FROM WESTMINSTER, WITH LOVE

Loves, Labour's Won

Our "heritage pioneers" at St Mary Mags are an excellent lot. They have been researching local history (and aspects of the history of the church) for the Project website, and to provide us with the raw material for future exhibitions, and some have been trained in the techniques of oral history (by a professional) and have been out interviewing people. These interviews will provide an archive of local experiences, but will also be the material for the recordings in the "whispering walls" in the new building, places where you will be able to learn more about the recent history of Paddington from listening to people tell their stories.

The excellence of the heritage pioneers was demonstrated by the fact that they wanted to do more, and organised a pub quiz (partly to ask questions based on all the things they had found out), which they called the "Keeping It Local" quiz. This was held a couple of weeks ago in the Eagle in Clifton Road. This is the pub that used to be the Robert Browning, but I imagine Eagle was an older name, so I'm all in favour of that reversion to tradition. It seemed generally a fairly traditional pub, but they were happy for us to take over their upstairs room, which was a good venue for a quiz attracting thirty-five people. We organised ourselves in teams, and I was quite positive about the make-up of ours, with a wide range of knowledge and several people who were Paddington born-and-bred. I hadn't bargained with the presence of the Westminster Labour Party team, but when I spotted Cllr Dimoldenberg (who is an even bigger geek than I am) my heart sank. I also shouldn't have had that pint of beer (shockingly unprofessional, but I was trying to look relaxed). They beat us by three points, and maddeningly we knew three answers that we had got wrong through pure silliness and indiscipline. Helen didn't like me doing quizzes because I am such a bad loser, so when we have them, I usually help set the questions; here I enjoyed myself but came away sore. Did I shake Paul Dimoldenberg's hand? I did not.


The Heart of Westminster

The Dean of Westminster, Dr John Hall, is one of the smoothest and most charming clergymen in the Church of England (though Helen once got under his skin by asking too-probing questions after a lecture he gave about religious education). At Westminster Abbey he has assured his place in history by building the "Weston Tower" which gives public access to the Triforium, part of which is now a gallery to display some of the Abbey's treasures, and by commissioning a window from David Hockney, just installed. The Weston Tower is a very clever piece of work (designed by Ptolemy Dean, the telegenic Surveyor of the Fabric) which is tucked into a corner formerly occupied by some loos, and which gives astonishing views along the south elevation of the Abbey as you go up the stairs. I suspect that the conceit of using specimen pieces of every type of stone used in the Abbey's history will look rather twee in the future, but it's a pleasing touch. I can't say I like the metalwork that loops across the glazing; neither Gothic nor contemporary, but kitsch in my view. But, as I say, Dean Hall's place in history is assured (even if he misses out on a coronation).

In my view, though, the most important thing he has done is to raise the profile of religion at the Abbey. It's a building with tremendous history, it's always referred to as the church of kings, and is in fact the burial place of most of our medieval and early modern monarchs, and it also functions as a sort of national pantheon, as the actual burial place of such as Chaucer, Newton and Darwin, and the place of commemoration of countless other national heroes of one sort or another. It also contains, in Henry VII's Lady Chapel, the finest piece of renaissance sculpture in Britain (Henry VII's tomb, by Torrigiani), and indeed the Chapel itself is one of the most important works of art of its period anywhere. So it's not unreasonable that the Abbey should be a tourist attraction, and as a "Royal Peculiar" it doesn't have a very clear spiritual function, beyond ensuring that a daily round of worship is celebrated (not a trivial thing, but an alien concept for the managers who run the contemporary C of E). So, it's never been a great surprise to me that it mostly feels like a tourist attraction in which worship occasionally takes place (it's not alone in that) but Dean Hall has ensured that religion has been brought back. I don't know how much income the Abbey expects to make on a Saturday in October, but they have chosen, under Dean Hall's leadership, to forego one Saturday's receipts by closing the Abbey to tourists and making it a place of pilgrimage for the day. So it was that I went, with an intrepid band of parishioners, to the National Pilgrimage to the Shrine of St Edward the Confessor last Saturday.

Because of course the medieval abbey was intended as a place of pilgrimage, housing the shrine of England's royal saint, (famed for his gentleness and radiating the love of God for the poor) and it functioned in that way until the dissolution of the abbeys. At that point the shrine was destroyed, but the Confessor's royalness trumped his saintliness, and so his remains were not scattered (as happened at most English shrines) but reverently buried. Hence, the reconstructed shrine still contains the saint's remains, and the modern Abbey has created a day of pilgrimage, around the Confessor's main feast day, at which the Abbey is absolutely given over to prayer, devotion and worship. We walked down from Paddington (which took an hour and a half, on a beautiful warm, sunny morning) and arrived in time for one of our number to make herself a pilgrim badge, while others used the facilities. We then took our seats for the Solemn Eucharist, which was very well done (Mozart was sung and the Bishop of Ebbsfleet preached). Afterwards there was the opportunity to visit the shrine, behind the high altar, where incense was burning, candles were being lit, and people were kneeling in prayer in the niches beneath the saint's tomb, and around the space. Genuine devotion. Real prayer. That absolutely brought home why all those kings wanted to be buried as they are, in a ring around the shrine, close to the holy man, so full of the grace of God. After the vergers finished clearing up from the service the east end of the Abbey was opened up again, and you could pray in the chapels. The highlight was praying before the Blessed Sacrament exposed in the Lady Chapel. Actually you could see the Sacrament in the monstrance from a particular spot in the Sacrarium  (the space around the shrine) which I would never have imagined, but was itself a very revealing detail, because the monstrance was placed on the Lady Chapel altar, that lovely little gem under its baldacchino in front of Henry VII's tomb. To be able to pray before our Lord, present in the Blessed Sacrament, in the very centre of power in this land (knowing that beyond the window in front of you was Parliament) was intensely moving and impressive. The silence there was stunning. That experience on its own was enough to justify all the nonsense. Last Saturday, for a few hours at least, the Lord was truly the heart of Westminster.