Day 4 of our Camino Ingles in southern England began and ended with SUN! Glory, Glory, Hallelujah! With another another long walk ahead of us, we met Jane at the Wheatsheaf Inn early so she could shuttle us around all the messy highways and dangerous backroads back to our end point yesterday in the little thatch-roof village of Dummer. We took a little stroll around the village to admire the thatcher's good work, including their signature whimseys atop a few of the homes - ducks, geese, rooster, hound, and cat. The old church of All Saints was closed (it was early!) but we loved checking out the different periods of architecture that combined over the centuries to create the present day structure. A part of it dates to the 12th century and while we guessed at the other building styles and periods, I loved how it was both old and new(er) all in one look.
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| All Saints, Dummer village |
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| Thatcher's whimseys atop the top |
I haven't talked much about the reasons for our pilgrimage, and why we chose this route. I certainly don't want to assume I knew why my elder cousin had made such a long journey to walk seventy miles in England. I had my ideas but never came right out and asked. But my intentions were two-part. I was walking to participate again in the ancient practice of pilgrimage, this time as a sojourner and companion to another pilgrim. I was also walking to honor the idea of revival. Feeling revived by a fill day of sunshine, this was a good time to think about my intentions.
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| A very birdy estate lane |
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| So much mud, despite the blue skies |
The recovery of religious pilgrimage to the English landscape has been nothing short of remarkable, especially to me coming from a country which has very little of its own pilgrimage tradition. Pilgrimage as a practice dates back thousands of years to include people walking with intention to sacred sites during the Iron Age through the Middle ages. Pilgrimage has been an important shaper of the British landscape from Celtic-pagan times through the Middle Ages. Many of the Christian traditions, holy sites, and shrines to saints are simply layered over pre-Christian sites with "revised" meanings and Christian symbolism but in many cases the older pagan belief system shines right on through. It was great fun to find these multilayered pilgrimage sites.
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| St. Mary the Virgin (1190) |
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| Medieval floor tiles |
When King Henry VIII ordered the Dissolution of the Abbeys and Catholic pilgrimage ritual in 1530s, the banishment of the sacred walk or sojourn was very hard for worshippers to let go of. Pilgrims protested in York by participating in the Pilgrimage of Grace, a mass defiance against Henry's order. Other regions revolted as well, including the mass demonstration of the Lincolnshire Rising. The king's response came hard and heavy. Pilgrims, priests, nuns, bishops, and monks were murdered during violent suppressions. For a country as pedestrian as England, the banning of pilgrimage and the dissolution of the abbeys was a very bitter chapter of Britain's walking history.
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| Interior of St. Mary the Virgin |
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| Celtic crosses of St. Mary the Virgin churchyard |
Since 2017 the Church of England has lifted restrictions on Christian pilgrimage and with it has come a flood of interest in recovering lost routes and restoring ancient sites. The British Pilgrimage Trust is one major organization leading this rival through historical research, support for route-reopening, and marketing of pilgrim services along the many paths that have been re-created or restored.. Their landmark book Britain's Pilgrim Places by Nick Mayhew-Smith and Guy Howard (2020) is jammed-packed with routes to choose from and places to visit and, at over 500 pages of site descriptions, maps, and 2000 years of history, it would take a lifetime to walk just what is featured here. (The St. James Way is featured on pg. 16) The Church of England, too, is encouraging the return of pilgrimage as devotional walking and remembrance travel. Revived interest in ancient histories and walking traditions has brought new interest to old sites like Hadrian's Wall (Roman) and those featured by English Heritage.
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| Pilgrim's Tea at Candover Valley Community Store |
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| A community's labor of love |
I love this history of revival and I love the landscapes that are being revived because of it. By Day 4 we had passed through so many nature reserves and conservation areas that are accessible by footpath. Folks we met enjoying their daily walks (mostly with dogs), birding, or riding, were excited to share with us news of a fish species returning, the restoration of bird species like the Red Kite or Crane, or their latest sightings of the Water Vole ( the top favorite). To walk from village to village, across a city, or cross-country on this restored route, immersed us in both the human and natural history and gave us ample opportunity to meet people and talk about what we were seeing and the changes they were experiencing on the land. The good folks at the Candover Valley Community Store chatted us up for some time! We not only received a pilgrim stamp which they were so excited to provide for us, but they served us a proper tea for our mid-day rest.
We visited three churches along the Way of St. James on Day 4 - all of them special in their own unique way and history. The "old" St. Mary the Virgin was a tiny but ancient church built by Saxons originally. It was changed over time to include - then lose - its bell tower (bellcote) and long transepts so that now it is just a little hut of a chancel. We spent a good while in this old place, trying to decipher the wall paintings and architectural features important to Saxon stone masons. We next visited the "new" St. Mary the Virgin almost across the road in Preston Candover with its 19th century modern atmosphere - a soaring and colorful vault ceiling stenciled with floral designs. Our last church visit, the Church of St. James, was also a delight and we spent a lot of time here admiring the woven wheat corn dollies, a delightful connection to Celtic pagan traditions for end-of-harvest season.
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| Cross harvested wheat fields |
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| Down beautiful Beech-lined lanes |
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| Church of St. James |
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| The flower arrangements here were astounding |
I have to admit that this day introduced to me a new hobby for when visiting England - to search for stone-scratched sundials on very old churches. We found three today and of course I took way too many pictures of them. Dating to to Anglo-Saxon times, these sundials were incised into the priest's door of Saxon churches. They served to tell the priest when mass times were by inserting a wheat straw into the center hole - the "hand" of the sundial - to cast a shadow on the prescribed lines of hours of mass. It became an obsession to go look for them. When I saw a large collection of them at the British Museum later on the following week (which I found in a book on Anglo-Saxon sundials) it was good to know I wasn't the only one who couldn't get enough of them. I did not buy the book. It was heavy. The author took way more pictures than I did.
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| Pew-end wheat corn dollies were amazingly intricate |
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| Pagan and Christian together |
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| Sundials for mass times |
Somehow we missed a turn and wound up walking a few extra miles until we strolled into New Alresford, a charming market town in the dark (!!) lit by streetlamps and the warm lights of interior rooms of shops and pubs. Though our official route map stated that the day would end in town at 11.5 miles, we noted that it was probably because of our good mood on this sun-splashed day that we didn't even notice we'd walk a few extra steps - errmmm - miles. Anyway, our room at The Swan Inn in Alresford was a delight and the dinner so delicious.
Notes:
The British Pilgrimage Trust works to re-establish pilgrimage routes and provide modern pilgrims with resources on lodgings and accommodations, places to eat, etc. while promoting local and cross-country pilgrimage as making good economic sense (as it was in the past!) for local villages and towns. This organization combines both pedestrian travel, bridleways, and biking networks in their routes
The ancient Celtic tradition of
weaving wheat corn dollies was alive and well at the church of St. James! All of the corn dollies (corn being another term for grain) were so beautiful!
https://motherhylde.com/the-corn-dolly-origins-and-how-to/ and Eleanor Pritchard's wonderful
https://www.eleanorpritchard.com/journal/2020/7/21/a10on8zvkgzvoavwsfwlw70bjz8ojt
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