I love me an email thread that weaves and flies between friends going down some rabbit hole to reemerge with a new branch of ideas, facts and memories.
I am involved in one at the moment. It all started with a brass rubbing of some medieval bishop of Ely Cathedral in eastern England. The picture, beautifully framed, was offered, via me, to the Cathedral church which I attend. I sent an email to the building committee with the offer. In the end we decided the picture was too somber – gold on black paper – for the intended space: a meeting room with no windows, it was also the wrong shape and size.
The matter did not end there; this talk of Ely Cathedral took on a life of its own. Several people, it appeared, in the group had been to Ely Cathedral, including myself, so I got in on this too. It was one of my “amazed moments”! Dare I say it, that Ely Cathedral is not one of the super stars of English Cathedrals and though near Cambridge, not on a main tourist route. It is very beautiful, rising out of the fens, the flat lands of East Anglia. Saint Etheldreda, a Saxon Queen from the 7th century, was the founder of the Abbey that became the Cathedral, and she is the local celebrity saint.
From all this talk of the Ely Cathedral, it was just a hop and a skip to happy thoughts of the wonderful tradition of Church of England/Anglican church music. I love the poetry of the hymns, one my favorite being George Herbert, a 16th century priest poet. Next on our electronic ramblings was talk of Evensong, (evening service) a rather unique and very musical Anglican service. One of the group had been to Evensong at Salisbury Cathedral. (that’s the photo above). Which led us into all sorts of facts and about Salisbury Cathedral, which is, very much, in the UK Premier Cathedral league. Facts like how names such as Sarum, the old name for Salisbury came about and that led to the Romans. Really you can’t go very far in most places in Europe without crashing into those Romans. This time it was their roads that then in no time, this led to the Roman roads on the high chalk hills of Hampshire and Wiltshire. As it was , up in them hills in Hampshire, where I was born, of course I had things to add, with a special nod to Farley Mount which is a memorial to a horse, on a hill, sort of in the middle of nowhere, not quite, as it is just off an Roman road. You might wonder where that could lead, as of today, another member has now taken up along bridal paths and sheep troves on those chalk hills.
So from some ancient bishop in Ely, so far, we are now up on the chalk hills traipsing along with the sheep and horses But I have more to tell, like how my grandfather, entertaining the visiting Bishop of Winchester for dinner at this house, served Communion wine instead of sherry. Well Grandpa was church warden and the church was so small, the village having got smaller and smaller since its glory days in Roman times, he had to keep the supplies in the house – and mix-ups can happen.