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St Mary,
Swardeston
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I
came here on what was just about the only gloomy
day in March 2007. But Swardeston is an
appropriate place to come to feeling slightly
sombre, and it is a place to leave uplifted as
well. For forty-six years at the end of
the 19th century and the start of the 20th
century, the Vicar here was Frederick Cavell. He
transformed the church and the village, and left
it its greatest legacy. The first hint of this
comes as you approach the church from the south.
The bulky, granite war memorial is no different
to a thousand others, except that the first name
under the legend Pro Patria is Edith
Louisa Cavell. It should be said that her name
comes first simply in alphabetical order, but she
was quite the most famous woman to be killed in
World War One, and one of the most significant
English figures of that slaughter. Her story was
one of the most fondly told in the years after
the War, an expression of Englishness. Indeed, a
near-hysteria became associated with her legend.
If the English nation hadn't embraced
protestantism so firmly, then no doubt she'd be
recognised as a Saint by now.
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Edith's
father's church is a long, tall, simple building, all
under one roof and probably originally Norman. The 14th
and 15th centuries saw a big rebuilding here, leaving the
tower and most of the window tracery. You step into a
light space; the nave windows are almost entirely clear,
and there is a sense of height.
Edith
Cavell's portrait hangs simply in the north-west corner.
Frederick Cavell's first action on arriving in the Parish
was to build a magnificent new Vicarage beside the
church. It is today a private house. While the Vicarage
was being built, The Cavells lived in a Georgian
farmhouse nearby, and this was where Edith Cavell was
born in 1865. Edith's letters reveal that her low church
father was a bit of a puritan, and she would spend much
of her early life wandering the parish, drawing and
painting. At school, she showed a talent for languages,
particularly French, and in 1890, at the age of 25, she
set off for Brussels to work as a governess. Five years
later, she was back in Swardeston, nursing her father
through an illness, and this seems to be what set her
mind to training as a nurse.
She worked
in hospitals in Kent, London and Manchester, before
setting off back to Brussels in 1906. She ran a training
school for nurses there, but often returned to Norfolk,
and it was while in the county that she heard of the
German invasion of Belgium in 1914. She made her fateful
decision to return to the country, and would never see
England again.
From the
stories, it is easy to imagine some dynamic, flighty
young girl putting the world to rights, but of course
Cavell was forty-eight years old when she headed back
across the German Ocean. From then on, the story is well
known. Her training school nursed soldiers of both sides,
but she also saw it as her humanitarian duty to help
hunted British soldiers escape back to England.
Inevitably, she was caught, and shot by the Germans on
the morning of October the 12th, 1915, a few weeks before
her fiftieth birthday. Her last words would have been
familiar to any English person in the first half of the
20th century: Standing as I do in view of God and
eternity, I realise that Patriotism is not enough. I must
have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.
She was
buried in a military cemetery, and part of the cross
which marked her grave is now in a glass case in
Swardeston church, like a holy relic. After the War,
Cavell's body was brought back to England, and, after a
funeral in Westminster Abbey, she was buried in the
Cathedral close in Norwich. There is a fine, dramatic
monument to her outside the National Portrait Gallery
near Trafalgar Square, and a fairly awful one outside the
Erpingham Gate of Norwich Cathedral. Perhaps the best
memorial, though, is the east window here at Swardeston,
completed before the end of the War by Ernest Heasman. In
light, muted colours, Edith Cavell kneels in her nurse's
uniform at the foot of the cross, accompanied by smaller,
appropriate figures, including St Agnes, St Margaret and
Florence Nightingale.
No doubt
this church still receives many visitors brought here by
Edith Cavell's story, and you'll find it open every day.
Also worth seeing are some images in continental glass,
one a roundel depicting the Blessed Virgin and child with
a Bishop, the other a rectangular pane depicting St
Matthew.
Frederick
Cavell's low church restoration has left the
interior simple and fitting. There are old
benches, the skeleton of a 15th century screen,
and the beautiful rustic timber roof. The font is
large and plain, the 17th century font cover
elegant. Nothing terribly exciting, but this
building retains a feel of the time of its
restoration, and Edith Cavell would certainly
recognise it today. Outside,
the weather was deteriorating, the gloom now
punctuated by bursts of drizzle. The rooks
collected miserably in the large oak to the
north. But all along the path, the daffodils
lifted their haughty golden heads and showed that
Spring had come again.
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