The Shepherds' Church and a Sanctuary for Shrews

Commoners' Advent, day 4

The Marsh Church, St Thomas a Becket, Fairfield

Across open fields and shining water courses, deep in the heart of Romney Marsh close to our hedgehermitage here in Kent, lies the tiny wood-beamed Church of St Thomas à Becket, Fairfield. Although still in occasional use, its congregation is mostly now of sheep, swans, an occasional heron, and clouds of overwintering lapwings. It is the most mesmerising of places; appearing to float in a world of shimmering green and blue where it can be hard to tell which way is up and which way down.

I had wanted to visit it for many years (I love marshes!), but had never been able to until my dear friend, Pauline and her granddaughter Ivy, then aged one, offered to take me last year. We visited at the beginning of June when the marsh was awash with a golden tide of buttercups and a profusion of pink hawthorn blossom was frothing in the hedgerows. Utterly intoxicating.

To unlock the little church you have to visit a nearby farmhouse to gather up the heavy key that hangs by the back door and then walk across the marsh along banks and over bridges. I once lived for a whole in the Avalon marshes and when I left the house for the day I was never quite sure that it would still be there when I came back. Fairfield feels very like that; you can see the church, but you can never be quite sure that you will get to it. As we arrived a heron took flight from the reeds & a swan family were sitting contentedly with their many babies by the water. Pauline wondered whether Ivy might like to live there and be “raised by swans”. I was tempted myself.

There were once 28 villages on the marsh; 17 remain, the rest lost through the effects of malaria & the Black Death. Fairfield is one of these lost villages. The houses of the original medieval inhabitants have long since gone, but the church remains threaded through with their prayers and praise songs. In 1801, a census shows that the parish of Fairfield had a population of 34. Just before it was abolished in 1934 the population was given as 61. Such a tiny dot on the edge of the world; a liminal place, in between here and there ~ just like Advent.

The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent: Volume 8, originally published by W Bristow, Canterbury, 1799 says of Fairfield that;

“The PARISH, far different from what its name seems to imply, is a most forlorn and dreary place, and is seemingly the sink of the whole Marsh. It consists of an open level of marsh-land, unsheltered and without a hedge or tre throughout it. It lies very low, the eastern part especially, which, for the space of several hundred acres, is overflowed in winter, and becomes one great sheet of water, and the rest of the year is a swamp, covered with flags and rushes, which is in great measure owing to the mismanagement of the sewers, and though the landholders have lately been put to a very considerable expence, for the drainage of this level, they have not yet, nor in all likelihood ever will, reap any kind of advantage from it. The church stands on a little rise in this part of it, and is so surrounded by those swamps, that for the greatest part of the year it is to be approached only in a boat, or on a horse, passing with great danger through them up to the saddle girts.”

Poor Fairfield.

Legend says that the church was built just there because it marks the spot where, sometime between 1162 and 1170, the then Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas à Becket was rescued from drowning in one of the marsh ditches after he prayed to St Thomas & a helpful farmer arrived just in time. By 1200, a wooden frame with wattle and daub walls had been built as a temporary structure to offer nearby farmers & shepherds a place to worship. The walls were replaced with bricks in the 18th Century and, between 1912 and 1913, much of the church was dismantled, the foundations secured, and then reassembled using as many of the original materials as possible. The interior still contains the original lime-washed timbers, as well as bright white Georgian box pews.

There is no electricity here; only candlelight, the windows are clear glass giving views of sheep grazing and swans on water that might be the sky. It is extraordinary. And, even though we visited in midsummer, we couldn’t help but imagine the tiny church at midwinter, shining with candlelight, decorated with greenery and holly berries, perhaps surrounded by mists and flood water for the midnight service that sings in Christmas Day.

I love this poem by Joan Warburg, written in 1966 and pinned in the church in a tattered frame. I remembered it as I was writing about St Hugh and his Swan Wife and it seems to me to be the perfect poem for a Commoners’ Advent; a tiny shepherds’ church, offering room to spider, mouse, and shrew, a wild place of heron and wing, a holy sanctuary longing for the coming of the Child of Winter Stars and for a candle flame to light the dark.

St Thomas Becket, Fairfield

My parish is the lonely marsh,

My service at the water’s edge;

Wailing of sea-birds, sweet

and harsh,

The susurration of the sedge.

Bleating of a hundred sheep,

Where pilgrims and crusaders sleep.

*

I was too small a church to preach

The gospel to such mighty men;

I’d little Latin and could teach

But simple shepherds; now as then

I loved the frailest and the least,

Scattering words for bird and

beast.

*

The humble hands that built me

Of solid wood and stone

To last throughout Eternity,

Eight hundred years are gone;

Buried beneath the Kentish sod,

And I must intercede with God.

*

One winter as I watched alone

The whole marsh lay in flood,

Salt waters lapped against my

stone

Leaving great waves of mud.

Strange creatures swam for sanctuary,

As ark-like I withstood that sea.

*

So still I guard the coast and look

Beyond the sea, across the Downs,

I that was writ in Domesday book,

Have watched tall ships and towns

Spring up as flowers, and pass

away

Within the fading of a day.

*

No-one comes to worship, yet

The feathery fronds of water

weeds

Wave ghostly hands through grey

sea fret:

The sedges and the singing reeds

Seem, as they supplicate and sway,

Murmorous spirits come to pray.

*

I am nothing but Thy house,

Empty stands the sacred porch;

Yet I can shelter shrew and mouse,

Light a glow-worm for Thy torch.

From a spider’s tapestry

Weave a splendour fit for Thee.

~ Joan Warburg

“Published in Country Life in 1966. This captures the spirit of the place perfectly (and also refers to the floods in November, 1960, when the church was, like Piglet, “Completely Surrounded by Water”)”

The Marsh Church, St Thomas a Becket, Fairfield

I am determined to continue offering my work free of charge, because that too is resistance, but if you would ever like to support me with pennies you can do that at https://ko-fi.com/radicalhoneybee. Thank you so much, both for pennies and for all other forms of support, all of which are worth more than their weight in gold.

#CommonersAdvent #OldAdvent #CelticAdvent #StMartinsLent #WinterLent

References:

On Fairfield and the marsh ~

https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-kent/vol8/pp379-381

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairfield,_Kent

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romney_Marsh

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walland_Marsh

The lost villages of Romney Marsh https://romneymarshhistory.co.uk/lostvillages

Fairfield Church of Thomas à Becket ~

https://www.rob-tomlinson.com/places/church-st-thomas-becket-fairfield

https://www.romneymarshchurches.org.uk/fairfield

https://romneymarshhistory.co.uk/stthomas

Details of services in the church ~ https://www.achurchnearyou.com/church/12117/