We are down to the last few days, and on the last day there’s a Tube strike planned, so we must focus.
I made the three big kids get up at nine and leave at ten, because the sisters at Tyburn Convent offer a tour of their shrine daily at 10:30.
Outside Marble Arch tube station we discovered something cool: outdoor ping pong tables! The last players had left the ball on the surface, tented under two paddles so it wouldn’t roll away: two more paddles were in slots under the table.
Sadly, we had to move on so as not to be late.
Tyburn Convent and Shrine occupies two adjacent door-fronts of a row of buildings opposite Hyde Park. We crossed a couple of streets and easily found it; it stands out with its red brick and its large outdoor crucifix, and a switchbackihg accessibility ramp. First we went in the convent’s front door, into a tiny lobby with a door and also a grilled window, and stairs behind a tall metal gate going down, and many notices posted on the walls, and rang the bell. And waited. Then we wondered if we should have gone up the ramp; perhaps that was the entrance to the shrine?
I sent the 13yo ahead and then walked there myself. The ramp led to a button-operated sliding glass door which admitted us directly to an adoration chapel, with a few people inside: an elderly white couple, a Hispanic mother with a stroller and a toddler. The Host was exposed behind the grille in front.
If I stumble accidentally into an adoration chapel, it seems rather pointedly wrong to say “Excuse me, I was looking for something else,” and stumble out again, so I signaled “A few minutes” to my oldest and we knelt down briefly, paused there.
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The Tyburn Nuns is a well-beloved shorthand for the Benedictine Adorers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus of Montmartre. This is their motherhouse, and they have monasteries in several other countries. The canonization cause for their foundress, Marie-Adèle Garnier, founded the congregation in France in 1898 (at Montmartre, hence the name) but fled to England because of the laws in France against religious orders, and settled there at Tyburn, a bit more than a stone’s throw from the site where the English Catholic martyrs of the Reformation were hanged along with centuries’ worth of common people accused of crimes.
After our brief adoration we genuflected and went back to the front lobby, where a sister was just opening the door to see who had rung the bell. “I will get someone to open the grille,” she said, in a strong West African accent, and closed it again. And then behind us we heard a hearty, “Hello!”
Coming up the stairs one foot at a time was a plump, cheerful, bespectacled nun, like me not quite five feet tall. “I’m so sorry I didn’t hear the bell,” she said, “I was just putting the mop and bucket away, and then I thought to myself, I hear footsteps upstairs. Are you here to come down to the crypt?”
“Yes, we’re here for the tour of the shrine,” I said, “are we in the right place?”
She laughed as if that was a silly question, because of course it was. “You’re very welcome here!”
I introduced myself and the children, and explained that my husband had stayed back with the two youngest, and she said that next time I should bring them along as she unlocked the gate and welcomed us down to the basement crypt. “I’m Sister Thomasina,” she said.
“Now I want you to know that as you’re looking around down here, please feel free to take pictures. As many as you want! I know some feel they aren’t supposed to, in a holy place. But our work is for everyone, and the more people know about it, the better.”
So I did take pictures.
This is their altar, topped by small replica of the Triple Tree:
Sister Thomasina had a way of telling that started down a path, went down a trail, backed up to the main narrative, then started again down another trail. She began by explaining the long history of hangings at Tyburn. “East was the sea,” she said, “so when people approached London from the countryside they came from the west, and there was a little river here, the Tyburn. And you know, they wanted the criminals to be hanging there when visitors came from the west, so that is why the executions were here. And—listen—” She held up a finger and we heard a low rumble grow, tremble the floor, and die off. “That’s the train, from the Underground. Well, we’re downstream of the Triple Tree, and you know, the river once flowed under here, it forked. So we say that the blood of the martyrs flowed under our feet.”
She described hanging and drawing and quartering in detail, and she had a very different demeanor from the Yeoman Warder who gave our Tower tour; he played it for laughs. She was not somber, though; there was a certain cheerfulness in her telling of the story. She explained the size of the gallows, big enough to drive two carts side by side under each crossbeam, big enough to hang eight people on each, twenty-four in all.
“These reliquaries on the walls,” she said. “On this side”—she gestured—”these relics were spirited away to France during the persecution, and they’ve been brought back here. And these on this side went to Spain, and they’re back thanks to the Spanish Embassy.”
“And here, come here.” She beckoned us up to the gallows-altar, and flung back the red cloth covering it to reveal the altar-stone. “The relics in this stone are those of Edmund Campion.” I put my hand to my face, and she invited me, “You can come and venerate it, if you like,” and so I did, walking up and laying my fingers on the cool stone surface.
“There’s some historic items over there if you’ll just let me fetch my keys,” she said, already on her way across the floor. The kids and I went into the other room, which was posted with a chapter from a book explaining the evidence for the location of the Tyburn gallows, and engravings that pictured the hangings and the grandstands, and a map of the path taken from Newgate Prison to Tyburn, with the stops along the way. One stop had been at Ely Place, where the 17yo and I had attended Sunday mass.
There was another bulletin board with pictures of more recent martyrs. Seven priests. Three nuns. Twenty-one men. Children. “Yes, it’s never stopped,” said Sister Thomasina. “And people from all over the world ask us to pray for them. This place is a center.”
Sister Thomasina invited us through the gate into the kitchen garden, in a tiny courtyard. “Here is where we grow our herbs, and the salad things,” she said. “We have room to try some new things now and then. Here, we are trying to grow an avocado tree. Don’t know if it will bear fruit but it is worth a try.”
In one corner of the garden was a raised stone sepulchre. “That’s our foundress,” said Sister. There was a little kneeler in front of the tomb, and above it a mural of the resurrected Christ. Right next to the kneeler was a large glassed-in bulletin board in which were posted printed emails. I leaned over; they were clearly petitions submitted to the Sisters via a website combox of some sort. All were crisp with relatively recent dates. I suspect that if you send them an email and ask for a prayer, your prayer will be posted here, next to the little kneeler.
She gathered us around and handed us a little card with a prayer printed on it. “A prayer for the canonization of our foundress,” she said. “Why don’t you come around here and let’s all say it together right now.”
So we did, and then headed back through the door, passing more posted petitions.
The crucifix on the wall we passed bears a tag that reads: Pray for those who died around this crucifix at Ypres in the 1914-1918 war and for their chaplain. R. I. P.
Before we left, Sister said to us, still unflappably cheerful: “If you have anything that is worrying you or burdening you, leave it here at Tyburn. Our prayers are for everyone here. Prayer is our work. Leave it here at Tyburn. And,” she added with a wider grin, “if your burden isn’t lifted, you may take that to mean that we can use some help! And pray for us, then.”
On our way past Marble Arch we found the stone marking Tyburn where she had said it would be, flanked by three little oaks that had been recently planted to make a new Triple Tree.
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We walked down to the Bond Street station, past Selfridge’s (which would be a better shopping destination than Harrods).
I had promised my daughter some sushi. We found a chain called Wasabi in the mall. Very nice: you can pick individually wrapped pieces of nigiri, maki, onigiri, and other things to make a bento box, or grab a preassembled combo to go. Also there are hot noodles and rice bowls. Once again, London fast food wins the category.
Then we took the tube to Westminster Abbey. Which had once been Benedictine, like Tyburn. But of course is quite different now.
I won’t go into too many details, since Westminster Abbey is well known and easy to read about. I was surprised that the high and narrow nave did not really impress me all that much; on television it looks as if it would be sweeping and dramatically high, but it seemed smaller in real life. But I did enjoy very much the great age of it, the haphazard clutter of memorials and tombs placed any which way, the weight of the years measured in tombs of kings. The ceiling of the Lady Chapel is intricate as lace, and its survival of the Reformation a thing to be grateful for. My daughter loved Poet’s Corner, and was pleased as punch to find a tidy little memorial to Wordsworth, her own favorite poet. What I think I liked best was the Chapterhouse, with its single central column rising up and branching into a many-splintered ceiling, and its perfect proportions; and the simple fact of all the monarchs’ coronations, all on the same spot, since 1066.
I am not into the monarchy as celebrity, not all that interested in the queen’s houses and the changing of the guard; but I am impressed by any human institution that preserves its relics and rituals for so long. I find myself, late at night, looking up place-names that I happened upon that day (High Holborn; Watling Street) to find out how long it’s been there, how long it’s had the name. I like the idea of things and practices enduring. And of the physical evidences of it: the golden spoon among the Crown Jewels, the ancient chair kept under glass in the Abbey.
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A couple of views from the walk back:
I came back to find Mark working:
“What did you do while you were home with Daddy?” I asked the 3yo. “We went to the playground,” he said, “and we went for a walk in the town.” They had walked to the grocery store. He was very pleased about it. I later found out that “Let’s go for a walk in the town” had been the refrain all afternoon until Mark had agreed to run an errand.
Mark and I went out for a pint:
And picked up dinner (more sushi from a different chain):
I snapped a photo of a sign I had passed many times over the past few weeks, and been pleased by:
After a quick gobble of dinner, I set out with four children to the Cambridge Theatre in Seven Dials. We had tickets to Matilda: The Musical.
I haven’t time for a proper review, so I’ll just say that we all loved it, with the possible exception of the 7yo for whom it was a bit too intense and dark. I think he was okay in the end, though. Although I love Roald Dahl (even, or especially, his stories not written for children), I never have read the book Matilda nor seen the movie from a few years ago. I only had a vague idea of the plot. So it was unspoiled for me, and I enjoyed it greatly. There seem to be a few places in the story that are paced irregularly, the mark of an imperfect adaptation. But the music is wonderful, and there was the extra delight of a passel of very talented children. Matilda herself was played wonderfully dryly by Savannah Read, a tiny girl with long red hair and expressive body language. The set design and lighting is brilliant. A lovely evening out with the kids.
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