The first glimpse of my patron saint this Autumn came in Cattistock church. This has a gigantic and sumptuous 19th-century tower decorated with a frieze of saints and, sure enough, there she is, rather a long way up.
Naturally I also made my customary pilgrimage to Abbotsbury. I don't usually approach the village from the west, but this gives a different view of the chapel on the hill, lit by the morning sun a week ago, with Chesil Beach and the great dark mass of Portland behind it:
Most of the prayers left in the chapel at the moment concern departed loved ones. In the photo below you can see a variety of hand-made mementos, or offerings, and also a sort of memorial bottle which has been bought commercially. In one case a group of people had clearly visited the chapel to remember someone on their birthday, with the implication that they do this regularly; another deposit, in memory of a baby, had been gathered together over a number of years and left in the niche on a single occasion. There was one obvious exception to this memorial theme - the line on a piece of paper 'thank you for my transplant', next to a rough sketch of a heart. Nothing was addressed to St Catherine, or obviously Christian, or specifically belonging to any spiritual tradition at all.
From there I went down to the parish church. Somehow I'd never managed to take a photograph of the beautiful Catherine window, which makes her look like a 1930s movie star. I was entranced not only by that, but also the lovely little musical cherubs above her.
There was an upsurge in interest in St Catherine in Abbotsbury around Millennium year when a music festival was held and the Chapel played a crucial role in the branding. At that time a whole set of new kneelers were made for the church by local people, and a cover for the church's piano. Many of these pieces use imagery of Catherine, the wheel, and the chapel, sometimes in a whimsical way.
Now I had forgotten until quite recently that there is a third chapel of St Catherine in Dorset, as well as Abbotsbury's and the one at Milton Abbas. This is St-Catherine's-by-the-Sea, perched on the cliffs at Holworth above Ringstead Bay, and I had been there many, many years ago, yet its existence had completely slipped my mind. On this holiday I parked at the Ringstead Bay car park (£5, ow) and went on what I expected to be a demanding mile-long walk along the cliff path but which turned out to be relatively mild, to find the chapel. Abbotsbury's and Milton Abbas's chapels are of course ancient, but the Holworth one is modern. How it came to be here at all, looking out over the Channel with no more than a scattering of houses nearby, is a tangled story. Holworth was once a far more extensive village, part of the original foundation grant to Milton Abbey by King Athelstan in 933, and seems to have disappeared in the 1400s. This settlement was inland from where the chapel is now. I can't find out how old Holworth House is, but in 1887 it was bought by Revd Robert Linklater, Vicar of Holy Trinity, Stroud Green. Fr Linklater's appointment to Stroud Green had been controversial as he was known to be an advanced Anglo-Catholic and was taking over a church with an Evangelical tradition, but he gradually won his congregation over and had a successful ministry, retiring in 1910 and dying five years later. Holworth was his holiday retreat, and he was clearly fascinated with its history. Even though the area had been united with Owermoigne parish in 1880 (a more practical arrangement than belonging to Milton Abbas, miles away inland) he insisted on sending, so the story goes, an annual basket of prawns to the Vicar of Milton Abbas to recognise the historic connection between the two places. It was Fr Linklater's widow who built St Catherine's-by-the-Sea some time after 1926, setting up a Trust to look after it once she'd sold Holworth House. Of course the dedication makes sense given the chapel at Milton, but perhaps there was also a church dedicated to Catherine at old Holworth: I can't find any proof of that, but will look elsewhere when I get the chance.
The chapel on the cliffs was made of wood and by 2012 needed complete rebuilding (you can see what it used to look like here). During this work, a broken medieval floor tile was discovered: it had been sent from St Catherine's at Milton Abbas when St Catherine's-by-the-Sea was built to mark the link between them. There it still is, a 'relic', as a label tells you.
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