Holy Places: Paul Handley

LAVATORIES, parking, heating, comfortable seats if possible, possibly some carpet. PCCs across the country are under pressure to draw recent worshippers who would never consider going anywhere without such amenities. It is paradoxical, subsequently, that a few of the places deemed most spiritual have absolutely naught in your comfort.

One such is St Aldhelm’s Chapel, near the sting of a cliff on the Dorset coast. It is a small, square constructing, dating from the twelfth century. In its 800-year history, it has gained one or two amenities: a recent roof or two, some glass for its one thin window, and two buttresses that make it look more like a bunker than a church — albeit a Grade I listed bunker.

But there isn’t any electricity, no heating — and positively no parking. To reach it, you drive through the small village of Worth Matravers (not omitting to go to St Nicholas’s, with its dog-tooth chancel arch and medieval squint), and discover a small farm automobile park, before taking the shortish walk along a chalky farm path. Or you’ll be able to take the good distance round: it’s on the South West Coastal Path; so, in theory, you can start from Minehead.

THE chapel’s origins are obscure, but earthworks near by suggest an early, pre-Conquest monastery. It is first mentioned within the pipe rolls of Henry III (d.1272), and a chaplain was employed, suggesting that the constructing was used as a chantry. Its position also suggests some kind of beacon for ships; so perhaps the chaplain prayed that sailors would see the beacon before they struck the rocks below.

The dedication to St Aldhelm (c.639-709), Abbot of Malmesbury Abbey and Bishop of Sherborne, hints at a link to a non secular community further inland. Confusion concerning the name — presumably map-makers were unacquainted with Aldhelm’s writings on the virtue of virginity, or his 100 Latin riddles — led to the naming of the promontory St Alban’s Head. If this adds to the sensation of obscurity and neglect, then so be it. The chapel’s isolation signifies that it should never be overrun by tourists.

THE attraction to me is its austerity. I admit to preferring my Christianity warm and preferably well-padded. St Aldhelm’s isn’t that. Dark, even in the event you leave the door open, cold, windswept, unadorned (unless you include the Seventeenth-century graffiti), it makes only very grudging concessions to any humans who might need to use it. It feels closer to the God who was around at Stonehenge than to the God of its contemporary Early English churches. It warns me to not humanise God too readily.

There are occasional services during August, when it could actually be cool quite than cold, and fewer windswept. But the best privilege is to attend the 6 a.m. service on Easter Day, walking from the automobile park within the pitch dark, grateful for the paleness of the trail, marvelling on the singing of the unseen larks. At the top of the candlelit service — in what feels very like Christ’s tomb — we go outside, and see the sun rise out of the ocean.

Paul Handley was Editor of the Church Times from 1995-2024.

For details of St Aldhelm’s, visit the benefice website: staldhelm-purbeck.org