The woods around Lesnes Abbey have London’s largest display of wild daffodils.
The familiar yellow flowers are appearing now and will reach their peak this month.
There are also crocuses near the abbey fish pond and blossom in the monks’ garden.
**Lesnes Abbey is between Shooters Hill and Dartford on the second stage out of London.
The Pilgrims’ Way starts in Winchester and Southwark before converging at Otford.
Both starting points have a St Valentine resonance.
On the edge of Winchester the PW passes through the remains of Hyde Abbey. Here one of the treasured relics was the head of St Valentine which had been given by Canute’s Queen Emma, mother of Edward the Confessor.
The community observed a Valentine octave which meant that the celebrations continued for just over a week .
Hyde Abbey’s seal depicted St Valentine holding his head.
[The relic was lost at the Reformation when the monastery was dissolved. There may have been three Valentines so although San Anton in Madrid displays a ‘skull and bones of St Valentine’ and Santa Maria in Cosmedin in Rome has a head there is no confirmed connection with Winchester.]
This highlighting of Valentine in Winchester was long before he became associated with love or romance.
Those responsible for that connection and triggering today’s popularity are to be found in Southwark.
Southwark Cathedral ‘s most splendid tomb belongs to John Gower.
His Ballades ‘Saint Valentin l’amour et la nature’ and ‘Saint Valentin, plus qe null Emperour’, written about 1390, make him one of the first to suggest Valentine had a connection with love.
This was nine years after his friend Geoffrey Chaucer is writing in his Parliament of Foules ‘…this was on Seynt Valentyne’s day/Whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate’.
St Valentine, patron of engaged couples and young people, joins St Christopher and St James in being patron of travellers.
On Sunday Southwark Cathedral’s Evensong was sung at Southwark’s St George’s Roman Catholic Cathedral to mark the end of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.
The service was simultaneous with a Unity Vespers at Rome’s Basilica of St Paul outside the Walls where Pope Leo presided.
At St George’s the Dean of Southwark preached and a combined choir provided the music.
Roman Catholic Vespers will be sung by the choirs at Southwark Cathedral on Sunday afternoon 21 June.
St George’s Cathedral is an additional starting point for pilgrims to Canterbury. The Roman Catholic cathedral has the Oscar Romero national shrine.
Pilgrims can follow the short Romero Way from St George’s Cathedral to Southwark Cathedral for the ancient beginning of the Pilgrims’ Way to Canterbury.
Two lost mosaic panels depicting the Tabard Inn ‘are in reasonable
condition’ according to a report submitted to Southwark Council.
The Livesey Trust Annual Report 2024/25 highlights the large scenes which were removed from public display in 1967 to make way for the Bricklayers Arms flyover in Old Kent Road.
They show the pilgrims in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales gathering at The Tabard in Southwark’s Borough High Street before setting out for Canterbury and on their return feasting.
The report, by Southwark Council’s Head of Culture Eva Gomez, concedes that the bright life-size outdoor artworks have ‘one or two losses and loose pieces’.
With a proposal to remove traffic from the flyover and create a high level garden this might be the moment to bring the panels out of storage and place them back restored on the Pilgrims’ Way which runs across the Bricklayers Arms roundabout.
The Pilgrims’ Way from Winchester to Canterbury is the UK’s second most popular route according to the British Pilgrimage Trust.
‘For many, the appeal of pilgrimage lies not simply in the act of walking, but in walking towards the unknown in search of something meaningful,’ claims the Trust which welcomes the King’s Christmas message featuring pilgrimage.
The top route is the St James Way from Reading to Southampton which briefly shares the same path around Hyde Abbey outside Winchester.
The St James Way is the first section of the Camino Ingles which continues from La Coruna to Santiago de Compostela.
Also just announced is the number for pilgrims arriving by all routes in Santiago last year. The total, at 530,987, is more than half a million.
The Pilgrims’ Way also has a London starting point at Southwark Cathedral and although not recorded by the Trust there is an ever growing number of people setting out on this Chaucer route beginning in Southwark.
Chaucer is not known to have visited Winchester although he did go to Southampton. His business and civic duties took him up and down the Kentish road out of London.
‘Pilgrimage is an ancient practice, but its renewed appeal today reflects contemporary pressures such as the pace of modern life and constant connectivity,’ says the statement from the Trust marking the survey release.
‘Setting out on foot along routes shaped by centuries of use offers a deliberate contrast, creating space for reflection and attentiveness to landscape and history.’
The Trust adds: ‘At a time when many people feel divided from one another, pilgrimage can offer something quietly radical: common ground. By walking alongside others, sometimes alone, sometimes in silence and sometimes in conversation, people often find it easier to listen and connect.’
Monday 29 December is the anniversary of St Thomas Becket’s murder in Canterbury Cathedral.
At Canterbury Cathedral there will be celebrations of The Eucharist at the Altar of Swordspoint at 8am and 12.30pm.
The Roman Catholic Mass is at noon at St Thomas of Canterbury Church in nearby Burgate. The church is home to relics of Becket including a piece of finger bone, once held by Pontigny Abbey where St Thomas stayed during his years of exile, and a fragment of his vestment.
St Thomas was martyred on the fifth day of Christmas 1170 at the start of vespers so the Cathedral evensong on this day has long been a special occasion. At 5.30pm The Memorial Service for the Martyrdom of St Thomas largely takes the form of evensong with short graphic readings from TS Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral.
The play was writtten for performance in the cathedral’s chapter house.
The service will be sung by Canterbury Chamber Choir. The anthem is by John Rutter and hymns include In our day of thanksgiving. The Bishop of Richborough will preach.
At 7.30pm there will be Solemn Vespers in the Cathedral Crypt.
The day is one of pilgrimage but more by car or public transport rather than foot. There was never a huge number of pilgrims from afar on this day due to the weather and short daylight hours.
The Translation of St Thomas on 7 July was the better attended occasion and remains so today.
The Christmas carol Bethlehem Down was written by poet Bruce Blunt in 1927 whilst between two pubs on the Pilgrims’ Way.
He was walking from The Plough in Bishop’s Sutton to The Anchor on the outskirts of Ropley in Hampshire.
Both pubs are now closed. The Plough, on the corner of Water Lane, suffered a serious fire and having been rebuilt is now a private house. The Anchor, near Ropley Watercress Line Station, is a steak house restaurant.
Within a few days Blunt had sent the words to composer Peter Warlock who lived at Eynsford on the Southwark branch of the Pilgrims’ Way. His cottage is today marked by a blue plaque.
Bruce Blunt was hoping the two might have some money for seasonal drinking, or an ‘immortal carouse’ as he called it, and so they entered their work in the annual Daily Telegraph carol competition.
They won and the carol appeared in the paper’s Christmas Eve issue.
The tune was for a congregation but in 1930 Warlock arranged a solo version. The manuscript was received by Lancaster Priory on the day he died.
Peter Warlock, born Philip Heseltine, was the father of art critic Brian Sewell.
Bruce Blunt is buried in the churchyard at Bishop’s Sutton where his carol is often sung on Christmas morning.
Bethlehem Down
When He is King we will give him the King’s gifts,
Myrrh for its sweetness, and gold for a crown,
“Beautiful robes”, said the young girl to Joseph
Fair with her first-born on Bethlehem Down.
Bethlehem Down is full of the starlight
Winds for the spices, and stars for the gold,
Mary for sleep, and for lullaby music
Songs of a shepherd by Bethlehem fold.
When He is King they will clothe Him in grave-sheets,
Myrrh for embalming, and wood for a crown,
He that lies now in the white arms of Mary
Sleeping so lightly on Bethlehem Down.
Here He has peace and a short while for dreaming,
Close-huddled oxen to keep Him from cold,
Mary for love, and for lullaby music
Songs of a shepherd by Bethlehem fold.
Jane Austen was born 250 years ago on 16 December 1775 in the north Hampshire village of Steventon.
Her death in 1817 came in Winchester where she is buried in the cathedral.
Her statue, unveiled this year, is outside although at the moment suddenly almost lost between Christmas Market stalls.
Advent, as she celebrated her birthday year by year, was a special season but, like Christmas, much more low key than now.
Jane would have only known one carol which was While Shepherds Watched. It was probably sung to the Old Winchester psalm tune.
This ‘Christmas hymn’ had been published in 1700 having been written by poet laureate Nahum Tate. He died penniless fifteen years later and was buried in the crypt of St George the Martyr church in Southwark.
(His body is now in Surrey’s Brookwood Cemetery.)
St George the Martyr in Borough High Street is the first church on the London branch of the Pilgrims’ Way which runs through many places known to Jane Austen.
One Christmas Day, when staying with her brother at Godmersham (on PW), Jane delighted in having Christmas Day dinner at the ‘grown up time’ of 4pm.
Bishop of Southwark Christopher Chessun, who has often spoken about pilgrimage, this week returned to the theme in a letter announcing his retirement next year.
‘During my time in Southwark I have very much enjoyed leading diocesan and co-leading ecumenical pilgrimages, particularly to the Holy Land,’ writes the Bishop in his letter to the diocese dated Advent Sunday.
‘In recent years I have a very strong sense of how important the reality and metaphor of journey and pilgrimage is in the Christian Faith. It is the Way, as we seek together to understand God’s loving purposes for us, to speak well of each other, and to honour our Baptism and participation in Christ.
‘I have a heartfelt desire, God willing, to continue to serve Christ’s Church, but my own personal sense of pilgrimage is captured in Walter Raleigh’s poem, ‘The Passionate Man’s Pilgrimage’:
Give me my scallop shell of quiet,
My staff of faith to walk upon,
My scrip of joy, immortal diet,
My bottle of salvation,
My gown of glory, hope’s true gage,
And thus I’ll take my pilgrimage.
‘It has been a privilege to make my pilgrimage with you over these years. You have been hearty companions. I am confident that in God’s providence there will be joy and sustenance for each and every Southwark pilgrim in the faithful years to come, the Lord himself being our helper.’
A special granite Camino milestone, or mouteira, has been installed in Winchester on the line of the St James’ Way.
The location is outside St Bartholomew’s which is a surviving church within the once large Hyde Abbey on the edge of Winchester.
The St James’ Way, from Reading Abbey to Southampton, is the first leg of the Camino Inglés, once linked by a direct sea route to La Coruña on the northern Spanish coast, leading to Santiago de Compostela.
The relics of St James the Great, often depicted as a pilgrim, are in Santiago’s cathedral. But a hand, given by Henry I and claimed as belonging to St James, was held by Reading Abbey.
The new stone is where the St James Way has briefly joined the Pilgrims’ Way. For pilgrims walking eastward to Canterbury, the stone is 1km from the Pilgrims’ Way starting point at Winchester Cathedral. For Santiago pilgrims walking south it is 659 miles to Santiago.
The stone is unusual in not recording in kilometres. A delegation from the Spanish Galician Government and A Coruña Provincial Council, who gave the stone, was present for the unveiling last week.
A pilgrim passport stamped on the route across Berkshire and Hampshire counts towards receiving a certificate, or Compostela, in Compostela de Santiago.
A new stamp for pilgrims walking in either direction is available in St Bartholomew’s, open Saturday and Sunday mornings. The stamp depicts the stone. The nearby King Alfred pub also has a stamp.
Bishop David Hamid, former suffragan Bishop in Europe, blessed the stone and spoke in Spanish.
David Sinclair of the Confraternity of St James, who has worked on the development of the St James’ Way Camino Inglés, said: ‘It is a further significant step in the ongoing development of the St James’ Way Camino route.
‘The milestone marks in a magnificent way at this most apt of sites, the 100 km ‘to go’ point by foot in a pilgrim’s journey to Santiago de Compostela Cathedral. This is the point from which their Compostela is earned.
‘We are grateful for the efforts and contributions of the Galician government, A Coruña Provincial Council, Winchester City Council, St Bartholomew’s Parish Pastoral Council and the Diocese of Winchester in its placement, production, shipment and installation. For the future pilgrims that reach it, we wish them ultreia et suseia (go further, and higher).’
Before the dissolution of monasteries in 1539 pilgrims were attracted to Hyde Abbey by the relics of St Josse and the head of St Valentine. David Sinclair hopes that the addition of the St James’ Way will herald a return of pilgrimage to St Bartholomew’s church and Hyde Abbey now the resting place of King Alfred.
