The Wilderness of Heaven
Daphne, Hughes & the Sacred Greenway
Greetings friends, We are off on pilgrimage to Walsingham today, but first I’m delighted to share news of an exhibition of new paintings and drawings coming up here in Devon at Field System Gallery. Those in this neck of the woods, it would be grand to see you there.
INIS OIRR (INNER SEER) EXHIBITION
Martin Shaw, Inis Oirr, Field System Gallery, Ashburton, 7th–27th November
In the middle of last winter Martin Shaw braved a three-day storm to go pilgrimaging on the smallest of the Aran Islands. This is a gathering of drawings, paintings and recordings responding to the adventure.
Opening, Thursday 7th November, 6–8pm: come along and join us for the private view and a nip of poitín.
A Night on the Island, Thursday 14th November, 7.30–9.30pm: an intimate evening of stories and conversations with Martin Shaw, unveiling the encounters that inspired the work. Please note, tickets for this event are limited, available here: A Night on the Island.
Walsingham
Walsingham – thee olyd and mystical village – is officially in the thrall of the North Sea. Crickey. The windscreen is frozen and I’m hopping from foot to foot waiting for the cafe to open. It’s gorgeous, absolutely my kind of weather, but it’s a jump from rain-sloshy Devon almost 300 miles to the west. Linen has been replaced by Levi’s and the Fair Isle sweaters are in, baby. My companion of the road is Father Porphyrios from my parish, with Orthodox business to do as we wind from this tiny special village and on to Cambridge later today. It’s time for my autumn pilgrimage to Walsingham – not least as my sister Anna who lives here is approaching an auspicious birthday. Six of the seven kiddos are at home so I get to gawp lovingly at them and be their eccentric uncle for a little while.
I relayed much about Walsingham to you last year (see: The Power of Pilgrimage), but here’s a synopsis.
The more recent Walsingham story is that in 1061, a woman called Richeldis de Faverches prayed to Mary, asking how she could honour her. In response the wealthy widow was led by vision and shown the house that Mary had first been contacted by the angel. Measurements were given and instructions to build one just like it in Walsingham. It was built, and there was now a place of pilgrimage for British Christians that didn’t involve travelling to the Holy Land; Nazareth, or something like it, was here.
From Henry III onwards it becomes a major shrine in Northern Europe. Walsingham was a name familiar to Christians all across Europe. Pilgrimages were of course good for business: inn keepers, shoemakers, boatmen to name but three all felt the benefit. There was a route from Shoreditch all the way to Walsingham, roads often being repaired by charitable work from the Religious Houses. The Milky Way was known as the ‘Walsingham Way’, because the stars were meant to illuminate the pilgrim paths, known as ‘Greenways’. This was a period where the very roads of England were made holy by crosses going as far back as Anglo-Saxon times. Some marked their way to shrines, needed when crop was high across the fields and you couldn’t see a thing. There was estimated to be more than five thousand crosses accompanying our tracks and roads at one point.
For this reason ben crosses
By ye waye, that when folke passynge
See thy crosse
They sholde thinke on Him
That deyed on the Crosse,
And worshypp Hym above all thynge.
Wynken de Worde, 1496
Not surprisingly, the shrine was sadly and horribly destroyed during the reformation and only really came back to life at the beginning of the twentieth century. It was actually an Anglican vicar, the industrious and plucky Father Hope Patten, that created a new shrine Church and Holy House. Around the same time, Charlotte Boyd restored the ancient Slipper Chapel and gave it to the Catholics. And these days, pilgrims once again flood the lanes and shrines of ‘thin’ Walsingham, from all four quarters of the earth.
There’s a Divine Liturgy in a small Orthodox chapel (literally on a stairwell) early on the Thursday morning. Other than a nun, Mother Malenga, there’s two other attendees, one a reader – an old lad – who speaks with a lovely cracked and burred West Country accent, resembling vocally none other than Rooster Byron from the play Jerusalem. Rooster, played by Mark Rylance, is a Pannish figure, living in a caravan on the edge of ‘the new estate’ and holding out as a desperado as modernity and insurance policies and gainful employment lurch ever closer. It’s moving to hear the Bible read in such loamed and earthy tones. I love that even when chanted, I can locate the rural cant. ‘Deep as England,’ the poet says.
Johnny Rooster Byron, preparing for church