Little Gidding and Nicholas Ferrar

December 1993

You drive out of Cambridge, north-west up the busy A604 dual carriageway, passing by Saint Ives. Over the A1 (the ‘Great North Road’) onto the brand-new A14. After a few miles turn off north and drive a few hundred yards to Leighton Bromswold, where George Herbert was prebendary. Then on, further north, down narrow country lanes, hardly wide enough for two cars to pass. Now you’re out of the flat East Anglian fens and into the Huntingdonshire Wolds, where the land rises gently and is lightly wooded. A few more turnings, through Steeple Gidding, and on towards Great Gidding. Finally, a little signpost points down a single-lane track: ‘Little Gidding’.

Down this muddy road for a few hundred yards and you reach a small group of simple brick houses clustered around a large old farm house. A sign proclaims ‘The Community of Christ the Sower’ in a circle around four ears of wheat arranged as a cross, and points to a small car park off to the left – it’s just another muddy field. Out of the car the cold, damp, misty December air hits you: you sniff, button up your coat, and wish you’d worn wellingtons.

A footpath leads from the car park alongside the garden of the big house, and brings you to a small churchyard, tidily kept, with several tombs. A small church, with a weird eighteenth-century façade, stands in the middle of the churchyard, a small door in the middle of the west front. Before the door stands an altar-tomb, a couple of feet high: this is the grave of Nicholas Ferrar.

Inside the church it’s dark, and still bitterly cold and damp. It’s just a single aisle, say thirty feet long by fifteen feet wide, with a small chancel beyond. There are no pews or seats, just seventeenth-century collegiate-style stalls around the west, north and south walls. Brightly-coloured nineteenth-century stained glass windows depict the coats of arms of Nicholas Ferrar (incorrectly), King Charles I, and the nineteenth-century restorer. A brass font with a battered crown stands like a standard candlestick at the north side of the sanctuary step. On the south side, a low doorway leads to the tiny vestry, about eight feet square, with a disused fireplace, and an old cupboard piled with dusty hymn and prayer books. Back out into the church again. At the west end is a small display of guide books, postcards, and copies of Four Quartets and other Eliot works. You turn round to the east and say a prayer.

Then back out into the fast-fading December afternoon light and look around. You’re standing on a hill looking south across the rolling countryside and bare ploughed fields. There is no sound except for a few birds calling overhead, and the occasional distant gunshot. It’s hard to believe you’re only four or five miles from the A1, one of the country’s busiest roads. It’s easy to believe that this was the peace and quiet which drew Nicholas Ferrar and his family from the busy world of London commerce to establish the only community in the Church of England in the three hundred years between the dissolution of the monasteries and the Oxford Movement. It’s easy to see what draws Christians of all denominations to this simple shrine, to remember the example of Nicholas Ferrar, and to live in a community at this place.

You walk round to the farm house, in through the front door. In the hall is a small display of Ferrar and Gidding memorabilia, and you turn left into a decent-sized room labelled the Parlour. In the corner a lady looks up from her reading, smiles and welcomes you, ‘Would you like some tea? Cake?’ ‘Yes, please.’ She disappears. Around the walls are more Ferrar pictures, and photographs of Little Gidding and members of the Community. It’s lovely and warm and you undo your coat and look with dismay at your mud-spattered trousers. A notice tells you that the tables and chairs in the room were made by a member of the community and that you can buy similar furniture. Your host returns and you gratefully sit down to eat and drink, noting the books on the bookstall. Further conversation, then it’s time to drive home in the dark, pledging to return someday, and pondering the advantages of community life.