Church News and Rectors Letter
Not from the Rectory- Which tells of day when the rector ‘aspired’ to greater things!
Professor Jonathon Vam-Tam has become something of a Lincolnshire hero with his use of metaphors to explain the situation we find ourselves in at the start of this new year. As well as drawing on his evident fondness for Boston United for his football analogies he has also used the analogy of waiting for a train to describe the process of a vaccine being developed:
We can imagine him standing Grantham station as he speaks of it as being wet and windy but down the track two lights appear and it’s the train with the vaccine but it’s a long way off as it awaits the results of the trials.
But now the train has slowed down to enter the station and the train has stopped. Initially the doors don’t open as the guard has to make sure it is safe to open the doors – that’s the regulator [MHRA] giving its authorisation – but then the doors do open and there is a need for people to get on board that train and travel safely to their destination.
But despite the vaccine becoming available we still face some ‘hard winter months….where people must continue to follow the guidance’ for the vaccines are not an instant ticket out of trouble. However, Professor JVT concluded that the future was hopefully much brighter though we may have to be patient until maybe late spring [2021].
It was on a not dissimilar day when the rector stood on Grantham station [wet and windy] and looked south for the lights of the approaching ‘Cathedrals Express’. In truth it was the humble East Midlands Railway [EMR] service linking East Anglia to Merseyside linking the [Anglican] cathedral cities of Norwich, Ely, Peterborough, Sheffield, Manchester and Liverpool as well as the Catholic cathedral cities at Nottingham, Sheffield and Liverpool – but which brought to mind the 1957 branded Western Region ‘Cathedrals Express’ service from the cathedral cities of Hereford and Worcester to London Paddington.
On this occasion the train conveyed the present writer the short distance from Grantham through Nottingham and on to Chesterfield via the Erewash Valley Line: it was but a short walk up hill from the train station to the church of St Mary and All Saints – perhaps better known as the ‘Crooked Spire’ church.
The town was home to a Roman fort built about 50 AD and grew in prosperity to be granted its Market Charter by King John in 1204 and shortly after this the east end of the present church as well as the pillars which support the tower were built. In 1887 the church was said to be ‘fast going to decay’ although this situation was remedied by George Gilbert Scott who re-ordered the church and added more glass. Nonetheless the interior of the church is dark [albeit on the particular occasion was lit by the lights of some 160 Christmas trees] though there is a grandeur towards the east end where there are 5 chapels; under the central tower there stands a nave altar and the baptismal font – dated to before the Norman Conquest – stands in the south transept.
Light floods into the nave through the Anniversary window installed in 1984 with its bright colours tracing the history of the town from the 11th century to the present.
The shape of the spire is said to originate from when the devil, flying between Nottingham and Sheffield, took a moment to rest on the spire. However, the smell of the incense drifting up so irritated him that he gave a violent sneeze and flew from the tower but in doing so his tail caught the top of the spire and twisted it! Perhaps it is more probable that the spire was built using unseasoned timber which split and allowed the lead plates laid in herring-bone fashion to twist the spire into the shape which today identifies not just the church but the town as well.
There was time before the return train to step into the town’s museum and learn something of its industrial past and the manufacture of iron, pottery and glassware – but most significantly of the coal which lies near the surface and the mining of which was developed during the 1700’s and expanded with arrival first of the Chesterfield Canal [1777] to link to the River Trent and secondly with the coming of the railways from the 1840’s.
The exhibition ‘Down t’Pit’ highlighted the dangers inherent in this coal mining heritage with some moving verses penned on the occasion of the Grassmoor Colliery Disaster of 19th November 1933:
“Upon a drear November morn/On yon pit head with faces worn
The relatives and friends stood there/Of men who’ve passed beyond all care
They went to work unconscious all/Of the dread thing that was to fall
And ere the night shift was complete/They’d gone to rest at Jesu’s feet”
With every good wish—Stuart Hadley [Rector of the South Cliff Benefice]