TIGERS AND FOXES, WYVERNS AND LONGWOOL SHEEP

 

The spire of Leicester Cathedral

When I think of ‘garden towns/suburbs’ my mind goes to Hampstead or Letchworth, where ambitions for new ways of urban living resulted in the idealised, pretty estates we see today. Not quite such beauty in the Humberstone Garden Village, which at first glance is virtually indistinguishable from other housing developments of the same era. Only the names of the roads – Laburnum, Lilac, Fern and Chestnut - tell you where you are. Nonetheless, the downbeat Leicester counterpart of those more famous initiatives remains a lasting memorial to socialist idealism. In late Victorian times the workers of a co-operatively run boot and shoe company formed a Housing Association which eventually resulted in this project of 97 houses being built east of old Humberstone. At its time it will have been a visionary, startling, improvement to the lives of those working people and their kids.

The plain church building of 1910 carries a legend in stone above the front door:  ‘Christians Meeting House’. This was where the congregation of a small denomination known as ‘The Churches of Christ’ once met, a group whose simple faith was based on an early-church (i.e. Acts of the Apostles) model which sat easily with their everyday lived socialism.

The message this chapel proclaims implies exclusivity, doesn’t it?  Either you’re in or you’re out. Everybody is welcome of course, but not everyone will take advantage of the invitation. Contrast this with the tag-line coming from the recent General Synod of the Church of England, which says our aim is to be: ‘Growing younger and more diverse…’  For some of us there are troubling overtones to that, however well-intentioned. What does it say to seniors? Are there any limits to diversity that the faith won’t accommodate?

My route in and out of Leicester today runs in parallel to the A47 (and for a short distance along it.) For all its traditionally maudlin theme, the following needs a robust ballad tune, perhaps in the style of Steve Earle or Mumford and Sons. As I’ve previously remarked, the bikers so love this road… On a Sunday you can see a shining array of Harleys and big Yamahas parked by the mobile café near our village of Morcott.  The view from the lay-by just there is the best along the airy ride from Duddington on the Northants border to the outskirts of Leicester city.

The Ballad of the A47

A day may last a month,

And a month may last a year,

And a year is like a lifetime

So, hold me close my dear.

 

I am a hoary biker;

Tattoos and a gnarly beard.

I ride the forty-seven

From the Soke to Leicestershire.

 

I know each undulation,

Each verge and hedge and hole.

I navigate with certainty,

For biking’s in my soul.

           

My love and I went riding

All on a winter’s day.

The wind and rain were cruel

As we cruised the darkening way.

 

The hills were veiled in mist.

The road ahead was hid.

I could not see a score of yards,

And a voice inside me said:

 

‘Oh, do not ride today.

Do not be so unwise.

Oh, do not ride today;

That way disaster lies.

 

Oh, do not ride today

When you cannot see ahead.’

If I’d listened to that voice

My love would not lie dead.

                                   -

A day seems like a month,

And a month seems like a year,

And a year is like eternity

Without my darling dear.

 

The door to the parish church in Humberstone (St. Mary and St. Barnabas) is closed, but I can hear an organ being played. A mile or so further on, as I turn south-west on Catherine St., All Saints’ church is probably open, but I have a noon appointment today so I don’t stop. I marvel at the palace-like white marble exterior of the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir (Hindu Temple) across the road. 

I haven’t been to Leicester in years, and have never walked its suburban streets. Today’s route takes me through areas densely populated by families of Indian and Pakistani origin who began arriving here in the fifties and sixties. Generally, there’s been tolerance and harmony among and between different cultural and faith communities, but at the end of last summer  there was a sudden and temporary explosion of violence, whose origins still aren’t clearly understood, at least beyond the city limits. Nationalism, fundamentalism, outspoken support for one side or the other in a relatively insignificant India v. Pakistan cricket match, poverty, and disillusionment among young people may all have been contributory factors.

Walking up Silver Street towards the Cathedral, I see a long queue outside what at first I think is a video games' shop - maybe 150 teens and twenties. Then I see they're waiting to be allowed inside a shoe shop, two at a time. I ask one of the lads what they're hoping to buy, thinking there must be a release of a new brand of trainers. 'Shoes', he replies, obviously thinking this old boy is just off the pace.  No, I reply, any particular shoe? 'It's a sale, in'it?' The kids at the back of the line will be there an hour or two, so it must be some sale. Further up, a bloke on a pushbike has just arrived and is trying, probably illegally, to flog some honey. He extols its virtues to all who pass. 'Leicestershire bees...' he shouts hopefully, going for the chauvinistic vote. There are no takers. Thus retail life in a city.

My lunchtime engagement is with an old friend whom I haven’t seen for 49 years. Until not so long ago, Pete Hobson was the Project Director of Leicester Cathedral Revealed. When we meet, he surprises me by telling me that he’s arranged for his successor, Simon Bentley, to show me around the currently closed Cathedral so that I can conclude my walk from Peterborough by seeing what they’re doing here by way of refurbishment. When the Cathedral re-opens – which it hopes to do partially by the end of the year, although the full project won’t be completed until the summer of 2024 – it will be a warm, welcoming, fully wheelchair accessible, worship space. The tomb of the re-interred Richard III will be situated beyond the altar in the previous chancel, flanked on the north side by magnificent Tom Denny glass telling the story of the king’s life.  There will be a beautiful new Visitors Centre with plenty of teaching space, schoolchildren particularly in mind.

 

It's a very expensive project, part Lottery-funded. And this of course in itself is controversial, given the plight of rural church communities, referred to in previous blog postings. It cannot be a case of either/or though, can it?  (And here my mind today has been adjusted by seeing the exterior splendour of that Hindu temple up in Catherine Street). God’s greatness is always celebrated by his people whether in the Dome of the Rock, or at Srirangam or in St. Paul’s Cathedral. Hopefully the renewed Leicester cathedral will be a magnet for people of all faiths as well as our own.  So please don’t misunderstand the following, which was written before my visit. There are solutions to the conundrum to which it draws attention – and they are in faithfulness and giving.

It was great to see Pete, and be reminded of times past, and of many friends who have lived life well and to God’s glory.

Leicester (August 2023)

The Cathedral is closed for repairs.

The King’s tomb cannot be seen;

An unusual state of affairs

A purgatory in-between.

Soon business will be resumed.

The tourists will come and go,

To salve (as we must presume)

The finances’ ebb and flow.

 

But out in the diocesan wilds

The churches crumble and crack.

Dust drops into ancient aisles

Over faith that is torn and slack.

The doors are thrown open wide

And who will venture inside?

There’s something that draws to the idea of the sonnet. A fellow-worshipper in Northampton, the late, splendid, Harry Walding, like me once an R.E. teacher, was addicted to the form, and wrote a number of lovely, unpublished examples, more accomplished than this rather earth-bound effort.

Oh, and what about Richard?

A birth, a death, an execution.

‘There are no mountains near Fotheringhay.’

See the wet nurse weep

As she rocks the future king to sleep.

‘How far to Babylon, wee man?

What great promises to break or to keep?’

There are no hills

Just a lonely marsh

Where the cries of wildfowl keen

And the winter lies so still,

So still and deep.

 

‘There are no mountains near Fotheringhay’.

See the wet nurse weep,

Foreseeing the harvest hubris will reap at Bosworth.

No three score and ten

In this world of men

where life is now so cheap.

 

 

As the first frost whitens the border steeps

She hears he is dead

And swoons

While overhead the mewing hawk

Hunts what scuttles,

Catches what creeps.

 

‘There are no mountains near Fotheringhay.’

No eager deer or lively hares leap,

But a king was born here and soon

A queen will die and

Blood will seep through the scaffold boards

Flooding the dreams of all who peep

Through the cracks in history’s door.

See the wet nurse weep.

Whatever the director may say

There are no mountains near Fotheringhay.

As thanks to Philippa Langley we now know, after Bosworth Richard was buried under the (later!!) site of the car-park in Leicester, not thrown into the River Soar as the legend had it. He’d been born at Fotheringhay, the place where a hundred years later, Mary Queen of Scots was killed. All that remains of the castle there is a humdrum mound of soil by a farmyard, but it’s still a place that fuels the imagination. Sandy Denny not only wrote a song about it, but named her band after the village. They were successful enough that Elton John supported them at an Albert Hall gig very early in his career, and I was there to see it. Possibly, the slight Hibernian lilt to Sandy’s song, and Mary’s regnal title, led at least one film-maker to mistakenly place the castle in a landscape which bore no resemblance to Fotheringhay’s fen.  There are always grey areas of fact on the hinterlands of history. Sometimes mountains of drama are built on the flatlands of reality. 

Scraptoft – Humberstone – Leicester – Scraptoft

17.5 km.  4 hours. 19 degrees C. Cloudy but dry apart from a few spots of morning damping.

The title of this post? Simon and Pete drew my attention to the new gargoyles on the Cathedral’s coping. A tiger and a fox for the city/county’s rugby and cricket teams. A wyvern from the coat of arms. A Leicestershire longwool sheep, because I suppose Christians identify with sheep more than any other animal.  Baa! 

So, what comes next?  To Lincoln perhaps, when my aching joints have had a chance to recover. If you have been, thank you very much for reading. All material as ever © Vince Cross 2023. It’s been a blast.