Forty Days and Forty Nights

APRIL 2021 FORTY DAYS AND FORTY NIGHTS FORDINGBRIDGE AND RINGWOOD PARISH MAGAZINE In This Edition: The Great Bridge at Fordingbridge • Fr Paul Says: • Book Reviews (Penny Sharp and Gabriel Gamble) • Poetry Please G W Carryl, Robert Browning, Geoffrey Chaucer) • Easter Gardening (Sheila Wade) • The Invisible Times (Margaret Fraser) • The Great Bridge at Fordingbridge (Text Ed, picture George Shepperdley) • Salisbury Cathedral Tower Tour (continued, Chris Basham) • The Anni Rosler Letters (Provided by David Saunders) • Growing Up in Fordingbridge (George Shepperdley • Rohingya in Bangladesh (Helen Eales) • Cookery Corner (Janet Arden) • End Bits (Ed) Fr. Paul Says… This is a photograph of rather lovely oil painting by Henry Woodward which my old Canadian friend George Shepperdley (see below) has on his bedroom wall. George thinks it was painted in the 1970s, but I think it was earlier than that as there is no footbridge. I remember the footbridge being added because I rowed beneath that bridge practically every day until 1962! Of course, the artist may have just left it out! April begins this year with our celebration of the ‘Easter Triduum’, on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd April. The The view is looking downstream from the meadow just upstream of what is now Caxtons, but was then The Riverside Triduum consists of three days making up the Bakery. On the left is Dr. Vickery’s garden, then the bridge itself with The George, as ever, on the bank to the South single liturgy of the Paschal Mystery or the life, with the Albany Hotel and its river frontage adjoining the Greyhound Hotel garden and boathouse. death and resurrection of Jesus. It begins on Maundy Thursday evening with the Mass of the The original bridge was built by 1252 because it is recorded that the town received a grant for its maintenance then. Lord’s Supper. This liturgy relives that Last I believe parts of it remain, although much rebuilding has taken place. A date of 1622 appears above one of the Supper which Jesus and his disciples celebrated arches on the downstream side and there was substantial rebuilding in the nineteenth century. The earlier ford was the night before he died. At the Last Supper the just downstream and on the Ringwood end of the bridge was a hospital for travellers on the site of St. John’s Farm. Eucharist was instituted and Jesus washed his disciples’ feet offering us a model for the service Thanks George! (Ed) of Christian life and discipleship. That liturgy ends in silence as we look towards Good Friday and the celebration of the Lord’s passion and death. The Good Friday liturgy is not actually Mass. Instead it offers an opportunity to enter liturgically into the mystery of the Lord’s Cross. Good Friday is a day of PAGE 1 FORTY DAYS AND FORTY NIGHTS of fasting and abstinence which reminds us that on this day we are still celebrating the three-day liturgy even though we may not attend church all the time. The Triduum comes to it completion and high point with the celebration of the Easter Vigil when the resurrection of Jesus is solemnly proclaimed and Jesus is presented to the world as its light and life. Throughout the world, Salisbury Cathedral Tower catechumens are baptized at the Vigil, then they are confirmed and receive the Eucharist. This happens at Easter because Baptism, Confirmation and Eucharist connect us with the death and Tour resurrection of Jesus, making us members of his risen Body. Each time I celebrate Easter my imagination carries me to Jerusalem and to the many times I have prayed in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The original church was built by the Emperor Constantine over the place where Jesus was crucified, buried and rose from the dead. Its authenticity is continually supported by historians, biblical scholars and archaeologists. It is a most sacred place where Christians of all traditions come on pilgrimage. Like me, so many visitors and pilgrims are drawn to the Holy Sepulchre because of its power and sanctity which seeps out of the walls. Happy Easter to everyone. Book Reviews “Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death” by M C Beaton (Continued from March edition) The door which you see in the corner leads to a very narrow spiral within the thickness of the turret and which some people find claustrophobic. The steps are narrow, and you have to use your toes! This is Something a bit frothier this month as we meet probably the hardest climb for that reason, and I tend to arrive at the next chamber where the bells are hung Agatha Raisin , former proprietor of a flourishing just a bit short of breath. Fortunately, most people climb slower than I, and I have a second or two to breathe PR company in London and recently retired to a hard and snatch a mouthful of water from the bottle I always carry. cottage in the heavenly Cotswold village of Carsley. Although not quite so heavenly, Agatha Salisbury Cathedral does not have a peal of bells as you would find, for instance, at Winchester. The reason finds! Agatha has the social skills of a cabbage, is that the medieval bells were hung in a separate bell tower, which stood, with its own spire reaching two and the villagers view her with hostility and hundred feet, very close to where the Bell Tower Restaurant now stands. The Bell Tower was neglected distaste. Her unpopularity is enhanced when she for many years, ruined in the Civil War and demolished by Wyatt in the 1789-90 restoration. In enters a local produce show with a shop-bought consequence the bells in the tower only sound the Westminster chimes and the hour bell, the single object spinach quiche (cheating), which is subsequently rescued from the demolished Bell Tower rings the hours. The bells are not hung, as you would expect in a poisoned and consumed by an eminent villager belfry, upside down because they are not swung, which might stress the tower, rather they are struck by who is tragically found dead behind his sofa. hammers operated through levers and pullies by the clock lower down. PAGE 2 FORTY DAYS AND FORTY NIGHTS Suspicion falls on our heroine, who sets our to prove her innocence..... Not a book of great literary merit but who cares? It is well written and entertaining, as it wanders along leafy Cotswolds lanes and through picturesque villages and a handsome gentleman moves in next door...... And……………… Victorian set of bells which ring the Westminster chimes Reviewed by Gabriel Gamble aged 6. The best thing about this book is that you can change the animal and make your own random animals, because the pages are divided into three parts; the head, the middle and the tail. Some of the animals are a platypus, a Ruby- Topaz bird and an alligator. So you could have the head of a platypus, the tummy of a Ruby-Topaz bird and the tail of an alligator. And you can read all about the animals. Poetry Please Three poems this month. The first is from Sheila Wade and connects with her article on gardening Ancient bell from the old tower re-cast in Restoration. below. The Easter Lily by Guy Wetmore Carryl There was an 18C fire in this part of the tower, extinguished by the A beautiful but sad poem, and I always think of citizens of the town who probably Christina Rossetti’s work when I read it.If you haven’t come across the American poet (and formed a bucket chain to get water humourist) Carryl, he’s worth a try. I particularly from the Avon up to the Tower in enjoy his series “Fables for the Frivolous” order to put out the blaze. According published in 1898. to the then Clerk of the Works, they were not a moment too soon or the These Aesop-style fables are written in verse and fire would certainly have brought the are light-hearted re-tellings of fables from two whole edifice down. A charred centuries before, each one ending with a moral and timber preserves the memory of the a pun. Among the more celebrated of the fables event. are The Tortoise and the Pretentious Hare, The Arrogant Frog and the Superior Bull, and The Another open wooden spiral takes Sycophantic Fox and the Gullible Raven. you to the final level, called ‘Eight Easter Lily Doors’ because it has, well, eight doors, in the shape of a double set A little child, as winter turned to spring, facing each of the main points of the Tended a lily-plant with patient care, compass; but reaching this level, the first thing you will be struck by, possibly literally if you don’t mind Thinking, when she should see it blossoming, your head, is the amazing and enigmatic medieval scaffolding rising from the floor to the very tip of the To set it on the chancel-step; that there, spire. When Easter dawned on Lent, the spotless thing Might on the feast-day be her offering, Lifting its own white face to One more fair. But, as the plant grew upward day by day, Raising itself from earth towards the sky, PAGE 3 FORTY DAYS AND FORTY NIGHTS So seemed the child from earth to draw away, The while she feared to see the lily die; Unthinking that, ere broke the Easter ray, She might her own white soul before Him lay For Whom she sought the flower to sanctify. Time passed. The lily bloomed not; and the night Before the feast had come.

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