The Rt Revd Stephen Platten writes:

A UNIQUE visionary, Harold Palmer, better known for much of his life simply as Brother Harold, lived, for much of the time on his own, at Shepherds Law, the hermitage built partly by his own hands on a hillside near Eglingham, in Northumberland.

The seed of his vision came from Fr William (Sirr), who had been a member of the Society of the Divine Compassion, the earliest Anglican Franciscan community, but who then went on to live alone, in the hope of starting a contemplative community at Glasshampton, in Worcestershire. That vision collapsed with his death in 1937. Like William, Harold was something of an individualist, but still his aim was to establish a contemplative skete, a very small community like those on Mount Athos, and indeed like those of the early Desert Fathers. Although, ultimately, no one became a permanent additional member at Shepherds Law, a number of religious, both members of the Anglican Society of St Francis and other orders, joined him for extended periods. Harold remained committed to an ecumenical vision of the religious life, and Roman Catholic and Orthodox monks spent significant lengths of time with him, as did some Free Churchmen.

Richard Harold Palmer was born in 1931, into a fairly comfortable family in Purley, south London, the eldest son of the proprietor of the Propert’s polish company, which made dubbin and boot polish. Educated at Bishop’s Stortford School, in Hertfordshire, he served his National Service within the Royal Engineers at Borden Camp, in Hampshire, where he had particular responsibilities relating to the Longmoor Military Railway, which lay within the camp’s curtilage. This left him with a lifelong fascination with railways — he had even worked for a brief time with British Railways. In Shepherds Law’s library, alongside the rich harvest of theology, spirituality, and history are a prodigious number of railway books and even railway magazines. He often wore a curious Thomas the Tank Engine hat.

Harold went on to teach mathematics at Highgate School, thereafter joining the Society of St Francis (SSF). While at their Alnmouth Friary, he could often be seen with his habit tucked into his girdle, pedalling his bicycle furiously to catch a glimpse of a preserved steam locomotive passing through on the east-coast mainline.

Harold joined the SSF knowing that he might well wish to pursue Fr William’s vision, and, with great generosity, the Franciscans let him seek out a possible location for a hermitage, while he remained a member of the Order. Having looked at sites in Somerset, Shropshire, North Yorkshire, and Northumberland, he alighted on Shepherds Law to which he was taken first of all by Harry Bates, the then Archdeacon of Northumberland. In 1970, he began his work, and, with the support of students from Cuddesdon Theological College, he built a dwelling on the footprint of the 18th-century farmhouse within the grounds of an “eyecatcher” or folly, doubtless built by a former landowner.

In the 1980s, with the help of his growing number of supporters, he raised funds to build four cells, rather of the Carthusian plan with downstairs a kitchen and living room and a bedroom with an oratory above. Robert Runcie, then Archbishop of Canterbury, came to Shepherds Law to bless them in 1989.

The final and crowning piece of the plan, the chapel, was made possible by the legacy that he received on his mother’s death. The chapel is a triumph effectively designed by a local Northumbrian architect with much input from Harold. Dedicated in honour of St Mary and St Cuthbert, it is a triumph of the neo-Romanesque, but breathing the air of the celebrated Northumbrian saints, and with stones and bricks collected from the shores of Lindisfarne: stained glass includes images of St Aidan and St Cuthbert, and there is a relic of Cuthbert in the altar base. In 2015, it won the first prize in the RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) competition for the best new ecclesiastical building.

Harold sang daily the full office of matins, terce, sext, none, evensong, and compline to Gregorian chant, including material that he had personally gathered together. Some twenty years ago, Harold sought to move his allegiance to the Holy See, but without renouncing his former life and continuing very largely to use the riches of Anglican spirituality within his daily, monthly, and annual routine. The music and texts are now safely stored at Shepherds Law, and a monograph, Oneness, has been published. Inspired by Harold’s life, it takes the reader deeper into the contemplative monastic life.

An ecumenical trust with a majority of religious has taken on the development of the hermitage, so that Harold’s remarkable vision lives on. He died in the early hours of 4 October, the feast of St Francis.