Hassocks, to you!
At Easter-time we revisited the cathedral at Bury St.
Edmunds. As at Blackburn, a large parish church has been transformed into a
larger cathedral
and
the latest addition, a splendid tower, is nearing completion. Anyone
watching Songs of Praise on TV on Easter
Day may have seen something of this. It was in 1914 that the Church of St. James
had first been chosen to become the
Cathedral Church of Suffolk. The intervention of two world wars, and the
financial depression between them, meant that it was only in the 1950s that
work was actually begun on altering and extending the building.
I served much of my National Service at RAF Honington, about eight miles from Bury St Edmunds, and was aware of the work (and fund-raising!) that was going on at that time. Since then we have holidayed in the area on a number of occasions. I like that part of East Anglia, not least for its history and its medieval churches.
When I first took my wife there, almost twenty five years ago, one of the first places we visited was the cathedral— to see what had been done since my time in the area. Perhaps the most eye-catching attraction was the one thousand kneelers (hassocks, to you!); colourful, full of interest and a tribute to the many people who had worked on embroidering them. Of course, we've seen many others since but those stand out in our memory— and there's quite a story behind them.
Back
in 1952 some people from Bury had visited the
newly-completed Guildford Cathedral, and had been very impressed by the new kneelers
they had seen there. They returned home determined to do something similar. A
quick
survey suggested there were almost five hundred parishes in the Diocese: that
meant asking each of those parishes to provide two new kneelers. An underlying
note of uniformity would be needed: it was decided that each and every kneeler
should have a 'Y' (an early Christian
symbol) worked in red and gold, the stem starting from the bottom centre, with
the arms reaching to the two top corners. The background in the triangle between
the arms was to be in light blues, the rest in dark blues. Here was something
essentially 'Suffolk' for in medieval times all cloth produced locally was dyed
blue— light, middle or dark— and was thus recognised throughout
Europe
as
having originated in Suffolk.
Each parish
was to be given a symbol or motif that would
identify that particular parish, either with the dedication of its church or
with some local landmark by which it was generally known and, of course, its
name (in gold thread).
Some examples of these are: the familiar crossed keys of St Peter for churches
dedicated to St Peter, the scallop shell of St James, a gridiron for St Martin
and so on. Sheer invention also had to be resorted to: for All Saints a winged
crown was produced, for instance.
Other motifs included mills, either wind or water; coats of arms in whole or in part; puns— something medieval craftsmen were fond of— such as a wheelbarrow for Barrow, a crow for Crowfield and a jockey's cap and whip for Newmarket; buildings such as castles, towers, gateways and even a power station!; connections with river and sea; flowers and plants (e.g.a nettle for Nettlestead) and so on and so forth. It was a tremendous enterprise, and having a tent at the Suffolk Show in 1963, with a dozen or more of the completed tops to display, certainly boosted interest. Other bodies became involved, including schools, and churches of other denominations.
When the work was nearing completion, and for anyone who had really caught the embroidery bug, there were then almost fifty cushions to be produced for the stalls in the new chancel! But that's a separate story.
(Cf. The Story of the Cathedral Kneelers and the Cushions in the Canons' Stalls by Grace and Oswald Sitwell)
Moving on from Bury St Edmunds we visited a friend in North Essex: David lives between Chelmsford and Saffron Walden, bordering on an area known as The Rodings. The names of some of the villages thereabouts are quite intriguing and so we were able to visit Easter at Easter— and High Easter too. Then there was Chignall Smealy, Leaden Roding, Loves Green, Matching Green, Matching Tye, Pleshey, Pilgrim's Hatch, Shellow Bowells, Thrushesbush and Toot Hill to name but a few. How daft! Why can't they have good, straightforward names like we do in Lancashire? Names like Nog Tow (as in toe), Samlesbury Bottoms, Claughton (three of them, pronounced Clawton, Clighton and Clafton), Much Hoole, Cow Ark, Rush Bed, Ring O' Bells, Rann, Bent Gate, Nutter's Platt, Haverbreaks, Mumps, Chequerbent and Hic Bibi. There's nothing strange about our names, you know!
