George and Dragon in the Dales

Bedale Church

Masham Church, stained glass window

At Masham too – a more peacable picture

Filed under: photography, Travel

Pictures from the Dales

Middleham, The VIllage Shop

Jervaulx Abbey, Piled Pilaster Pieces

Masham Church, More Early Modern Toothache

Filed under: photography, Travel

Consider a Pilgrimage to the Holy Land!

From Canon Stephen Earl, Vicar of Burwell:

 

You are warmly invited to join Canon Stephen Earl in visiting the beautiful places we read about in the Bible,and discovering for yourself the thrill of the Scriptures coming to life in a new and exciting way!

Thursday 17^{t h} - Saturday 26^th February, 2011

(Overlapping Spring ½ term week)

 

 

► Follow in the steps of the Patriarchs, the Prophets, of Jesus and his disciples, and of countless Christian pilgrims over the ages!

 

► Visit the land of the “living stones” today, and meet those who, despite hardships, fan the flame of the Christian faith in the land of Christ’s birth.

 

► Meet those of the other Abrahamic faiths in a land sacred to Christians, Jews and Moslems.

Stephen writes:

 

Join me on a truly memorable “pilgrimage of a lifetime”visiting Biblical and other ancient sites of antiquity, meeting those who inhabit a remarkable land of stunning and varied beauty:

“the land of milk and honey”

 

Bask in, and marvel at…

• the lush green slopes of Galilee

• the rugged hills around “Jerusalem – the golden”

• the barren, sun-baked desert of Judea

• the fertile “bread-basket” of the Jezreel Valley

• the awesome rift valley, Masada & the Dead Sea,

1,300ft below sea level!

 

 

This is significantly different from any “standard pilgrimage”.

Given the need to support the remnant of Christians in the Holy Land – just 1% of the total population, and only about 2% in the Palestinian Territories including Bethlehem – the programme has been carefully designed to give support to Christians across the denominations wherever possible…

We are working with a Christian tour company and a Christian agent in the Holy Land, both of whom have many years’ experience in running pilgrimages in the Holy Land. We will be staying in high standard Christian-run accommodation (all bar one night in the plush new Jericho Inter-continental), and where possible lunching at Christian hostelries. We will be visiting some Christian (and non-Christian) organisations committed to humanitarian causes for those of all faiths.

The premise… that if we as Christians do not support our fellow Christians there, who else will? A Holy Land without any Christians in the land of Jesus’ birth and ministry, because they felt forced to give up on their struggle to survive there, is not a happy thought at all.

We must passionately “pray for the peace of Jerusalem” and for the whole of this sacred land.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am interested… What should I do now?

► Request full details and application form from:

Revd Canon Stephen Earl 01638 741262 searl@toucansurf.com

Complete & return the application form with your deposit of £200

as soon as possible in order to secure you place and the flights (which

are now available). Bookings accepted on “first-come” basis.

The special price of £1370 includes almost everything!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

† A Pilgrimage Supporting Christians in the Holy Land †

Since it has been announced Revd Canon Stephen Earl is leaving Burwell with Reach in the summer and moving on to parishes in the St Edmundsbury & Ipswich Diocese, he confirms that this pilgrimage will definitely go ahead, and that his new parishes are very happy for him to lead it.

Filed under: Christianity, Travel

West Dereham Church

The pretty  church at West Dereham, near Downham Market in the Ely Diocese part of Norfolk, is one of the famous East Anglian “Round Tower” Churches. They have their own society which has an informative website and even has ties for sale!

The round tower is possibly of Saxon origin but they are hard to date firmly, and the first documentary evidence for the church doesn’t arrive until a Tax Roll of 1246. The brick belfry on the top of the tower is much later – sixteenth century.

West Dereham is no metropolis, but intriguingly it had not only a Premonstratensian Abbey as well as the church (founding daughter houses as far afield as Yorkshire), but like another Swaffham (Prior, further south) a second church in the same churchyard, which was eventually allowed to become ruinous and doesn’t show now.

Keys can be had from the Old Vicarage opposite, and though we ourselves didn’t raise an answer we were able to peer in through the plain windows and see a simple well-kept interior.

Filed under: Church of England, Churches, Travel

Swaffham Church

Our travels last week took us across the border (just) to Swaffham, and we were delighted to find the fine church there open to visit. It’s architecture is grandly simple – all of a piece from the late fifteenth century with a good sense of rhythm to its arcades, stretching upwards with plenty of Dec in its Perp. And it is full of just the sort of things a parish church should be: a curious screen containing folios from a mediaeval church music manuscript (with no local connection though); lead plates secreted away by generations of builders and roofers, now displayed for us to see; a wonderfully narrative memorial plaque to one F P Rolfe who died in 1918 and was a mining expert, JP and volunteer soldier in Rhodesia; and perhaps most strikingly a very unusual war memorial window with pictorial panes illustrating the conflict at Mons, Jerusalem, Zeebrugge – and the Healing work of the military hospitals. Well worth a visit. And I haven’t even mentioned the Pedlar of Swaffham once.

 

Filed under: Church of England, Churches, Travel

Brancaster Staithe Harbour

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More from North Norfolk: this time the quiet harbour at Brancaster. it’s a great place for a boat-filled photo shoot.

Filed under: photography, Travel

Flower Power at Peckover House

 

As the days get darker, there’s nothing like the odd surviving dahlia to bring a bit of sunshine back. These were in the ‘secret garden’ behind Peckover House (NT) at Wisbech.

Filed under: photography, Travel

Autumn at Sandringham

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It’s an easy drive up from Ely to the Sandringham Estate, and you can walk round the woodland paths for free. The autumn colour was excellent this year, with lots of sweet chestnuts too. For those who can’t walk, try the Scenic Drive.

Filed under: photography, Travel

Angels from the realms of glory

 

Sir John Betjeman: "Worth cycling forty miles into a head wind"

Nicolaus Pevsner: “The most splendid roof of Cambridgeshire”

This is the amazing Angel Roof (120 of them) in the church of St Wendreda in March, where I’ve just been privileged to confirm David, Susan, Cherrie, Simone, Peggy and Joy. Wendreda was sister to Ely’s Etheldreda. Her relics were enshrined in gold and kept at Ely until captured by Canute, when they were taken into battle by Edmund Ironside against him, but failed to carry the day. From there they went to Canterbury, and then supposedly back to March in 1343, but only the angels know where they are now.

Another puzzle: what is the origin of this strange tablet, now in the wall of the fine new Parish Rooms and before that in the wall of the Schoolroom. Pevsner thinks it is two putti controlling a mob of schoolchildren!

Filed under: Travel, Cambridgeshire churches, March

Out on the farm

I had a great day out this last week in the company of our Bishop’s Rural Adviser, Geoff Dodgson. After 15 years in Cumbria I am not completely wet behind the ears about agriculture, despite a very urban upbringing. But you can’t get much more different in farming terms between North West and South East, so it was about time I did my homework.

Geoff organised a great day out for me, touring north and west of Ely first seeing a machinery auction, pumping station and typical fen towns with the farmsteads right in their hearts, then on to the RSPB reserve near Fen Drayton and the planned agricultural settlement there (where Geoff lives) which gave redundant miners 5 acre smallholdings and a new start.

On to a great lunch at the White Swan Conington with local farmers Keith, Michael and John (good ‘crack’ as they say in Cumbria, which is conversation, not cocaine), and then very generously Keith invited me up to Red Hill to meet his wife Helen, see the Gloucester and South Devon cattle they keep, and have a go on the huge Challenger tractor.

The Gloucesters are a rare breed and Helen’s special interest. One of their claims to fame is that it was this breed that Edward Jenner worked with in  developing the smallpox vaccine. The depiction of the cow on the old stamp suggests that the breed’s looks have changed a bit over the years! None of the ones I saw had pictures on the side …

After lunch we went on to two very different larger enterprises – the Pecks at Scotland Farm, with their cathedral-size grain drier, and then the Jenkins at Childerley, an amazing old property still surrounded by its own estate, and the place where Charles I met Cromwell face to face and was arrested.

As if all that hadn’t been enough, we then went on to license Susan Johnson as the new part-time vicar based at Bourn in the Papworth Team nearby: what a splendid day out! And many thanks indeed not only to Geoff but also to everyone who gave so generously of their time, conversation and hospitality (and tractors).

Filed under: Travel, Cambridgeshire, farming