St Bartholomew’s Day 24 August is forty days after St Swithun’s Day on 15 July. Is summer coming to an abrupt end? How much has it rained? All the tears that Saint Swithun can cry, Saint Bartlemy’s dusty mantel wipes dry You will come across churches dedicated to St Bartholomew at Hyde Abbey, on the […]

On seeing the new Britain’s Pilgrim Places book one turns first to see the Pilgrims’ Way entry. But the book has a lot more and many diverting entries. It’s a candidate for a definitive work. This is a British Pilgrim Trust book by Nick Mayhew-Smith and Guy Hayward. The photographs are by Marcus Green who […]

Oscar Romero is the 20th-century Thomas Becket. Archbishop Romero was killed in a church by the El Salvador dictatorship because it did not like his defence of human rights . The St Oscar Romero national shrine is in St George’s Roman Catholic Cathedral in Southwark (opposite the Imperial War Museum). Pilgrims from Southwark to Canterbury […]

Published this month, between the 800th anniversary of the Translation of St Thomas Becket in July and the 850th anniversary of his murder next December, is a book which would have been part of the Becket 2020 programme. But the pandemic has not stopped the appearance of this lovely hardback Penguin The Book in the […]

The Lammas Fair in Exeter and the Ould Lammas Fair in Ballycastle have been cancelled due to Coronavirus. But Borough Market and Southwark Cathedral are together maintaining ancient tradition. The word Lammas is derived from Loaf Mass and refers to bread made from the first harvested wheat for the Mass of Thanksgiving. This is Old […]

Saturday 25 July is St James’s Day which is special to pilgrims old, new and intending. St James the Great, one of the core apostles and John’s brother, is now found in Santiago de Compostela cathedral where he draws thousands of pilgrims arriving on various trails across Spain from France and Portugal. From England you […]

Today is St Margaret’s Day. Before Southwark Priory became the parish church (and later also cathedral) there was St Margaret of Antioch Church in Borough High Street. St Margaret’s in Borough High Street, rebuilt in the 13th century, was Southwark’s parish church until 1540. As you left the Tabard Inn you would have seen the […]

Public worship has returned to Winchester Cathedral in time for St Swithun’s Day on Wednesday 15 July. Swithun (800-862) often gets a mention in the weather forecast at this time of the summer thanks to the saying: St Swithin’s day if thou dost rain For forty days it will remain St Swithin’s day if thou […]

William Cash was planning a Catholic Herald readers’ Becket anniversary pilgrimage to Canterbury when the virus struck. In this month’s Catholic Herald he writes about St Thomas Becket and recounts own recent walk from Southwark. There are some delightful illustrations. According to The Times William Cash is thorough for he also went solo from Winchester […]

The eve of the Translation of St Thomas of Canterbury is the anniversary of St Thomas More’s death in 1535. He is a Becket figure who put God before the state and as a result lost his life. Today pilgrims ‘meet’ him at Southwark, Dartford, Farningham and Canterbury. In Canterbury every 6 July there is […]