Majestas: March 1999

In this issue

Freestyle to France
Prima Vox
News
Water, Water Everywhere...
Nor Any Drop To Drink?
Water in the Gospels
Clean Water For Malindi
Angels
Diary
Who's Who
Publication
- Submissions for the next editions of Majestas

There may be easier ways of reaching France than swimming the Channel, but that is what six Cambridge undergraduates did last summer after an e-mail from Oxford University challenged Cambridge University Swimming Club to a cross-channel relay.

After accepting the challenge there was a minimum of time to make all the arrangements - finding sponsorship (provided by Credit Suisse First Boston), contacting the Cross Channel Swimming Association, arranging two boats with approved pilots and timekeepers, and selecting and training the team.

Gareth Earl (20), the peerless President of Cambridge University Swimming Club, comes from Brighton and when he was four his father taught him to swim in the sea. He won the pier to pier race the year before he came up and so was used to sea swimming. Gareth explained: "When term ended we had a week here swimming in the Jesus Green pool every day. It is cold water but by then it was warming - it was about 18-20° and the sea on the day was 15°. We then went down to Brighton and used the local club's facility on the beach every day. You can pick routes between buoys and piers and it was really good to get used to the cold water. Three days after that we met at a hotel in Folkestone and then we had an agonising week waiting for the tide and conditions to be right because it was really rough. Then eventually we got the go-ahead for 16th July."

The race started from Shakespeare Beach, which is half-way between Folkestone and Dover (where the Oxford team was staying). Gareth continued: "Our race was due to start at 4.30 a.m., so we all staggered down to the beach from the hotel, climbed into the pilot boat and chugged round to the beach, by which time the sea was enormous and it was really horrible in the boat." The two captains dived from the pilot boats, swam to the beach and shook hands. An Oxford supporter under an umbrella took a photograph of them and started the race. "We ran in and swam straight for our team boats. For that first hour I swam it was pretty rough and I was really suffering because the waves were hitting the other side of the boat, breaking on the stern, and I was constantly being drowned by white water. The worst thing was the diesel fumes from the boat. Also, you get the feeling that you're swimming round in circles: it's really strange."

The race agreement was that male and female swimmers (three of each) would swim alternately. After an hour, the second swimmer, Isabelle Kenning (the Ladies' swimming Captain), jumped in behind Gareth and swam past him. Gareth went on: "For the first three hours it was so rough that when I climbed out everyone was seasick - all the team, really badly, which was a bit of a worry. Half way through the third hour the weather got a lot better and certainly when the fourth swimmer went in there was almost no swell and the sun was coming out. When I got in for the second time I really noticed how flat the sea was and I could get swimming properly, although I did feel very tired after about half an hour."

The swimmers' route to France is a dog-leg, and Gareth continued: "The race finished with the two boats converging on this rocky headland which is called Cap Gris Nez where everyone finishes. Oxford was swimming to one side and we were curving round the back of it, so for the last two minutes they disappeared from sight and there was this terrible delay to see who had finished first. For the last few hundred yards one of the pilots jumped into a rowing boat and followed the girl swimmer (Ruth Hill) because it was too shallow for the pilot boat. When she reached the rocks she scrambled out. That was quite difficult because there was still a swell and she wasn't quite sure when she was going to be declared on the land and she kept climbing. Cross-channel swimmers are required to take three steps after reaching land. The CCSA doesn't recognise times to the second - hours and minutes only, because of the problems of getting exact times at the start and finish. We had a race agreement with Oxford in advance that, if the times were within two minutes (because that was the margin for error), the race would be a draw - and that's actually what happened." The Cambridge team finished in 9hrs, 24 mins, 40 seconds ahead of Oxford, whose time was recorded as 9hrs 25mins. Gareth ended the story: "The pilots motored back to Folkestone, which took about two hours, and we were just sunbathing on the deck; everyone was completely shattered."

This was the first ever Oxford v. Cambridge cross-channel relay and it was the first crossing of the year by anyone. Congratulations to the team: Gareth Earl (Gonville and Caius), Isabelle Kenning (Christ's), Scott Darling (Robinson), Ruth Hill (Peterhouse), Mikko Vaanenen (King's), Caroline Ng (Trinity) and James Scott (Churchill), who was responsible for looking after the team. In spite of the hassle of making all the arrangements and the arduous swimming, Gareth said: "I think it might happen again this year and I'd certainly like to get involved."

Prima Vox

By the Revd Dr John Binns

I have returned from a fortnight in Ethiopia, where I was visiting some educational and aid projects I know and spending time with friends. As always, I returned with some vivid experiences in my memory.

I went to a new Anglican mission church, serving migrant pastoral peoples and refugees from South Sudan. Through the town runs the Baro river - a marvellous, wide, slow-moving river. People swim in it, wash their clothes in it, clean lorries in it, take cattle to water in it and drink from it. In the summer it rains - usually - and the waters rise rapidly. Last year the rains were heavy and people were anxious. Homes were flooded, and the water brought with it many diseases - typhoid, intestinal disorders, yellow fever and malaria. The rising waters approached the town as an enormous threat, bringing danger and destruction.

After I left Gambella (by this time hot and dry), I spent two days in the north of Addis Ababa, at a bustling lakeside town called Bahar Dar. One afternoon I visited a rural development project - partly managed and financed by the Anglican Church in Addis Ababa. The region had been selected because it was especially poor. The first action of the new project was to drill for water, and now there is a new pump producing a profusion of good clean water. Now it is surrounded by fields of vegetables and the region has an air of fruitfulness about it. A group of boys were standing on the concrete platform surrounding the pump, collecting the precious liquid in brightly-coloured plastic containers.

Water is one of the central symbols of Christian worship. It is poured over the heads of new members three times in baptism - or in some places they are submerged three times in it. It is a symbol which is rich in meaning, and our baptism prayers contain some strong descriptions. "The gift of water to cleanse us and revive ... through the waters of the Red Sea you led your people to freedom, ... through the deep waters of death ... bless this water." So the water is blessed according to the prayer set out in the Baptism service.

In Ethiopia people live much of the time on the margins of survival. Variations in the weather pattern can bring crop failure and hunger. There is little medicine or health care to protect against the threat of disease. Here death seems close, and life a rich and powerful gift. The symbol of water gains new depths and dimensions of meaning.

We may feel more secure, although perhaps not that much more secure. But still the pouring of water in baptism retains a powerful and many-sided significance. Every baptism is a reminder that we can place our trust in God, who washes away the effects of evil on us and gives us richly of the gift of life.

News

The Michaelhouse Launch

The Michaelhouse Appeal is officially launched this month. It has been much discussed in Great St Mary's and much support has been necessary to get this far. Plans have been drawn up, planning permission given, a fund-raising campaign proposed.

There will be an open day at St Michael's, which is in Trinity Street, on Saturday 13th March from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. Admission is free and all are welcome. The open day will provide a flavour of what the new St Michael's will offer - worship (with a meditative and informal Eucharist and a service of Russian Orthodox vespers), art (with contributions from local artists, including schoolchildren), performances of music, magic and handbell ringing, story-telling, and of course refreshments.

On the following day, Sunday 14th March, Choral Mattins at 11.15 a.m. in St Michael's will be followed by a reception at which the Appeal President, Lady Broers, will formally launch the appeal.

Friends of Great St Mary's

The Friends of Great St Mary's provide the opportunity to keep in touch with the church and to support its work.

The Friends are providing the funds for the refurbishment of the narthex (the entrance hall at the west end of the church) which is now being carried out. There is a gathering for Friends at least once a year and this year it will be on Saturday 12th June, when the refurbishment will be complete.

The Friends' newsletter is issued twice a year and the Friends' Christmas card sold well last Christmas. Another card will be available in 1999.

New Friends will be welcomed: the annual subscription is Ł10 and life membership is Ł200. Membership forms are available on the table at the back of the church or on application to the Church Office.

Good Friday

Good Friday falls on 2nd April this year. Some see Christ on the Cross as a pointless waste - and yet it is the great act of giving and of eternal life. The churches of Cambridge will unite for a short act of witness in the Market Square at 11.40 a.m. At 12 noon the preacher at our three-hour service will be Michael Roberts, the Principal of Westcott House.

Market Music

The Saturday Market Music series in January included a programme by young musicians.

Concert

The Cambridge Singers will be singing Bach's St John Passion on Saturday 20th March at 7 p.m. in Great St Mary's. For further information contact Rachel Wroth on Cambridge 365123.

Majestas by Post

This newsletter is available by post each month. For subscribers in the U.K. the cost is Ł6.00 per year and for members of the University the cost is Ł3.00 for copies sent through the University Mailing Service. To order a postal copy of Majestas, please contact:
The Church Office,
Great St Mary's Church,
Cambridge,
CB2 3PQ.

Water, Water Everywhere...

Kate Parkin on the Cambridgeshire Fenland before drainage

Wicken Fen is an isolated fragment of a distinctive region which once stretched from Cambridge north to Boston, and east from Peterborough to King's Lynn. The area is described by St Guthlac's Anglo-Saxon biographer: "There are immense marshes, now a black pool of water, now foul running streams, and also many islands, and reeds, and hillocks, and thickets, and with manifold windings wide and long." These "many islands" are fossilised, post-drainage, in place-names, since the Old English element eg denoting "island" is contained in such names as Ely, Swavesey and Quy. The isolation of the island sites created by the fen waters appealed to early Christian communities. St Guthlac, the founder of Crowland Abbey, chose the site for its solitude: "no settler had been able to dwell there before ... because of the fantastic demons living there", but Guthlac "loved the remoteness of the place which God had given him". Monastic sites were also founded on each of the three islands in the medieval parish of Waterbeach, described by its foremost 20th-century historian J.R. Ravensdale as "a small fen archipelago". In the 12th and 14th centuries, however, the communities at Elmeney and Waterbeach respectively sought transfers to the less inhospitable Denny. A 12th- century charter describes the Benedictine community at Elmeney as "too much harassed in that isle by the waters and hindered in the service of God".

Amidst this setting arose the magnificant fenland churches and abbeys, Leverington, March, Whittlesey and Ely ("ship of the fens") in Cambridgeshire. They were founded also upon the strength of the peculiar, thriving, fenland economy. Fisheries were a key resource. Domesday Book records 33,260 eels rendered to various lords by fishermen of Wisbech. Documents from the 12th and 13th centuries attest the continuing importance of the fisheries in the local economy. In addition to the fenland fish and fowl, the extraction of peat and the grazing of livestock on the summer pastures provided many with their livelihood. Such resources were carefully guarded, and medieval manorial records often witness the concern that 'outsiders' or 'non-commoners' dug turves or grazed their livestock in the areas belonging to the manorial lord. The long droves stretching from Wisbech west towards the peat fen reflect the seasonal use of the pasture; today the road or rail passenger crossing the Hundred Foot Washes west or north-west of Ely can have some sense of this (deliberate) seasonal flooding and grazing pattern.

Fenland waterways played a crucial role in the development of this region. Communities were often linked by causeways, that at Aldreth providing the main causeway south into Cambridge. How-ever, as the name of Aldreth denotes ("landing-place by the alders"), it was the waterways which facilitated greater communications. Wisbech provided a link in the transport chain from Ely to Lynn, and through Ely to Cambridge and London, and the bishop of Ely's tenants were obliged to provide carrying services by water as part of their feudal obligations. A map of 1597 in Wisbech Museum emphasises not the roads but the watercourses and dykes.

The medieval Wisbech area provides a good example of the classic coastal fenland, with the seaward silt fen or marsh and the inland peat fen. The region was defended from marine flooding by the great Sea Bank on the east, and the Fen Bank kept out fresh water on the west. Some idea of the scale of the sea defences is given by a 700-yard-long earthwork surviving east of Leverington which is approximately 111/2ft wide at the base, 9ft wide at the top and 8ft high. Such structures were vital to the society and economy of the region and are part of the second main phase of fenland reclamation. Cornelius Vermuyden, the 17th-century adventurers and their modern counterparts are associated with the more recent draining of the fens, but the fundamental work was done during the Roman and medieval periods.

Fenland topography illustrates the changing interplay between water levels, peat and silt. As it drains, peat, unlike silt, shrinks, and thus we have the occurrence today of roads following roddons (the previous beds of silted watercourses) which are several feet above the surrounding fenland fields. Different comparative levels of wealth also reflect the difference between peat and silt: in the medieval fenland silt was the source of greater prosperity. (Even today, prime agricultural land in the narrow belt of siltland between Boston and Wainfleet, Lincolnshire, reaches Ł10,000 per acre.)

Successive generations have sought to manage this fenland landscape, today's efforts producing a much more artificial environment than ever before. But it does not take pictures of the 1947 floods to remind the local historian how central water is to this region's topography, society and economy.

Nor Any Drop To Drink?

David Hollier on the work of the Cambridge Water Company

Cambridge originally obtained its water from the river, wells and the King's Ditch, a channel which left the River Cam near the present Silver Street and rejoined it near Magdalene College. In 1325 the Franciscans or Greyfriars introduced a pure water supply from a spring near Madingley Road (close to the present site of the Observatory and the University Farm) by laying a 11/2-mile lead pipe to their buildings on the site of the present Sidney Sussex College. The pipe crossed the river and went along a lane which is now part of the Great Court of Trinity College. On the suppression of the monasteries, Henry VIII granted the pipeline to Trinity College in 1546 and it was used to supply the Great Court fountain (which was the main supply of water for the College for 300 years) and a tap for public use, which is still outside the Great Gate. In 1610 the University and Town together constructed a two- mile open channel from Nine Wells (near the later Cambridge to Shelford railway line) and part of the stream was piped to a fountain in the Market Place and part used to flush the King's Ditch and college drains. Part of this channel remains as Hobson's Brook, named after Thomas Hobson, who contributed to the project and whose method of hiring out mounts gave rise to the phrase 'Hobson's choice'.

In 1853 the Cambridge University and Town Waterworks Company came into being as the result of an Act of Parliament and started supplying water in 1855, when the original Cherry Hinton works was opened. Six years later the Company extended its area to include the parishes of Great Shelford, Fulbourn, Madingley, Histon, Impington and Girton, covering a total of 60 sq. miles. In 1963 the Company was required to take over a larger area covering most of Cambridgeshire, the area supplied growing to 453 sq. miles. Its name was changed to the Cambridge Water Company.

The Company now has 2,158 kilometres of mains and pumps 73,100 cubic metres of water into the supply every day. All the water comes from underground, most of it from the deep Cambridgeshire chalk, which is absorbent and becomes a natural underground reservoir. Water from chalk sources is cleaner than water taken from rivers, as the chalk filters some of the impurities as the rainwater percolates through it, but some calcium carbonate from the chalk dissolves into the water, making it 'hard'. In Cambridge the hardness is mid-range (275-325 milligrams per litre, compared with 150mg/l in soft water and 400mg/l in hard water) and is seen as scum on hot drinks from some plastic kettles and in blocked shower-heads.

In 1991 water was restricted for the first time following the three-year drought, but the record low levels of water caused by the drought were replenished in the winter of 1993/94. After a wetter than average year in 1998 (653.15mm in Cambridgeshire, compared with the average 570.56mm), there is no talk of drought and hosepipe bans this year.

Cambridgeshire is one of the driest parts of the country and so conserving water is a priority. The Cambridge Water Company was one of the first to introduce metering as an option for domestic water in 1977 and 40% of domestic customers now receive a metered supply. The control of leakage, metering and other efficiency projects (such as the use of Hippos in toilet cisterns to reduce the amount of water flushed) has led to a reduction of 4.6% in the amount of water pumped each day in 1997/98, despite an increase in the number of customers. The Cambridge Water Company sponsors the experimental 'dry garden' at the University Botanic Garden and is currently sponsoring the Cub Scouts' Water Wise badge to help raise awareness of the need for water conservation.

The quality of drinking water in this country is controlled by some of the strictest regulations in the world, set by the Government and the European Commission. Water samples are taken each day from the treatment works, reservoirs and customers' taps, and the Cambridge Water Company takes three million samples a year, which are analysed in laboratories, involving physical, chemical and bacteriological tests. Cambridge's water supply is certainly a more complex operation than the monastic pipe introduced 674 years ago!

Water in the Gospels

Daniel Hardy (formerly Van Mildert Professor of Theology at the University of Durham) reflects on the Biblical significance of water

In biblical times, water was as fundamental to life as it is today, but then it was uncertain and dangerous as well as friendly. For the Hebrews, living in an arid and rocky place, the rain coming down - or water coming up from the earth in a spring - made the difference between life and death. For their Palestin- ian neighbours, living in areas where the waters and dry lands were in constant rivalry, the world was the land between the "waters above" (the heavenly ocean) and the "waters below" (the deep) - a mythology often found in the Hebrew Bible.

Despite all their danger and unpredictability, even despite the chaos they might bring, the Hebrews believed that the waters had been subdued by God, who had founded the earth upon the seas. "The sea is his, for he made it", and "in his hand are the depths of the earth" [Psalm 95:4-5]. God is Lord of water and dry land, and does "wondrous works in the deep" [Psalm 107:23-32]. In all history, God controls the waters by his command and makes them a blessing for the people, making the dry land live through a due supply of water.

This is the exciting world within which the New Testament is set. Wherever water appears, it is an element vital to life, uncertain and dangerous yet friendly and beneficial, impressive in its own right but also the means by which God confers blessing. Here, however, it is more instrumental to the purification and transformation of human life through Jesus.

When Jesus is baptised by John in the River Jordan, for example, the water is the means by which God's blessing upon him is affirmed. But with Jesus, the Holy Spirit comes down as he emerges from the water. The water of baptism will thereafter be the 'conduit' not only for blessing and purification but also for a direct, purposeful enlivening by God that sustains the baptised even with the onset of temptations. (Jesus' temptations follow his baptism.)

When Jesus gathers his first disciples, they are fishermen at the Sea of Galilee casting their nets. In one account (Luke), it is after Jesus invites them to cast their nets "into the deep" and the nets fill to overflowing, that they recognise Jesus' power, and their own sin, and follow him. The mysterious "deep" seems to refer to the depth of the waters of the original creation by God. Jesus' direct connection with the powers of the creating God is what brings the fishermen to acknowledge their sin and to follow him. The episode identifies Jesus with the powers of God.

In the Gospel of John, the wedding at Cana -- when Jesus made water into wine -- marks the beginning of his ministry. When the supply of wine has run out, Jesus asks for six large Jewish ritual jars to be filled anew with water, and, when some is used, it has become wine, and the best wine at that. It is what Jesus does -- transforming an elemental 'stuff' of the world into another of a more spiritually transforming kind -- that identifies him with the glory that is God's alone. It is the "first of his signs manifesting his glory" [John 2:11].

There are many others, all testifying to the immediacy of Jesus' relation to God through what he does with water. When the waters rage and the boat is threatened, he stills them ([Matthew 8:26]; [Mark 4:39]; [Luke 8:24]). When the waters divide him from his followers, he walks on the sea to reach them ([Matthew 14:25-26]; [Mark 6:48-49]; [John 6:19]). When he meets a Samaritan woman at Jacob's well, he contrasts well-water with the "living water" he himself offers - short-term satisfaction with water which "will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life" [John 4:14].There are two major changes later. First, the emphasis on water as the medium of the glory and power of God's life-giving salvation shifts to water as the medium of lowly service through which others may grow to serve still others, as when Jesus washes the disciples' feet [John 13:5-14]. Second, where the need for transformation involves not only water but also life itself, Jesus' action to save his people is through his own life's blood. Even then, God's blessing in the basis of life (water) is present in the transformation of life by Christ (blood) [John 19:34].

Clean Water For Malindi

In the February issue of Majestas we reported that the total raised in the Christmas Thankoffering Appeal was Ł2,663 and that part of this sum would be used to help provide a water filtration system for St Martin's Hospital in Malindi. We have received the following report, written at the end of January by Roger Flambert, who is working in Malawi as part of the USPG Special Skills Programme.

"The building work goes on apace. The water scheme at the hospital is now functioning at sufficient pressure to reach the most far-flung buildings. The capacity is now double the original. We had to construct a cradle to carry the two water tanks the half mile from the hospital to the roadside above. Sixteen people manhandled them, one at a time, negotiating sharp corners with this 3m-high by 3m-wide load. We looked like the focus of a religious procession accompanied by all and sundry curious to know what would happen next. The bouldered hillside had to be negotiated next. We removed all the rocks which were moveable and then rolled the tanks up, vertically in some places, with a rope underneath and over the top. It is extraordinary just what is possible using human labour. All is now in place and working well. We have to finish the sand filters, which should be achieved in the next week or so.

"The toilet blocks are nearing completion now. Three of them are perched on a steep hillside close behind the hospital. Now that the rains have started my decision to build brick terracing has been justified. The water from the road above swept all before it as it gushed down into the site. The upper retention wall now diverts the flow along the hillside within the area, while the lower wall retains the soil on the hillside within the area. The builders have done a really nice job on these walls so that the whole effect is modern and tidy. When all is finished this dirty old area should be attractive with flower beds and flights of steps to the road above instead of the present mud slide.

"In fact there have been more than a hundred cases of cholera at St Martin's in the last month, with five infant deaths. This underlines the desperate need to complete the water filters. The water is pumped untreated from the lake, which is the source of the present infection! We hope to start on a similar filter system for the other thirty or so houses served by the workshop water system.

"Malawi is suffering from widespread cholera at the moment but in this immediate area the health workers seem to be getting it under control. We pray that this can continue."

Roger, Karla and Lica

Angels

By Dr Lynne Broughton

It seems to be common in the 20th century to portray the medieval church as attempting to terrrorise its people into good behaviour by the threat of Hell. Certainly Hell and its torments were vividly portrayed in most, if not all churches. Each year in Advent preachers were expected to talk about the Four Last Things - death, judgment, Heaven and Hell.

And yet in my researches into the surviving imagery in parish churches, Heaven and its inhabitants are much more evident than devils and Hell, as if the Church wisely preferred the carrot to the stick. There will have been many more statues and paintings of the saints than have survived. Angels are still very much at home, especially in the aptly-named 'angel roofs' of East Anglia. The upper parts of the church building represented Heaven, so flights of angels were very appropriate as reminders of the 'angels and archangels' with whose perpetual song of praise the congregation on earth joins its prayers. Among the bosses on the roof of GSM, St Michael the archangel fights the dragon, which is Satan; an angel holds the crown of thorns, signifying Christ's redemptive sufferings; another carries a crowned 'MR', the monogram of the Blessed Virgin Mary, to whom the church is dedicated. More angels inhabit the horizontal wall-plate along the edges of the nave roof and the corbels supporting the aisle roof.

This article forms part of a series describing our Church building.

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