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St
Seraphim, Little Walsingham
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This
beautiful building is a chapel of ease within the
Russian Orthodox Parish of the Holy
Transfiguration, Great Walsingham. The Orthodox
presence in Walsingham dates back to 1966, when
the Anglican shrine dedicated one of its upstairs
chapels to Orthodox worship. This ecumenical move
needs to be seen in the light of the fact that at
this time the state of relations between the
Catholic and Anglican shrines was one of rivalry
rather than co-operation, and in fact the chapel
was not really suited to regular Orthodox
worship. The following year, the Russian Orthodox
Priest assigned to the Anglican shrine, along
with three companions, set up residence here in
the former railway station, establishing a
religious community dedicated to the great 19th
century Russian mystic, St Seraphim. The building
is at the highest point in the village of Little
Walsingham. |
The
building's former use is still readily obvious, but it
has been enhanced by a dome and a cross, and an icon of
Christ in majesty above the main entrance. The
residential building of the community have been built on
the fomer platform, which judging by its appearance must
have been rebuilt very soon before the station closed in
the 1960s. Also on the platform is an icon workshop,
icon-making forming the main business of the community
here. Behind the building, the station yard is now the
monastery garden, the vegetable patch stalked by noisy
hens. It reminds me very much of small monasteries I have
seen in Russia.
| You
enter a porch, and then step into the former
waiting room, which forms the nave of the church.
The interior is typically Orthodox, feeling at
once timeless and ancient. The iconostasis
screens the holy end from the main body of the
interior, beautiful icons representing mystical
windows. A lectern bears the icon of St Seraphim,
and the icon of the day on high feast days. As
with all Orthodox churches, the interior is
relatively bare, with a single bench at the back
for those unable to stand through the long
Orthodox liturgies. St Seraphim
is no longer used for regular Sunday worship -
that now happens at the Orthodox Parish church in
Great Walsingham, consecrated in 1986 - but it
still hosts the Liturgy on St Seraphim's feast
day, and on other special holy days. However, it
remains open every day, a witness for visitors to
the other great Christian tradition of the world,
a tradition that will always remain foreign to
western eyes, but which seems perfectly at home
among these remote, high-hedged Norfolk lanes.
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