It’s nearly Easter and the comforting thought that however well or ill we have managed with our observances, we have survived Lent. The 10th century monks who farmed this land would have been exhausted from the long weeks of abstinence – no meat, fish, eggs, dairy produce – and on top of that the farming still to be done. Of course I know that in this parish as in many others, people do still observe the Lenten fast, but in services we haven’t so much had a fast as a feast with the sermon series [available on the website hampsteadparishchurch.org.uk and possibly to be printed out – one can be found further on in this issue, I wish I could have printed them all.
Going back to the monks for a moment I can’t help wishing we knew more – how much land did they have, for instance? When was it sold off? How much of Hampstead belonged to them and what did they grow? I am destined never to find out. King Ethelred gave 5 hides [= 600 acres] of Hampstead land to Westminster Abbey in 998 but it was gradually granted away until by 13th century only the churchyard was left and in 1750 that was so full they were having to buy back land to extend the burial ground.
Buying and selling land has dogged the Parish church over the centuries and it’s hard now to understand why they acted as they did. In 1811 they bought the field over the road from the church for an Additional Burial Ground 1 and then immediately sold off a large part of it [from Prospect Place up towards Mount Vernon]. If only they hadn’t! We could do with that land now – could have done with it 50 years ago when we ran out of space for burials. Short-sighted? Or a calculated decision to make money? What they bought as a field they sold as building plots.
Running a parish is so often about making the best available decisions – which is why we have an Annual Parochial Church Meeting. PCCs were set up in 1921, Acts of 1956 and 1969 govern their establishment and function, we as members of the parish have a duty to see that our elected representatives carry out that function; and it’s a measure of our support as well, that we go to the meeting and take an interest in what is happening. We hear a lot in the national press about the direction the Church of England is moving in, the decisions it takes, the mess it is often represented as taking, but here we are, at grassroots level, so to speak, taking a hand in running our parish. The meeting is on Monday 23rd April at 8pm in the Moreland Hall – a venue which is a mystery to a lot of people: it’s in the school playground and can be reached by going through the gates under the arch where the entrance to the Everyman cinema is.
It would be tempting to expect to have a rest in April, following the tension of Holy Week, the excitement of Easter. The church never rests! Easter Week itself contains the Friends of the Drama AGM on 11th and a visit by the London Gallery Quire to sing Evensong on 15th; the following week we have Classics with my Baby on Tuesday 17th, a Literary Hour on 18th, and the week after that the APCM [see above], The Friends of the Drama performance of Act Two of The Winter’s Tale at the Questor’s theatre [see page 22], Desert Island Discs [p 26, a Friends of the Music fund-raiser, featuring Lee Ward and Barry Rose on 28th; a Plant Stall and Primrose Sunday [ps 17 & 18] on 29th. So – a restful month? I don’t think so!
Happy Easter,