English Parish Churches

Lord Berkeley of Knighton Excerpts

Thursday 12th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow my composing colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd-Webber. I agree wholeheartedly with everything he said, especially about protecting works of art. One encouraging little point is that tomorrow morning I will be at King’s College, Cambridge, with Stephen Cleobury and a couple of hundred local children, recording a small piece only for an app. The whole purpose is that when the Tour de France starts in Cambridge, a series of pieces will have been created with local institutions and people will go round Cambridge listening to the app that is relevant to that particular place. So that was a prophetic idea from the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd-Webber.

We heard about bats. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, for instigating this debate, and in particular for focusing on bats. I am afraid that I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, that we need not worry about them. My experience in the country in mid-Wales is that they are a real problem, and I will be very interested to hear what the Minister thinks might be done to tackle the problem of bats in Wimbledon and elsewhere.

An extraordinary amount of wonderful art has been created for English churches, and English parish churches. I think, for example, of an amazing man, Walter Hussey, who was dean of St Matthew’s in Northampton. He commissioned Britten, Henry Moore, John Piper, Gerald Finzi, Marc Chagall, and even one Lennox Berkeley. On moving to Chichester he commissioned Leonard Bernstein’s “Chichester Psalms”. That was a man with great vision. Sometimes, of course, that takes money, but it is amazing what can be done when local people are brought together and raise funds, and composers and artists will do things for the love of the area they live in.

One thinks of festivals and how churches have been important to them, such as Aldeburgh and its parish church, where Britten and Pears are buried. There are performances there every year and in Blythburgh and Orford—stunning East Anglian buildings. Moving to Norfolk, there are wonderful churches such as that of Cley next the Sea. Just down the road is Stiffkey. Noble Lords will all remember what happened to the rector of Stiffkey, Harold Davidson. Unfortunately, he was defrocked for consorting with ladies who were, you might say, already defrocked. He then decided to raise money by exhibiting himself in a barrel, and finally by getting into a cage with lions. The unfortunate Harold Davidson met his end being eaten by the lions. That is rather an unusual story, and fortunately not typical of most of the parish churches we have heard about.

There is something terribly important about creativity and religion, whether you have great faith or are an atheist. Hearing a marvellous piece of music or even just local children creating sound has an extraordinary, transcending quality. Some of the people I know who are most devoted to English churches are, in fact, atheists. They are passionate about them. We can all get an extraordinary sustenance from the communal coming-together, making music and worshipping—or not worshipping; just savouring that extraordinary calm that you get in an English parish church.

At Cheltenham we had, for concert venues at the festival, Gloucester Cathedral and Tewkesbury Abbey, but perhaps I remember even more fondly the concerts in Wynchcombe and the local surrounding area, where local people came. It is this thing of outreach—bringing the local parishioners in. Funnily enough, even those of us who have perhaps strayed from the faith in some ways go back to our local churches to be baptised and married and to bury our dead. It is a fulcrum—a lever on which everything turns. What is so extraordinary in this country, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, said, is that we have so many fantastically beautiful buildings. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, that we cannot put everything into mothballs, and we may have to concentrate on the greatest. Let us be realistic. But it is vital that we precisely do that.

We are privileged in this country; we can go for a drive somewhere and look up in a book, like the one by Simon Jenkins, a wonderful church to sit in, be with ourselves and think of God, if that is what we want to do, or our place in society or in humanity. That is a staggering privilege, and we must protect it at all costs.