Evensong At Binsey

My week off has coincided so far with an attack of sciatica which hopefully won't stop me doing too many of the things I've planned. Those began with a prelude on Sunday, in which I zoomed from Swanvale Halt as far as appalling traffic along the M25 would allow to Binsey on the west side of Oxford, where, MissT had alerted me, Evensong was to be celebrated on the feast day of the chapel's patron saint Margaret, and a ceremony of blessing held at her well in the churchyard. The tiny lane to Binsey also leads to The Perch, one of the area's most popular pubs among the class of people who can afford its prices, and tends to be lined with cars. I parked at some distance and despite my discomfort found myself running towards the chapel as the bell rang, only to discover I could have left the car quite close by. I arrived panting seconds before we began. There were ten of us including the Rector of Osney and two students, one of whom was studying the ecological role of churchyards and the other doing a DPhil in mining including the possibility of lithium extraction in Cornwall. Amazing the people you meet. 

The holy Office concluded (and my obligation fulfilled) we moved out into the churchyard to the well. Although it's dedicated to St Margaret, the well is supposed to have arisen at the prayers of St Frideswide, Anglo-Saxon princess and founder-abbess of Oxford Priory, now the University's patron saint. By the mid-1800s there was nothing remaining, until 1874 when the perpetual curate of Binsey, TJ Prout - a classics lecturer, university reformer, mountaineer, and, according to legend, so prone to fall asleep in meetings that his friend Lewis Carroll turned him into Alice In Wonderland's Dormouse - rebuilt the well. He may have tapped the original source of the water, but on Sunday after weeks of dry weather there was so little remaining (and you wouldn't have wanted to be aspersed with what there was) that Revd Clare brought some finest Thames Water tap fluid in for the purpose. The Baptismal blessing of water, the Collect for St Margaret, a modern poem inspired by the churchyard and a blessing concluded the ceremony. 

Unlike some holy wells, St Margaret's Well operates in a predominately Christian context, but all sorts of people visit it. On a previous inspection in November I found rosaries, saintly prayer cards, and a candle bearing the image of the Indian Roman Catholic devotion of Our Lady of Vailankanni; on Sunday there were more pagan feathers and stones, a few coins, and a little pair of china shoes from somewhere in Holland.