From the Editor

It’s official – we are now into an interregnum.  Fr David has departed and it is up to every one of us to continue the excellent work that he achieved in the seven years that he was with us.  Sandra Haggan and Graham Frost were selected by the PCC to be our representatives in selecting the new Rector.  The PCC also decided to rescind Resolution B - that this PCC will not accept a woman as the incumbent or priest in charge of the benefice or as a team vicar for the benefice.

What a busy, but rewarding, 3 days we had in June for the Flower Festival.  There were so many helpers – setting it up, arranging tables, providing the refreshments, cakes and goody bags, tidying up and doing many other tasks - that it would take a few pages to mention you all in the magazine, but our thanks go to Sandra Haggan who co-ordinated the events and worked tirelessly over the three days.  Rosemary Thomas and her team provided some stunning arrange-ments – see them on our website -and the church was decorated brilliantly.  The “Sound of Music” sing-a-long was good fun– Martin Poliszczuk and Angie Mckeown acted as the Master of Ceremonies – with some of the audience dressed as the performers in the film – Marias, Nuns, etc.  The weather was kind for the Strawberry Tea in the Churchyard and the 3 days ended with the choir from St. John the Baptist at Westbourne joining our own choir for a Choral evensong – directed by our Musical Director, Sylvia Willey.  There was a rich sound in church with 44 members of the joint choir singing enthusiastically.

Colin Carter

From the Lay Deacon

By the time you read this we shall have said our farewells to Fr. David and his family.  I am sure we shall all continue to remember them in our prayers as they begin a new life and ministry at St. Mark’s, Barrington Hills, near Chicago.

In the seven years Fr. David has been our Rector we have seen many changes in the life of the parish, changes which have evolved and grown steadily.  Here at St. Faith’s we have a friendly, family atmosphere, imbued with the Holy Spirit to enliven our church life.  Our main Sunday service, the 9.30 Eucharist, has become a gathering together of church members for the family meal, which, in the presence of our Lord Jesus, who commanded us to ‘Do this in remembrance of me’, is a true act of worship and fellowship.  We all go away from this service spiritually refreshed, and strengthened for the week ahead.  We have thriving and varied organisations and groups, all of which play an active role in our church life.

Now we are faced with an interregnum, a period of waiting until a new rector is appointed, but this does not mean that we should just ‘mark time’.  Whilst we shall have a number of visiting clergy to preside at the Eucharist and other services, it is up to us to keep the life of St. Faith’s active and progressing.  Fr. David leaves a great legacy in a parish which is spiritually very much alive, and we must all play our part not only in maintaining this, but building on it, so that the new rector will find a church and congregation which is a vigorous body of people, filled with the Spirit and witnessing to the Living Lord.

St. Paul, as ever, had something to say which we could all bear in mind at this time.  Writing to the Christians of Philippi he said, ‘Let us hold fast to what we have attained’ (Ch3 v16), and to the Colossians, ‘Continue securely established in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised in Gospel (Ch1 v23). ‘As you…..have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in Him, rooted and built up in Him, and established in the faith just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving’ (Ch2 v6).

A hymn we often sing on Sunday mornings, No. 525, offers us a final thought:  ‘One more step along the world I go, One more step along the world I go.  From the old things to the new, Keep me travelling along with You.  And it’s from the old I travel to the new; Keep me travelling along with You.’

May God’s continued blessing be with us all.

Trevor Hopkinson

Portsdown Hill Shelters

I remember in January 1941 during the Second World War my mother taking me to see my Aunt at Waterlooville in order to bring my cousin back with us to Southsea for a short stay.  As we caught the bus back that evening to Portsmouth, an air raid started.  The windows of the bus were criss-crossed with tape to lessen the danger of flying glass from bomb blasts.  As we reached the top of Portsdown Hill, we could see fires raging across Portsmouth and the noise of gunfire and bombs became almost deafening.  The driver pulled over to the side of the road and told us it was too dangerous to continue.  He motioned us towards an entrance on the side of Portsdown Hill.  This was to be my first and only experience of one of the two incredible underground air raid shelters tunnelled under the Hill.  This was the London Road Shelter.  We stayed a couple of hours in the comparative quiet and safety beneath Portsdown Hill before we were told that the “All Clear” had sounded, enabling us to rejoin the bus.

The second shelter was called the Wymering Shelter and Joy had considerable experience of it.  Her aunt had a large house in Wymering and Joy and her family would make their way there early evening to stay the night.  When the inevitable air raid started, they would leave their beds and make their way to the shelter.  Joy was 7 years old and her brother and sister were younger, so her parents did not allow her to explore the shelter.  This was just as well because the two shelters stretched for 1.8 miles, with 25 passages leading off the main tunnel.  Although the normal capacity was 2,500, when the air raids were particularly fierce, over 4,000 people crammed in as best they could.  The organization was superb.  There were bunks in tiers of three for people to sleep.  You had to have a ticket to use a bunk but there were also season tickets!  With these, people could sleep there every night regardless of whether there was an air raid in progress.  They could arrive at 5pm and the main lights went out at 8pm.  If an air raid started, the lights would go on to enable people to make their way into the shelter.

There were canteens providing hot and cold meals and a storage tunnel built to house a safe drinking water supply.  General hygiene was provided for by washrooms, together with women’s and men’s toilets.  There was even a play area for children, while the adults were entertained by local “pub” entertainers, singing or playing musical instruments like banjos and accordions.  There were also excellent medical facilities with a first aid post to deal with accidents and a medical staff including doctors and nurses. 

Incredibly, in the event of the small tunnel entrances being blocked by falling debris or a direct hit from a bomb, there were escape shafts to the surface of Portsdown Hill.  Escape was by climbing steel ladders with platforms spaced at short distances to catch anybody who fell from the ladders.  These shafts also provided a primitive form of ventilation but, in truth, there was no real system of ventilation.  Joy remembers the shelters as noisy and smelly, crowded with people, stuffy with condensation running down the walls.  But safe from the horrors of bombs and fires!  The tunnels were finally closed on 5 February 1945 when there was no longer any possibility of further air raids.  They have never been used since 1945 but they still exist as a silent monument to the courage and endeavour of the incredible and resolute citizens of Portsmouth.

Roger Bryant

Some Thoughts on the Flower Festival

There have been so many kind comments on the Festival that I believe we have achieved what we had hoped for in a small way.  Perhaps we did not make as much money for the Church restoration as we could have done, about £1,700, but it was not our policy to charge for entry.  Our primary purpose was that those visiting St Faith’s would feel uplifted and drawn to Christ through the imaginative and beautiful displays.  I think that some of the comments in the Visitor’s Book bear this out: “A moving experience - a Church full of prayer”, “Flowers as beautiful as His Grace”, “A most beautiful display - quite wonderful”, “Beautiful flowers and music” and “Superb display of work displaying the gift of God through nature”.

Everyone involved worked very hard that I feel humbled that you gave so much of yourselves especially Sandra, who organised so much and worked long hours over the whole weekend.

Contributors from other churches were very generous with their time and flower arrangements.  Many commented on the feeling of fellowship as we all worked together.  Also we should not forget those who through their skill grow such wonderful blooms and deliver them to us at the peak of their loveliness.  I would like to express my gratitude and warmest thanks to everyone who took part in whatever capacity.  May God bless you all,

Rosemary Thomas

Ralph Vaughan Williams - His Early Life

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the death of the English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams who died on the 26 August 1958.  He is perhaps best known for his work for strings “Fantasia on Greensleeves”.  During a long and active life which spanned over eighty years, Vaughan Williams wrote music of a wide genre including symphonies and other orchestral works, concerti, film scores, band music, choral works, church music and many songs.

Ralph (pronounced Rayf) Vaughan Williams was born on the 12 October 1872 at Down Ampney, Gloucestershire.  At this time agriculture was the principal industry, the horse was the major form of transport and domestic service the most common form of employment for women.  Edward Elgar, of whom I wrote recently, (see “Faith Matters” June 2007) was fifteen years old and would not be recognised as a national composer for a further twenty-seven years until the premiere of his “Enigma Variations” in 1899.

Background.  Vaughan Williams was born into a privileged background – the complete antithesis to that of Edward Elgar.  In 1868 his father, who was a Priest, moved from the parish of Alverstoke in Hampshire and became the vicar of All Saints Church, Down Ampney.  Vaughan Williams’ mother was the great-granddaughter of the famous potter Josiah Wedgwood and was also a niece of Charles Darwin.  Ralph and his family only lived at Down Ampney for two and a half years because, after the sudden death of his father, they moved to his mother’s family home at Leith Hill Place, set in four hundred acres of the beautiful Surrey countryside, near Dorking.

Vaughan Williams first attended school at Rottingdean.  The building, which now houses St. Aubyn’s School, is situated in the High Street.  In January 1887 he entered Charterhouse, the famous boys’ public school near Godalming, Surrey.  He played the violin and the viola in the school orchestra and had aspirations of becoming a professional orchestral player.  However, the family were opposed to this idea.  If he had to be a musician then an organist was considered to be a more respectable profession.  No expense was spared.  An organ was put in the entrance hall of his home in order that he could practice and since this had to be pumped by hand, Ralph often enlisted the help of a servant.

At the age of eighteen he entered the Royal College of Music (founded in 1883) where he was a pupil of Hubert Parry (1848-1918).  Two years later he became an undergraduate at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he obtained his Bachelor of Music and a second in history.  On completing his studies at Cambridge in 1895 he returned to the Royal College of Music.  By this time, Parry had been made Director of the College, so Ralph attended composition lessons with Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924).  He admired Parry as a man and also as a musician.  However his relationship with Stanford was both stormy and affectionate.  Vaughan Williams was determined to write music even if he had to start his career as an organist.  He was the only pupil to entirely baffle his Cambridge organ tutor Sir Walter Parratt.  Vaughan Williams was a big man and it is remarkable that he ever fitted into an organ loft.  One cannot imagine that he was ever able to co-ordinate his hands and feet – especially his feet.  He did however gain his FRCO while at the Royal College of Music.  Ralph eventually became organist at St. Barnabas, South Lambeth.  This was an experience that would stand him in good stead, as it gave him an insight into “good” and “bad” church music.

Whilst at Cambridge, Vaughan Williams met Adeline Fisher, the daughter of the historian and politician Herbert Fisher.  They were married on the 9 October 1897 at All Saints Church, Hove, by Canon W.J. Spooner, the self-same gentleman famed for “Spoonerism”.  They spent three months in Berlin where Vaughan Williams studied with the German composer Max Bruch (1838-1920).   On returning to London, Vaughan Williams gained a reputation as a writer, lecturer and music editor.  His research into early music, particularly that of Purcell, earned him great respect among scholars and critics.

Folksong.  Folk songs were to influence Vaughan Williams throughout his life.  One of the earliest collections of English folksongs was compiled in 1843 by the Reverend John Broadwood – the grandson of the founder of the Broadwood piano making business.  The collection was entitled “Old English Songs as now sung by the Peasantry of the Weald of Surrey and Sussex”.  There was a long-established friendship between the Vaughan Williams’s and their close neighbours the Broadwoods.  In 1902 Vaughan Williams gave a series of lectures in Bournemouth entitled “The History of Folk Song”.  To illustrate one of his talks he enlisted the help of Lucy Broadwood, niece of John Broadwood, an accomplished singer and herself a collector of folk songs.  These ancient songs, usually found within rural communities, had survived by being passed orally from one generation to the next.  Vaughan Williams was concerned that, owing to the spread of industrialisation and the break up of these communities, they would be lost forever if not written down.  So he toured the countryside, travelling many miles on his bicycle, collecting folk songs and carols from the villagers and the farmers and then notating them for posterity.  He enjoyed nothing more than visiting a country inn on a winter’s evening and sharing a mug of “four-ale” with the elderly country folk.  There was always the chance of picking up some rare old ballad on these occasions!  During 1904 Vaughan Williams visited Wiltshire, Kent, Essex and Sussex, particularly the Horsham area.  It was while on a visit to Monk’s Gate, a few miles to the south of Horsham, that he heard the folk song “Our captain calls” which he adapted for the hymn “He who valiant be” naming the tune “Monk’s Gate”. (English Hymnal No.402).  Though folk song had little influence on the composition of service settings and anthems, it became an important element in English hymnody– more of which will be told in the next “Faith Matters”.

Peter Willey

Church Shop

The Church Shop raised £2,420.69 during the May-June session.  Thank you to all who made this possible, to those working regularly in the shop and to the men who join us on setting up and closing down days – their help is gratefully appreciated.  We will set up shop on Saturday 23 August, re-opening on Tuesday 26 August, when we will be pleased to receive donations of clothing, bric-a-brac, household goods and small items of furniture.  Thank you all once again.

Sheila Warlow

Our Choir

Palestine (Continuing from July’s edition of “Faith Matters)

The Intelligence Officer was in charge of immigration.  The liner Ile de France anchored off and he went out to clear the mostly Jewish passengers.  The Captain then explained that he had a problem and introduced a distinguished looking Oxford educated Arab who had been expelled from the USA with a deportation order signed by John Foster Dulles no less.  The Arab said that if he went ashore he would have his throat cut to which the IO could only agree.  He therefore wrote in the man’s passport “Not accepted by the British Military authorities.”  Signed H Orpen Lt RM.  The liner sailed back to the States and our IO never heard from him or John Foster Dulles again!

A party of US Marines arrived on 17 June in white painted Jeeps to support the UN Mediator, Count Bernadotte.  There followed a four day countdown to the British withdrawal on 30 June.  40 Commando was the last British unit to leave and we embarked in HMS Striker.  

 The Royal Marines from HMS Phoebe provided the GOCs final guard as the Union Flag was lowered to three cheers from the Striker.  We arrived back in Malta with great satisfaction at the many and varied jobs we had done with efficiency and integrity.  We had lost no vehicles or personal weapons and no Royal Marine was among the 220 British troops killed by terrorists since the Second World War

Postscript.

Within weeks Count Bernadotte had been murdered almost certainly by Irgun.  The wretched Palestinians are still refugees and a running sore to relations with the Islamic nations.  Our CO, “Titch” Houghton, told me recently that when he was a POW in OFLAG 17, where prisoners from Dieppe were put in chains on orders from Hitler, he was able to do a good turn for a Jewish British Army officer.  When we arrived in Haifa he found this former officer in an influential position in the Jewish community and he had promised that 40 Commando would not be targeted and, apart from a few ’overs’, we were not.  

Postscript.  In 1973, when I was serving on the Naval Staff in Whitehall, Palestine had still not done with me.  One morning we found Cunard advertising a cruise there in the QE2 to celebrate the 25^th anniversary of the foundation of the State of Israel.  As there was £8 million of Government money in the vessel there was some surprise and a series of meetings was held in the Cabinet Office to make security arrangements.  I represented the Royal Navy and Michael Mates, now MP for Petersfield, represented the Army.  As a result of our meetings a number of SBS personnel in plain clothes mingled with the passengers and I sent the Superintendent of RN Diving to inspect the security arrangements at ports of call including Haifa and Ashdod, a new port built by the Israelis.  It was fortunate I did so for the Harbourmaster at Ashdod had no idea of the length of the QE 2.  Fortunately the cruise was completed safely.

Peter Thomas

Diamond Wedding Anniversary

Peggy & John Bradey were married on 2 August 1948 at St John the Baptist, Rudmore.  Its priest was Father Coley who walked about the parish in cassock and biretta greeting all and sundry with a cheerful word and a blessing – few were the houses in Rudmore that he did not visit.  In an air raid the complete roof of the nave was destroyed, but the Lady Chapel was undamaged.  Not long after the war Peggy and John were married there, in the Lady Chapel as the main body of the church was still open to the sky.  It was a warm, sunny but showery August day – the sun shone for them – but there were puddles all over the floor of the nave which had to be carefully negotiated as they made their way from the Lady Chapel amidst the congratulations and good wishes of family, friends and neighbours.

Alas, St John’s is no longer a church – but an apartment block.  Rudmore is gone – all that remains is the name of a roundabout.

Anniversaries and Explosions

Correspondence Column

Dear Colin,

I remember reading a magazine article some time ago, an interview with Andrew Lloyd-Webber.  He mentioned that from time to time he was approached by Churches for a donation towards their organ restoration projects.  He always refused, pointing out that for about £3,000 they could buy an electronic organ at least as good as, and probably better than the one they were proposing to expensively renovate.  I expect the cost has gone up a bit but the argument still holds and seems unassailable to me.  The PCC. is surely right to consider seriously the purchase of an electronic organ as against the figure for repair, etc., as given in the June edition of the magazine which I calculate at £36,254 including VAT which presumably is not recoverable.

Yours, Mike Dodsworth

(VAT on both church and organ repairs is in fact, recoverable via the Listed places of worship grant scheme.  See PCC decision of 14 July on page 21.  Ed)

The St Faith’s Safer Neighbourhood Team

Hello, I am Police Community Support Officer (PCSO) Sarah Woodley 13389 for the St Faith’s area.  I have been in post since February 2007, having previously worked in Rowland's Castle for nearly a year.  I joined St Faith’s in April and work alongside PCSO Giles Chapman, PC Anita Geroge, PC Kerry Bone and PC Alison Craddock.  Together we cover Havant, Denvilles, Langstone and Warblington either on foot or by bicycle.  Please do not hesitate to stop us when we are out and about.  I hold a beat surgery at St Faith’s church on the first Saturday of every month, 10am to 12-noon, which runs alongside the coffee mornings.  The beat surgery is open to everyone, so if you have any concerns/queries, please pop by.  We also hold several other beat surgeries to accommodate residents who may not be able to attend in the morning and these are: Warblington School on the 1^st Wednesday of every month between 6pm-8pm; Havant Health Centre from Monday 21^st August 10am to 12-noon (every 3^rd Monday of the month).

For those unfamiliar with the role of a PCSO, it is still a relatively new one, which came into place several years ago.  The fundamental purpose of the role is to provide reassurance in the form of high visibility patrols and a point of contact for the public.  We tackle anti-social behaviour and low level crime.  If you wish to contact the police regarding any of these issues there are several options such as:

1.  By email addressed: stfaiths.snt @hampshire.pnn.police.uk

2.  By telephone to 0845 045 45 45, asking for St Faith’s Safer Neighbourhood Team.

3.  Dialling 999 in an emergency.  Examples being when crime or disorder is in progress, when offenders are nearby, life is at risk, injury/damage is being caused or threatened.

4.  Dialling 101 to report community safety issues including crimes of a non-emergency nature such as vandalism, fly-tipping, drunkenness, drug abuse and anti-social behaviour.

5.  By calling into Havant police station (023 9289 1725).

6.  By reporting crime and concerns about potential criminal activity, anonymously, to Crime stoppers on 0800 555 111.

Please be extra vigilant with cold callers.  If you have door chains please use them and always ask for identification. There has been an increase in purse/wallet thefts throughout the town.  Please do not leave bags unattended or unzipped and hanging from shopping trolleys.  Always keep the zipper end closer to your arm, so you can check to make sure it’s still zipped, and try not to leave wallets in back pockets. I hope to meet many of you whilst out on patrol, and in the beat surgeries.

 PCSO Sarah Woodley