plaque at the entrance to Kilpatrick House marking the 50th anniversary of Wittgenstein’s death (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Daily prayer in Easter 2026: 25, Wednesday 29 April 2026

‘I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness’ (John 12: 46) … looking out into the village of Piskopiano in Crete from the Church of the Transfiguration (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Easter is a 50-day season, beginning on Easter Day (5 April 2026) and continuing until the Day of Pentecost (24 May 2026), or Whit Sunday. This week began with the Fourth Sunday of Easter (Easter IV, 26 April 2026), sometimes known as ‘Good Shepherd Sunday’.

The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Saint Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), Teacher of the Faith. Today also marks the 75th anniversary of the death of the philsopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, and I hope to say more about that anniversary in a blog posting later today. Later this evening, I hope to take part choir rehearsals in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford. But, before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, reading today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

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

‘Whoever sees me sees him who sent me’ (John 12: 45) … the Ancient of Days depicted in a fresco in the Church of the Transfiguration in Piskopiano in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 12: 44-50 (NRSVA):

44 Then Jesus cried aloud: ‘Whoever believes in me believes not in me but in him who sent me. 45 And whoever sees me sees him who sent me. 46 I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness. 47 I do not judge anyone who hears my words and does not keep them, for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. 48 The one who rejects me and does not receive my word has a judge; on the last day the word that I have spoken will serve as judge, 49 for I have not spoken on my own, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment about what to say and what to speak. 50 And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I speak, therefore, I speak just as the Father has told me.’

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

Today’s Reflections:

In the Gospel reading at the Eucharist today (John 12: 44-50), we come to the end of what is known as the ‘Book of Signs’ in Saint John’s Gospel (chapters 1 to 12). Through these seven signs, Christ clearly indicates who he is and what his mission is.

Today’s reading recapitulates all that Christ has said in the ‘Book of Signs’. We hear how Jesus ‘cried aloud’ and spoke. This gives extra emphasis to what he is proclaiming. It is once again a call to believe in Jesus where ‘believing in’ means much more than mere acceptance of the truth of his words. It implies too a personal commitment to Christ and to his mission.

To believe in Christ is also to believe in, to surrender oneself entirely to, the One who sent him, the Father. All through this Gospel, Jesus emphasises the inseparability of the Father and the Son.

The Father sends Christ as light into the world so that ‘whoever sees me sees him who sent me. I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness’ (John 12: 45-46).

One of the first images of Christ that I remember being show as a child by my grandmother in her house in Cappoquin, Co Waterford, is Holman Hunt’s ‘The Light of the World’. It remains my favourite image of Christ and my favourite Pre-Raphaelite painting.

Saint Catherine of Siena, the Dominican doctor of the church remembered today, says, ‘It is only through shadows that one comes to know the light.’ Addressing Chrit in The Dialogue of Saint Catherine, where she touches topics on prayer, divine providence, and obedience, she writes, ‘You are the Fire that takes away the cold, illuminates the mind with its light, and causes me to know the truth’.

The ‘word’ of Christ is a challenge. It offers a way of living and of inter-relating with God, with others and with ourselves. Christ tells us that his Father’s commands – which he also observes – mean eternal life. Everything that Jesus did was the carrying out of his Father’s will. We are called to follow the same path, which is the way to total freedom.

But how do we follow that path, how do we walk that path?

During the week, I found myself re-reading the hymn ‘Attend and Keep this Happy Fast’ by the English Roman Catholic theologian and one-time Dominican priest, Roger Ruston. He has been strongly influential in Christian CND and similar movements. He is best known for both his careful critique of the ‘deterrence’ theory and the reliance on nuclear weapons and for his work on human rights, including his book Human Rights and the Image of God (SCM-Canterbury Press, 2004), and the conference with that name organised that year by the Dominican Justice and Peace Commission at Blackfriars, Oxford.

Roger Ruston’s insights have a pressing relevance in today’s dismal global political realities. He has also written a number of hymns that are informed by his theological priorities. His hymn ‘Attend and Keep this Happy Fast’ is based on Isaiah 58: 5-9 and expresses the idea that love is better than fasting, and looks to ‘the dawn your light will break’ and that time when ‘the glory of the Lord will shine’:

Attend and keep this happy fast
I preach to you this day.
Is this the fast that pleases me,
that takes your joy away?
Do I delight in sorrow’s dress,
says God, who reigns above,
the hanging head, the dismal look,
will they attract my love?

But is this not the fast I choose,
that shares the heavy load;
that seeks to bring the poor man in
who’s weary of the road;
that gives the hungry bread to eat,
to strangers gives a home;
that does not let you hide your face
from your own flesh and bone?

Then like the dawn your light will break,
to life you will be raised.
And all will praise the Lord for you;
be happy in your days.
The glory of the Lord will shine,
and in your steps his grace.
And when you call he’ll answer you;
He will not hide his face.

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

Rembering Mika Chrysaki who gave her name to Mika Villas in Piskopiano in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 29 April 2026):

I have been recalling my own grandmother in my reflections this morning. In my prayers, I am also remebering a family of dear friends in Crete who are burying a dear mother, mother-in-law and grandmother, in Iraklion this afternoon. Mika was a warm, welcoming member of the family, and her son proudly gave her name to the family hotel in Piskopiano in the hills above Hersonissos. I have stayed in or visited there countless times since the mid-1990s.

‘Prayer and Action in Pakistan’ provides the theme this week (26 April to 2 May 2026) in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), pp 50-51. This theme was introduced on Sunday with Reflections from the Revd Davidson Solanki, Senior Regional Manager for Asia and the Middle East.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Wednesday 29 April 2026) invites us to pray:

Lord, bless the Church of Pakistan as they seek to serve all neighbours. Particularly after the devastation of the floods, may their acts of care demonstrate Christ’s love in action even across faiths.

The Collect:

God of compassion,
who gave your servant Catherine of Siena
a wondrous love of the passion of Christ:
grant that your people may be united to him in his majesty
and rejoice for ever in the revelation of his glory;
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 of truth,
whose Wisdom set her table
and invited us to eat the bread and drink the wine
of the kingdom:
help us to lay aside all foolishness
and to live and walk in the way of insight,
that we may come with Catherine to the eternal feast of heaven;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

‘It is only through shadows that one comes to know the light’ … Saint Catherine of Siena seen in a window in Saint Giles Church, Cambridge (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 return visit to Spode House and Hawkesyard Esate, with memories of philosophers and folk masses in the 1970s

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

Patrick Comerford

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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