ONE day, in the summer of 1961, when I was 20, a brother with a car suggested a visit to Newland, on the edge of the Forest of Dean, not far from where my parents had retired. We viewed the splendid church — the ancient mother church of the Forest — with its many medieval tombs, and wandered among the houses of the little surrounding village. On the gate of one was an inscription: The Old Grammar School. This was my “Damascus road” encounter.
Why had a grammar school been founded in a remote village? How old was the school? It turned out to date from 1446 — six years after Eton College. I was reading history at Oxford, but the history degree omitted children completely. It featured only adults. I became aware of something that my tutors never mentioned. “The child is father of the man.” About a quarter of our life passes before we are adults, and yet very few people have been prompted to study the history of childhood.
In the following year, when I was able to embark on postgraduate studies, I chose medieval schools as my subject. I have been studying them ever since, besides extending my research to childhood more widely. And to study any kind of history is to reach out beyond ourselves and become aware of what moves other people.
THE foundress of Newland Grammar School, Joan Greyndour, is buried in Newland Church. What moved her to found a school? We do not know, but it was probably an obligation to use her wealth to do good and to promote Christian knowledge. And she will not have been alone in this. Christianity has spent 2000 years inspiring human responses, in countless forms: buildings, liturgy, art, music, literature, education, and charity. Artists (of all kinds) have imagined and interpreted it. Benefactors have funded its activities. Churchgoers have guarded and cherished it. Whatever church attendance may be, this power still works to an amazing extent, afresh in each generation.
To go to any church like that of Newland (which a devoted band of people are bringing to new life) is to be brought into contact with centuries of inspiration and devotion, often changing, and yet always rooted in where it began: the gospel of Jesus. One can come out from even an empty church building a different person from the one that went in — as I did from Newland, on that day when I was 20.
And, for that, we need our churches to survive, including the small and the rural. The devoted bands need our support and encouragement. We cannot do without them; for the Church of England is made by the England of churches.
Dr Nicholas Orme is Emeritus Professor of History at Exeter University.