AN ABANDONED Gulag complex, in the far north of Russia, was the
unlikely starting point for my peregrinations through the holy
places of Britain. Yet this is where my long-term project to
promote our country's spiritual history began.
The seeds of this lengthy odyssey were planted a decade ago,
when I stepped through the rusting gate of a long-abandoned labour
camp, on an island in the White Sea. Fragments of rough pottery
splintered under foot - remnants of Soviet-era prison-life that
echoed down a corridor of crudely numbered cell doors.
The first door I tried swung slowly on its hinges. I stepped
into the abandoned cell, and picked my way through bed springs and
rotting rags. A scattering of grass grew where the pale, sub-Arctic
sunlight fell through the empty window's rusting bars.
It was a shock to remember that this archipelago is regarded by
many as the holiest place in Russian Orthodoxy. The remote island
of Solovki is now the scene of a rapid monastic revival, and
pilgrims flock here once again during the brief summer, when the
pack ice that gives the sea its name melts.
There was a cold but clear-sighted logic to the early Communist
decision to set up the first labour camp here, in 1923. Founded by
pioneering monks in the 15th century, the Solovetsky Monastery had
become the Russian equivalent of Mount Athos - a place that richly
symbolised everything the new atheist regime despised. Altars in
the monastic churches were ripped out, and replaced with kitchens
or latrines. Monks and priests who refused to use them were
executed.
SUCH harsh contrast between the sacred and the profane casts a
painfully bright light on the essence of all our holiest sites. In
Britain, as much as in Russia, it became increasingly clear to me
that holy places are much more than peaceful havens given only to
prayer or contemplation. They are where history is made, where the
hopes and fears of nations are gathered and dissipated; they are
our own Golgothas, in miniature and close at hand.
The day after we pushed through the long grass into the
forgotten Gulag, my brother and I visited the monastery gardens,
bright with daffodils in early July. The Russian guide told our
group about an attempt by the English Navy to raid this holy
island, a forgotten skirmish far from the Crimean War.
Despite nine hours' bombardment, a combination of divine miracle
and military incompetence ensured that not one monk was harmed. The
guide looked at us, and smiled knowingly at such a mix of blessings
between nations. In a Moscow flat the following year, I asked her
to marry me.
And so an Orthodox-inspired quest continued back here in
Britain. Our apparently gentle landscape of rolling hills and
gradually decaying Christian buildings might seem anything but a
spiritual battleground, particularly compared with the recent
trials endured by Russia. As I began to investigate our sacred
heritage, however, experience on the ground proved every bit as
intense and dramatic.
The Holy Island of Lindisfarne, the most important early
monastery and missionary centre in England, also bore witness to
the start of the Viking Age in 793, the moment when 300 years of
terror uncoiled on Europe like the lash of God. In similar vein,
the blood of St Thomas Becket spilt on the floor of Canterbury
Cathedral created the foremost shrine in England, a place that
dominated spiritual and secular culture for centuries.
DESECRATION is part of the life cycle of holy places, something
to remember in Britain as we contemplate the vast and complex
legacy of our Reformations. Both Holy Island and Canterbury attract
visitors in great numbers today, centuries after their monasteries
were closed and shrines were dismantled. The power and function of
holy places is not merely undimmed by the passing of centuries, and
the scars of violent opposition, but validated by them - enhanced,
even.
Armed with my wife Anna's sense of the sacred, and the proceeds
from selling a publishing firm I had founded in 1996, I set out on
a five-year journey across the length and breadth of Britain. The
aim was to see what was left of our long legacy of Christian
activity. The end result was my book Britain's Holiest
Places, published in 2011.
The book industry had warned me that "religious history books"
were unpopular, but I knew that my journey had unearthed treasures
that would appeal to anyone with an interest in our colourful past,
or an affection for our most enigmatic landscapes. The main reason
is the sheer diversity that is on offer: it is not possible to fit
our Christian history into any single creed.
I soon abandoned my unhappy attempts to shoehorn our holy places
into a theological framework, and learned to celebrate them for
what they are. When I wrote the final version of the book, my
ambition was simply to encourage readers to visit, and make up
their own minds.
The book was reprinted ten weeks after publication, and TV and
radio companies made contact. After some prevarication, the BBC and
the Welsh-language channel S4C teamed up to commission a six-part
series.
I SET out to retrace my steps with the film crew for an intense
three-month schedule, in the company of the series presenter, Ifor
ap Glyn. He is a poet and broadcaster, and, by chance, attends a
Welsh Congregationalist chapel in his home town of Caernarfon. As
he comes from a Christian denomination almost entirely devoid of
ancient ritual, I was intrigued to see what he would make of the
most extreme examples of medieval piety, and ascetic
traditions.
His instinct for the inherent beauty of spiritual places has
proved to be unerring. Aided, no doubt, by a poet's sensibility, he
recognised even the unfamiliar practice of praying at shrines as
the most human of narratives: a place to channel our rawest
emotions. At root level, shrines need no more explanation than the
matches and candles provided. Holy places make plain their purpose,
with minimal intervention.
Ifor's good-natured engagement with some of the imaginative
tales of early Christian writers makes particularly informative and
entertaining viewing. The outlandish folk hero St Twrog probably
did not roam the mountains of Snowdonia casting boulders the size
of dustbins at the devil and his temples. But he might have
converted the people from paganism. You cannot carry out an
archaeological excavation on an allegory - a liberating realisation
for any church historian.
For me, the episode on shrines sums up the potential of holy
places to cut across division, and inspire people from any
denomination. In addition to Ifor's thought-provoking response, we
were fortunate to interview both the Archbishop of Westminster, the
Most Revd Vincent Nichols, in Westminster Cathedral, and the Dean
of St Albans, the Very Revd Dr Jeffrey John, by the shrine in St
Albans Cathedral. In their own ways, all three offer a strikingly
human interpretation of the love that continues to draw us to the
graves of our ancestors.
Archbishop Nichols makes the provocative claim that the
Reformation in England has come to an end in recent years. Citing
public reaction to the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997,
he believes that we are a nation that is once again comfortable
revering the memories of the departed. It is a big call to make,
but, after five years on the road, visiting every great shrine in
Britain - both past and present - I would say he has a point.
THE holy places in Britain, in particular our cathedrals, are
becoming more accessible and better known than at any point in the
past 400 years. There were no acknowledged shrines in any Church of
England cathedral for hundreds of years after the Reformation, but,
in the past quarter of a century, more than a dozen have
reintroduced memorials to their saints.
Icons have been commissioned and displayed, medieval tombs
rebuilt, votive candles supplied, and, in a few cases, such as St
Albans, the saint's relics have been returned to public
veneration.
Some would argue, no doubt, that their popularity is simply
testament to our national love of heritage. But we have castles
that are just as old that see nothing like the numbers of visitors.
An emotional connection remains - the first step towards a
spiritual encounter.
Indeed, this is what makes it possible to commission a
television series: beautiful places, with fascinating stories that
people can relate to. I had assumed that the BBC would want to tell
our religious history in chronological order, but, instead, it
opted to focus mostly on natural landscape features, and the marks
left behind by devotional activity. The programmes therefore look
at islands, sacred trees and mountains, water rituals, ruins,
caves, and shrines, and visit 38 places in six episodes.
This is a story written on an enormous canvas. Now, we think in
terms of writing the gospel on people's hearts, but there was a
time when it was written on to the whole of our landscape. Like
cartwheels that follow an ancient track, devotional use over many
centuries leaves its own marks to follow - traces etched into the
spirit of a place.
Some symbols are eternal, and archetypal, like the trees and
mountains that we examine in one of the episodes. They unearth a
wealth of surprising Christian symbolism that is intact in our
landscape. Hilltop chapels dedicated to St Michael the Archangel
abound: St Michael's Mount, and particularly Glastonbury Tor, are
among our most iconic sites. They are photogenic, and have an
interesting tale to tell.
A ruinous chapel at Roche, in Cornwall, perched on a rocky crag,
is one such eye-catching site that we visit in the programme. It
looks, at once, like a place from which to proclaim to people
gathered below, and also somewhere to retreat from the world. It is
the sort of site that any Christian can usefully contemplate. Even
someone who claims to base his or her entire faith on the contents
of the Bible would admit that mountains play a pivotal part in
Jesus's journey. The Sermon on the Mount and the Temptation in the
Wilderness, conjured into life on a windswept Cornish moor.
Pagans and Pilgrims: Britain's holiest places runs on BBC4
for six weeks, from Thursday 7 March at 8.30 p.m.
Britain's Holiest Places: The all-new guide to 500 sacred sites,
by Nick Mayhew Smith, is published by Lifestyle Press at £19.99
(CT Bookshop £18); 978-0-9544767-4-8.