Survival of Poem's Inspiration
Religious Site That Inspired TS Eliot Still Attracts Visitors
In the early summer of 1936, TS Eliot visited a small religious community nestling in the rising ground to the west of England’s glass-flat East Anglian fenland 60 miles north of London.
Little Gidding was one of three communities scattered in the surrounding farmland. The others were – and still are – the tiny Steeple Gidding and the established village Great Gidding.
The Ferrars Come to Little Gidding
In the early 17th century the family of one of the earliest members of the Virginia Company, which established the US colony of Virginia in 1607, bought the then ruined church and manor house at Little Gidding.
Led by matriarch Mary Ferrar, whose late merchant husband had been an early member of the Virginia Company, the Ferrar family were fleeing financial ruin following the dissolution of the company and the near bankruptcy of Mary’s son John. The disaster had persuaded the family to renounce worldliness and embrace religion.
The tiny village had been abandoned after changes in local agriculture had driven the inhabitants away. Mary Ferrar’s first action on arriving at the ruins of the village church was to pray and she ordered it to be restored immediately.
Other members of the family joined Mary and her offspring and the household eventually numbered about 40, with each new arrival given a copy of the book of psalms to learn. Part of the house became an almshouse for the elderly and infirm and local people were offered food.
The future Archbishop of Canterbury William Laud made Mary’s other son Nicholas a Deacon and he began to lead the family’s prayers at the rebuilt church three times a day.
Nicholas eventually developed a Gospel harmony which was a harmonized version of all four gospels to help the community’s reading and when the King, Charles 1, heard of this he asked for his own copy. The poet George Herbert, linked with the nearby parish of Leighton Bromswold, also received a copy.
Death of Nicholas and Civil War
The good times could not last and in 1637 as the clouds of civil war gathered around the British Isles Nicholas died suddenly. He was buried in the Little Gidding churchyard and his anniversary is now commemorated on December 4 every year.
When civil war between Royalists and Parliamentarians broke out the county that included Little Gidding – Huntingdonshire, also the birthplace and home of Parliamentary leader and future Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell – was on the side of Parliament. The Ferrars meanwhile, were the Royalists and had to flee, not before they had offered refuge to a Charles 1 fleeing for his life. The Ferrar’s returned, eventually, and lived at Little Gidding until the mid 18th century with the manor house being demolished in the early 19th century.
Later Life at Little Gidding
The church was renovated and a new house – now called Ferrar House – built nearby. Worship continued in fits and starts. In1913 the Oratory of the Good Shepherd was founded, a local aristocrat paid for repair and renovations and in 1936 TS Eliot visited the site while working at Magdalene College in nearby Cambridge and was inspired to write the last of his Four Quartets. The whole poem cycle was collected and published in 1942. After the Second World War the Friends of Little Gidding was founded by Alan and Enid Maycock to preserve and look after the site. A new religious community was founded in 1970 which was only disbanded in 1999. The couple who began the 1970 community returned as wardens of Ferrar House. The local church council runs the church and there is still a summer pilgrimage to the church.
The latest newsletter of the Friends of Little Gidding reports a successful Eliot festival at the end of the June followed two weeks later by the annual pilgrimage from nearby Leighton Bromswold church to Little Gidding. Poet Seamus Heaney helped read the Little Gidding part of Four Quartets in front of the church.
Religious life continues at Little Gidding, thanks not least to the day an American poet had a day out from his college lecturing.
Sources
littlegiddingchurch.org.uk
anglicanhistory.org
The Friends of Little Gidding and Its Newsletters
Little Gidding church
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