April –1917

I just met the most unusual young lady. She is called Josephine Outram, in her late twenties I would guess, and she is spending the week holidaying in the Marple area. She is a keen cyclist and was thinking to cycle up our road, and of course it is not of very good quality, so she was pushing her bike and feeling most put out when she noticed that her tire was flat. I was out gardening when she walked by, and we got talking. I invited her in for a cup of tea and then let her use the garden to mend her bicycle. We got on very well.

I told her that the best place to visit in this area is Mellor Church, but that she would find it much easier to walk there. So she left her bicycle at our house and I decided that I would walk with her, as there was plenty of time before I needed to fetch Beth from school.

Mellor Church sits close to the top of a hill, and the views on a clear day are such that you can see for perhaps twenty miles all around. You certainly get a very good view over all of Manchester and its adjoining towns and villages. But the path up to it is very steep, although there are footpaths and styles the whole way, showing that the path was regularly used for centuries.  As we went along I told her the history of the church.

It is suggested that it was formed as a place of worship in the early 14th century, just before the Black Death. There may have been a wooden church on the site earlier than that but no evidence of it has been found. The tower with its perpendicular doorway and window is fifteenth century. During the 18th century the walls were partly rebuilt, and galleries on the south and east walls were constructed. The one over the chancel extended into the nave to accommodate the new organ and choir.  

The old pulpit was removed to the tower, and a large three decker pulpit built against the North wall. The Church at this time could seat seven hundred people, which seems impossible, looking at it today. I would have guessed that it would be crowded with 200 people in.  In 1879 new pine bench pews were installed only leaving three of the old ‘box’ type pews at the front of the nave.  In 1885 the East gallery and the three decker pulpit were removed, the old pulpit moved to the front of the chancel and brought back into full use.  A pipe organ was installed in the North wall of the chancel and a traceried arch placed between the chancel and the nave.  In the first decade of the twentieth century the remaining south and west galleries were demolished.  Stained glass windows were installed in the north wall, but frosted glass used in the south wall.

We walked up Townscliffe Road, and although the shortest route would have been through the golf club, the route Rebecca used to take to school, I thought it better than we should walk from Townscliffe Farm right down to Knowle Road and then take the path from there up to the church – as we wouldn’t want to get in the way of the golfers, and also it is a bit less steep a climb.

We were able to go into the church and I showed Jo the pulpit carved from the trunk of an old oak tree and the carved stone baptismal font which is supposed to date from late Anglo Saxon times. And in the graveyard I showed her the Saxon cross which is part of a sundial, and also the stocks, which thank heavens, are no longer used. I can say that with even more conviction when I think that adultery back in the past was certainly punishable by spending time in the stocks.

We walked back through the fields behind the church, down to Mill Brow and past the Primrose Mill, where Peter worked for those six months in 1915, and then along the well worn trail to the golf club, and then back down our road.

While we were viewing the church, Jo asked me if I belonged to it. I said, “No, I am a Catholic.”

“Oh,” she said, “I wouldn’t have thought you would be one of those.”

“Whatever do you mean by that?”

“Well, they are so false in their concepts.”

“Why do you say that?”

“You know confession. Do you go to confession?”

“Yes, but we only have to go once a year.”

“Well, I have a friend who is a Catholic, and she goes to the Catholic Church in Bourne. Every Saturday night, she goes to Confession. She says she has a friend who isn’t a Catholic who goes with her for company. And she says she makes up the sins because she has to go – and she doesn’t really have anything to say, but thinks she must say something.”

“Oh, dear. That sounds very odd to me. But most of us sin all the time. There is no need to make up sins. Just think of the occasions when one is proud or selfish and all the little lies we all tell.”

“In my opinion, she has more sins than that to confess, but doesn’t want to say what she really does. She says every time her penance is to say the stations of the cross, and her friend does the six on one side and she does those on the other, and then they go off to the dance, full of grace, or so she thinks, and go ahead and sin some more, if you take my meaning.”

“Well, I don’t know you friend, so I can’t comment on her situation. But I think that if what she tells you is true, she hasn’t understood the concept of confession at all.

"To be properly absolved of sin, you not only have to be genuinely sorry, but you have to promise not to do that particular sin again, to the best of your ability. So if she regularly sinned on Saturday after going to confession to confess that very sin, she would be badly mistaken in thinking that she had made a good confession. I know it is a difficult concept for people to understand.

"A lot of churches think that directly addressing your sorrow for sin to God is the most honest way to go. But there is something very comforting for me, knowing that if I have done something that I know is wrong, that I can be forgiven, as long as I have a proper sense of contrition.  It doesn’t give me the license to commit that sin again, but it should give me the grace to avoid the temptation involved in committing that sin in the first place.”

“Well, I will tell my friend what you said, but somehow I don’t think she will alter her interpretation.”

“It’s our differences that make life interesting.”

Jo and I became such good friends so quickly and I think she will be writing to me. She seems keen to keep up our fledgling acquaintance, which pleases me. She lives in Ropsey near Bourne, an area where I have never visited. She and her sister Adelaide live with their brother, who is rector of the local church which originally was under the care of their father, but he died in 1896.  Their 82 year old mother lives with them. She told me quite proudly that her brother’s living is worth £370 annually, which is quite good wages.

It looks as if the Americans are going to finally come into the war. At least the President has asked Congress for a declaration of war on Germany. It might take some time, but at least it is a move in the right direction.

The Royal Family have now decided that from henceforth they will have the last name of Windsor. I wonder if they are thinking that they don’t want their German background to be quite so obvious. The name was adopted as the British Royal Family’s official name by a proclamation of King George V, replacing the historic name of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. The paper says, “With the Great War against Germany raging on, George took the politically astute decision to sever all familial links with his Teutonic cousins. All the German titles throughout the family were exchanged for British peerages.”