Open June

This month we are opening our doors to the general public on weekdays from 10.00am to 5.00pm. This is something that we would like to do the whole time. The problem isn't vandalism - we could cope with that, it is arson.

We used to leave the doors unlocked right up until the early 1990s, but then one day the vicar of the time discovered the remains of a small fire that had been lit in our lady Chapel. Our problem is that if ever a fire got hold within the church, everything else would go up too. We have so much polished wood that, in effect, the whole place is a tinderbox.

But now we are open once again, it has been lovely to welcome passers-by into the church, and quite a few people do just wander in and look around. We are very lucky in that the church is so beautiful.

What is so fascinating about parish churches, is that they are concrete records of the tragedy and triumphs of the various families, groups and individuals what have made up the local community for hundreds of years. Municipal buildings come and go. The great bastion of the old Greater London Council, County Hall, for example, is now a block of flats. Churches tend to stay around because they are served by a dedicated community - the local congregation. They aren't paid, in fact they pay for the building. They do it out of love - love for God first and foremost, but also out of love for the place where they worship him.

Holy Trinity, our parish church has been on its present site for just over a hundred years, and so it has memorials marking the great events of probably the most momentous century in our history. Most significantly, there are two memorials marking the First and Second World Wars. I shall be talking about these in later posts. What I want to draw your attention to is one small domestic tradgedy.

          Set into the west wall are two pairs of stained glass windows. These are exquisite creations of the high tide of the Victorian era. They depict seven women saints and Rachel the matriarch from the Old Testament. The dominant colours are red and gold. Each pair has a quote from the Bible and a dedication. The first pair have: ‘These are they that came out of the great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb’ and the dedication ‘These words are here inscribed in loving remembrance of Ella Mary FitzRoy aged twenty, and Maud Eugenia her sister aged 18, daughters of Eugenia Susannah St Aubyn who passed through the fire to their rest. Christmas 1885-6.’
          The second pair have: ‘How glorious is the kingdom where all the saints rejoice with Christ, they are arrayed in white robes and follow the Lamb wheresoever he goeth.’ and the dedication ‘These words are inscribed in recollection of Eugenia Susannah St Aubyn born 4^th Nov. 1844 and died March 12^th 1886.’
           This is the story of a fire in one of the local big houses. Two of the daughters of the house died in the fire and their mother died barely three months later. We do not know whether she was injured in the fire, or whether she died of a broken heart.
           I was touched by the way in which this incident had lived with the St Aubyn family for many years and how they wanted to mark it - because our church was not built until 1898, twelve years after. They had waited that time to commemorate their loved ones. The family wanted them to be remembered. It reminds me of the saying that we all die twice: once when our bodies cease to function, and secondly when we cease to be remembered. Eugenia and her daughters have been given a fragile kind of afterlife.

The reason that this memorial has struck such a chord with me is that it reminds me of an incident I was involved with in my last appointment when I was in Cumbria. I was vicar of four urban parishes near Whitehaven. At the time I was also Force Chaplain to Cumbria Constabulary. One night I got called out to debrief a shift of officers who had attended a fire the other side of Whitehaven in a village called Harrington. There were twelve officers, and they had been ordered to secure the scene of a house that had caught fire - a chip pan fire which had killed the mother and three children of the family. Only the father and, I think, one child survived. These lived in just an ordinary council house, and they certainly would not have been able to afford a memorial in the local church. I hope that they will be remembered. The trouble is that people do not like to remember horrible incidents. They would rather get on with life. One of the great consolations of the Christian faith is that we believe that God always remembers us. He does not forget nor look away.

            Sombre thoughts. But there are some less melancholy items in our lovely building. One of them (and this goes against the 'loveliness' I have been proclaiming) is the most hideous 'Bishop's Chair' you can imagine. It is in West Ham colours, claret and blue, and it has images of severed heads at the ends of its arms for your fingers to explore when you sit in it. This was aquired by one of our former churchwardens, Harry de Bossart. Harry used to work for the BBC in the scenery department. At the end of productions some of the bits of scenery would be sold off to the cast or production team for a song. Harry had been working on a medieval drama and spotted the chair. Just right for Holy Trinity. And so now we have it.
          I have a deep and abiding loathing for the thing, but my churchwardens and the rest of the church council have rather a soft spot for it. I am hoping that some shady character might sneak into church and make off with it, or, even better, with what I call Auntie Flo's dresser. This is another hideous piece of domestic furniture - all black laquer, broken brass handles and irritating pointless little windows, which houses our hymn books. The only trouble is that both are immensely heavy, and so our shady character would have to have about four muscled strongmen to help him.
         Mercifully these are the oly two blots on the beautiful interior of the church, which of course, we invite you to come and look at any time this month.