Devon
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Celebrating Harvest and Christmas with Robert Hawker
I wrote this as we were preparing for our annual harvest festival at Pip and Jim’s church in Ilfracombe. In medieval England Lammas Day (1st August) was probably recognised as a thanksgiving for the first fruits of the harvest,...
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Exeter’s cleverest bishop?
The longest serving Bishop of Exeter in the twentieth century was Robert Mortimer. When I arrived at the preparatory department of Exeter School in 1952, he had already been Bishop for three years and when I left the main school...
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From Bishop Leofric to Bishop Jackie
When Bishop Jackie Searle came to Pip and Jim’s church in Ilfracombe on 13 June, preached, and celebrated communion with us, she was too modest to remind us that there was a Bishop of Crediton nearly 150 years before...
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The Devon men who shaped the infant Church of England
It is remarkable that two of the thinkers who shaped Anglicanism in the first 50 years of its existence were both Devon men, and one of them was actually born in our group of churches – John Jewel who...
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From Devon to the throne
Princess Victoria first saw the sea at Sidmouth. Her father (Frederick, Duke of Kent, the fourth son of George III) had come from Germany to England on borrowed money, and his creditors were pursuing him. A captain in the...
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Newman: One step enough for me
Last month I wrote about John Henry Newman’s love of the colours and scents of Devon. In December 1832, with his Devon friends Robert and Hurrell Froude, Newman set off from Falmouth on board the packet ship Hermes bound...
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The saint who loved the colours and scents of Devon
In the early church a common word applied to all believers in Christ was ‘saint’. So when Paul wrote his letter to the Romans, he addressed it to ‘all those in Rome who are loved by God and called...
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The rector who took time off to write a novel
‘But there is Ilfracombe, with its rock-walled harbour, its little wood of masts within, its white terraces, rambling up the hills, and its Capstone sea-walk, the finest “marine parade,” as Cockneydom terms it, in all England, except that splendid Hoe at Plymouth … And...
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Farewell to a man of ‘spiritual generosity and kindness’
On 6 March, 2019, Lord Habgood, who was Archbishop of York from 1983 to 1995, died at the age of 91. Eighty years earlier, at Eton, he hated games, but enjoyed chapel, although he rejected anything to do with God...
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A view of Challacombe Church
Sheila and I have discovered a lovely walk which we recommend. From Ilfracombe, you drive south down the A399 in the direction of Brayford but at Four Cross Way you turn left towards Challacombe. This takes you high up over...
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