From the Editor

On the last weekend in March, after attending a family celebration in Paignton, Beryl and I decided to make the short journey across the Tamar Bridge into Cornwall to see the Eden Project.  Travelling from Devon was delightful seeing the daffodils and primroses along the grass verges on a sunny but chilly morning – the countryside looked beautiful.  The Eden Project is the world’s largest greenhouse with plants from all around the world.  After the Eden Project we just had to have a Cornish cream tea and stopped at a lovely Pine Lodge Gardens and Nursery for one and thoroughly enjoyed it!

I received an e-mail from Lord Dowding’s stepson, David Whiting who had read on our website Roger Bryant’s excellent articles in the September 2008 and October 2008 editions of “Faith Matters” on Air Chief Marshal Dowding.  He also refers to Trevor Hopkinson’s article Palestine – Views from another Pair of Eyes which was also in the September 2008 edition. 

Well done to Sylvia Willey, our Organist & Choir Director, in organising and conducting our first performance of ‘The Crucifixion’ by John Stainer on Palm Sunday with the combined choirs of St. Faith’s and St. John the Baptist, Westbourne.  The meditation was superbly performed and enjoyed by a large congregation.                  

Colin Carter

Majorie “Madge” Milner RIP

Marjorie "Madge" Milner 1912-2009, late of 2 Churchfields, wife of Fred Milner verger at St. Faith's during the late 1960's to early 1980's.  After Fred’s retirement they moved across the road to Juniper Square where they continued to take an active part in church life.  Madge carried on living in Juniper Square after Fred’s death and could always be seen pushing her trolley round the town.  A small stroke forced her to move into sheltered housing and from there to her care home in Southbourne.  She passed away over the Easter week end after a short illness, one month before her 97^th birthday.

Cavaliers, Roundheads and Portsmouth

As a boy, I was fascinated by the English Civil War and the exploits of the dashing Cavalier, Prince Rupert.  I am sure you will remember that the Cavaliers were the Royalists, supporters of King Charles 1^st, and the Roundheads were the Parliament-arians, led by Oliver Cromwell.  It would take too long to examine the causes and events which led to the start of the Civil War on 22 August 1642 when the King raised his standard in Nottingham.  Sufficient to say that both King and Parliament each wanted absolute power.  At the outbreak of war, Portsmouth was the strongest fortified town in England and the King’s military headquarters in the south.  Its royal dockyard was of great importance to both sides; the King because of the need to get material aid into the country from the royal families of Europe and to the Roundheads to maintain the navy which was mostly under their control.

The garrison was with the Cavaliers but the citizens of the town were overwhelmingly for the Roundheads.  The Governor of Portsmouth was Colonel George Goring who had seen military service in the Lowlands.  He was a man of very dubious reputation who had spent most of his wife’s fortune on drink and other vices.  Although he posed as a royalist and a firm supporter of Queen Henrietta Marie, even plotting against his friends in Parliament, he nevertheless stayed Governor by giving the Roundheads secret information about royalist intentions.  He even managed to get money from both sides to strengthen the defences of the town!  No doubt some of this money found its way into his own coffers.  Eventually he came out for the King but not before accepting from Parliament a warrant for £5,000 for what was described as “garrison purposes”.

Goring’s soldiers were owed pay and were in a mutinous state, particularly as some were supporters of the Roundheads.  They were told to either leave the town or sign a loyalty pledge to the King, as were the Mayor and Corporation.  Townspeople had the option of leaving but most stayed to protect their properties from looting by the military.  Many sent their wives and children out of the town.  The Roundheads lost no time in assembling a large army on Portsdown Hill of some 240 cavalry and 500 foot soldiers which opposed a garrison of some 300.  Meanwhile a squadron of warships besieged the town for the Roundheads.  The seamen staged an audacious raid to rescue many of the women and old people who were suffering hardship during the siege.  Landing on the eastern shore, they ferried several hundred across Langstone Harbour to the safety of Hayling Island.  They even brought over more than 100 cattle which swam across, tied to the boats.  Meanwhile younger and agile townspeople were escaping over the walls in great numbers.

On 12 August, the Roundheads captured Portsbridge, while across the water in Gosport two gun platforms were built to secure 12 pieces of artillery.  The shelling of the town commenced on 2 September and the end for the Cavaliers was in sight but not before the controversial shelling of the parish church (now our Cathedral) on the grounds that it was being used as an observation post.  The Roundheads next captured Southsea Castle, aided it was said by its commander being drunk following a night of carousing with Goring.  Much of the town had been destroyed by the batteries in Gosport when finally Goring surrendered Portsmouth before fleeing to Holland.  To find out about Prince Rupert, you must keep a wary eye on the batteries in Gosport and hurry to buy next month’s “Faith Matters” from Mistress Beryl.

Roger Bryant

 Next year, 2010 will be the 70^th anniversary (12 September) of the Battle of Britain, and the 40^th anniversary of Lord Dowding’s death (14 February) at our home in Tunbridge Wells.

You may be interested to know that there have just been published two excellent good books on Lord Dowding that have had very good reviews.

I note in your magazine: Palestine – Views from another Pair of Eyes. Lord Dowding was in Palestine in the autumn of 1929 to report on the Arab uprisings.

I shall be coming to England around mid June to see my two daughters near Bath, then driving to East Kirkby for the family gathering and memorial service to those who lost their lives with 57 & 630 Squadrons that were based there.

We plan to return to France on Sunday 12 July after attending a Battle of Britain Memorial function at Capel-le-Ferne, near Folkestone, and then take the Eurotunnel in the evening.

Regards,

David Whiting, Fréjus, France

Dear Colin,

I applaud your letter in the current “Faith Matters” (April 2009) but believe you me I have been trying since last August to get funding for CCTV, which experience with the school in Church house has shown to stop vandalism.  I had a quote from Magna Security Services, whose Manager was so appalled at the damage that he offered, then, to install it at cost for £2,250.  Another firm quoted £512 for the material only but we believed a professional survey was necessary to get a faculty.  In consultation with Jan Stuart we agreed we needed a vandal proof camera in the porch and a camera on the cross beam half way down the nave to cover the altar and organ with a recorder in the bell loft.  I spoke to the Police in Winchester who confirmed that this would identify individuals who subsequently committed vandalism.  Incidentally vandalism is reported to the Havant Police although the neighbourhood policewoman does not always seem to be aware of it.

I then started trying to raise funds.  The one successful application I made was £230 from Waitrose.  I tried similar letters to DSG International plc through the helpful Manager of Curry’s but had no reply.  I tried Lloyds TSB to have a curt “The Bank has no money” left on Jan’s answer phone.  Tesco’s would only contribute in kind.  Regrettably, until we have a suitable deterrent, it is necessary to close the Church in the afternoons.  Vicki has the distasteful job of clearing up after such desecration and the organ cannot withstand continuing damage.  

Yours Peter (Thomas)

Church Shop

The Church Shop made £2,376 during the period 9 March-10 April.  Many thanks to everyone who helped to make this possible – it was a great result.

The shop will open next during the period 26 May-26 June.

Sheila Warlow

Eden Project

Eden was built in an old clay pit to show that degraded environments can be fixed.  It is a symbol of hope, showing what can be achieved when groups of people put their minds to something

Life on the Nile – Part 1

You probably have memories of the first week of February, when there was the coldest snap for several years, and it even snowed in Havant.  I am lucky: I don’t.  That was the week that Frances and I chose to spend in Egypt.  While England froze and ran out of grit for the roads, we were enjoying a week of continuous sunshine on a pair of Nile cruises.

The most popular way to visit Upper Egypt is to take a cruise boat between Luxor and Aswan.  This is the area where many of the finest ancient Egyptian temples were built, and Luxor is just across the river Nile from the famous Valley of the Kings, where many of the Pharaohs’’ tombs have been discovered.  There are several hundred boats specially built for these cruises, though quite a number of them are out of service at present, and moored alongside the river bank at one of the two towns.  The standard cruise takes a week, sailing upstream – which is down on the map:  Nile geography is confusing – for three days, spending a night moored at Aswan, and then another three days back downstream to Luxor.  It has never been possible to sail further than Aswan, since the First Cataract breaks the river there into dozens of narrow channels round rocky granite islands.  That is why the British chose Aswan to build the famous dam just below the cataract, and thus store the water from the annual Nile flood, and release it gradually through the dry season.  That was at the beginning of the 20^th century, and it revolutionised Egyptian agriculture, allowing farmers all along the Nile to get two or three harvests a year without regularly losing their land under flood water for several months every year.

However, by the 1950s, it was clear that the dam wasn’t high enough, and Nile water was still flowing directly to the Mediterranean Sea.  By that time, Colonel Nasser had ejected King Farouk, and he planned to build a new High Dam just upstream of the cataract.  But the USA and Britain disapproved of Nasser, and cut off the funds promised by the World Bank.  Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal, to use the tolls to finance the building, we got involved in the Suez campaign which led to the British forces leaving Egypt, and Nasser got help with constructing the dam from the Soviet Union. [Perhaps Roger Bryant will give us an article on that period soon.]

Work started in 1960, and it was obvious that the resulting lake above the dam would flood many of the villages and ancient monuments in Nubia, the part of Egypt between Aswan and the Sudan.  The most famous of these is Abu Simbel, which was built into the cliff on the bank of the Nile for Ramses II, about 1300BC.  The thought that this magnificent pair of temples would disappear under water for ever galvanised the world into a rescue operation.  UNESCO organised fundraising and engineering, and the entire complex was moved inland and uphill, so that once again it overlooks the river, but safely on dry land in an artificial hill with a perfect reproduction of the cliff.

And we wanted to visit it.  We had been on a Luxor-Aswan cruise in 1995, and greatly enjoyed it.  Now we found that Voyages Jules Verne run a double cruise in a week, from Aswan to Abu Simbel on what is now called Lake Nasser, and then taking a coach back to Aswan to join a Luxor cruise on its way back downstream.  This allowed us to see all the sites, but we worked twice as hard as the passengers who did the full week cruise on either boat.

We were due to leave from Gatwick on Monday morning, and I had planned to drive there with an early start.  But by the Saturday, the weather forecast was so menacing that we hastily booked a hotel in Crawley for Sunday night, and set off from Havant just as the first snow started.  So on Monday morning, we excavated the car from the drifts in the hotel car park, and had an easy drive to the airport – where our flight was the only one with no forecast departure time!  We eventually got away 2½ hours late.  It turned out that not only had the plane had to come in from Dublin, waiting there until the Gatwick runway had been cleared, but our pilot had had great difficulty driving to work, a journey that usually takes 20 minutes.

Alan Hakim

George Frideric Handel 1685 – 1759 - Part 2

Last month’s magazine article dealt with Handel’s time in Germany, his “apprenticeship” in Italy and his arrival in London.

In 1726, after a petition to the House of Lords, Handel – now aged 41 – became a British citizen.  The following year King George I died.  Handel was commissioned to write four anthems for the coronation of King George II and Queen Caroline in Westminster Abbey.  Zadok the Priest (1727) is the most well known of these anthems and has been sung at every British Coronation since.  It accompanies the anointing of the Monarch that precedes the Crowning and is the most sacred part of the service.  The thrilling opening to this work – with its extended orchestral introduction building a gradual crescendo – creates a level of suspense and anticipation for what is a magnificent choral explosion.

Italian opera had dominated Handel’s career throughout the 1720’s.  When King George I died in 1727, Handel lost a loyal supporter.  At the same time, the public began to grow tired of Italian opera.  This situation was not helped by the fact that there was often trouble between rival singers.  On one occasion a fight took place on stage between two leading sopranos regardless of the fact that Princess Caroline was present!  Handel’s final opera season failed largely because of rising production costs and he was left almost bankrupt.  As a consequence The Royal Academy of Music at the King’s Theatre, where Handel had staged his operas, failed financially in 1728.  During this period however, Handel had switched his attentions to English oratorio.  This was the religious equivalent of opera and was based upon biblical stories from the Old Testament rather than Roman history and classical mythology that London audiences never fully accepted.  Handel had heard such works in Rome and this, together with his background in Lutheran Passion music and an interest in English Church music, provided the inspiration for such glorious works as the oratorio Athalia (1723), and later works Israel in Egypt (1738) and Saul (1738).  The “Dead March” from Saul is often played at national funerals.

In 1728, John Gay wrote The Beggar’s Opera.  This was a different kind of opera – a ballad opera – that proved very popular with the public.  It was in English and had songs set to popular melodies that made it easier for the public to follow.  In 1729, in an endeavour to revive The Academy, Handel and the manager of the Kings Theatre formed their own opera company, but they had to face competition from a rival company called the “Opera of the Nobility” patronized by the Prince of Wales.  Initially both were successful but in 1737 both companies failed. 

Then the librettist Charles Jennens (who had already worked on Saul) sent Handel a selection of passages from the Bible and encouraged him to write an oratorio.  Remarkably, in the space of one month in 1741, Handel composed the Messiah.  It contains awe-inspiring arias and rousing choruses – some of the most memorable music he ever wrote.  The work is laid out in three parts: the anticipation of the Messiah’s coming and the Nativity; Christ’s Passion and Ascension; and Christ as the Redeemer.  Later that same year Handel accepted an invitation from the Duke of Devonshire, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland to visit Dublin, and it was there, at the Music Hall in Fishamble Street on the 13^th April 1742, that the Messiah was first performed.  The choir was comprised of twenty-six boys and five men from cathedral choirs.  A capacity audience attended and in an attempt to make more room, ladies were requested to come without hoops and gentlemen minus swords!  The audience gave the performance a rapturous reception. 

On his return to England Handel gave the first London performance of Messiah on the 23^rd March 1743 at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden (now the site of The Royal Opera House).  This was given in the presence of King George II.  During the singing of the “Hallelujah” chorus the King rose to his feet and remained standing until the end.  To this day, audiences still observe the tradition of standing for the “Hallelujah” chorus.  Handel’s Messiah is inextricably linked with the Church’s two major festivals, Easter and Christmas, and ever since Victorian times it has remained a favourite work with numerous choral societies.  From the 1940’s until the early 1960’s, one of the highlights of the musical calendar was the traditional Good Friday performance of Messiah sung by the Royal Choral Society at the Royal Albert Hall.  This was conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent – probably the greatest choral conductor of his generation.  In 1959, Sargent talked of Messiah as “an oratorio of incomparable grandeur and ineffable beauty which today, 200 years afterwards, brings glimpses of Heaven and the Peace of God to thousands.”  [Handel Messiah Sir Malcolm Sargent CD 575 7762]

Social conditions in London during the mid 18^th century were terrible and many children were abandoned.  These destitute children often died on the streets, in alleyways and on rubbish heaps.  Thomas Coram, a sea captain, campaigned for almost twenty years to establish a Foundling Hospital.  Finally, on 17 October 1739, George II signed a charter for the education and maintenance of exposed and deserted young children.  Fifty-six acres of land were purchased in Bloomsbury and the Hospital completed in 1752.  Handel first heard about the project in 1749 from the music publisher John Walsh who happened to be a Governor of the hospital.  Handel quickly became associated with the Foundling Hospital.  Funding such a project was expensive and when, in 1749, he heard that the Hospital Chapel still needed furniture and windows, he generously provided a concert of vocal and instrumental music in order to raise funds for its completion.  The concert included the first performance of his Foundling Hospital anthem “Blessed Are They That Considereth the Poor.”  This anthem was a mixture of elements taken from earlier works and ended with the “Hallelujah” chorus from Messiah.  Also included in the concert were movements from his new oratorio Solomon (1749).  These referred, appropriately, to the building of Solomon’s temple.  Following this event Handel was offered a Governorship, but he declined on the grounds that he could better serve the Hospital by organising further fund raising concerts.  In just ten years he raised the huge sum of almost £10,000. 

In 1750 Handel conducted the first of his many performances of Messiah in the Hospital Chapel.  An organ that he had donated to the Chapel was used to open the concert.  Shortly after he accepted election as a Governor.  Handel continued to give annual benefit concerts for the Hospital until his death in 1759.  He donated a fair copy of the Messiah to the Foundling Hospital so that benefit concerts for the Hospital could continue after his death.  To this day, Messiah is still his most popular work and is performed all over the world for the benefit of charitable works.

As well as the overtures to his operas and oratorios Handel wrote a considerable variety of instrumental music, including suites, sonatas and concertos.  The most important of the suites are Water Music (1717) and Music for the Royal Fireworks (1749).  Handel also wrote organ concertos for performance in his oratorio concerts. 

It was King George II who commissioned music to accompany a spectacular fireworks display to celebrate the end of the War of the Austrian Succession.  The Music for the Royal Fireworks was performed in Green Park, London.  However, the occasion was apparently a disaster!  It rained all evening, the pavilion caught fire and spectators were at risk of being hit by falling debris!  After the Music for the Royal Fireworks Handel wrote relatively little.  His eyesight began to deteriorate, and within a short time he was almost totally blind.  Despite this he continued to manage his annual oratorio seasons at Covent Garden and to play the organ.  A devout Christian, Handel regularly attended services at St George’s Church, Hanover Square where he had his own pew.  On 6 April 1759 he heard Messiah for the last time.  He died on 13 April – the anniversary of the first performance of this great oratorio.  Handel is buried in Westminster Abbey.

Peter Willey

From Our PCSO