From the Vicarage - April

On a few occasions now I have been contacted by someone wanting to see our Collingham Cresset Stone. Many others remain oblivious to its existence. Certainly, the reasons for its existence remain somewhat shrouded in mystery.

It isn’t very much to look at – a circular stone with fairly well-defined dimples within it; seven smaller dimples and one larger, each forming a cup-like shape. Cresset means ‘cup’ and such stones are understood to have been made and used for the purpose of providing light in dark places. The cups were filled with melted wax or tallow (animal fat) and a cotton wick inserted.

The strange thing is that when you read about similar stones they have been found at or near sites connected to a medieval religious community of some sort. Hence there had once been monks entering and leaving places of prayer in darkness, keeping their commitment to the steady rhythm of prayer, day and night. The little stone cups once lit, provided flickers of flame to guide them as well as for the lighting of other candles.

The words alongside our Collingham Cresset Stone are Ella Pontefract’s, the pioneering social historian of the 1930s and 40s. She, with her companion and illustrator Marie Hartley, travelled across Yorkshire recording the cultural heritage of the people they met and the places they found. Of her Collingham-find she wrote: - “a flat, round stone with a cup-shaped hollow in the centre in which a light burnt perpetually before the sanctuary, and seven smaller cups round the edge for the days of the week. Their lights were used to relight cottage fires if accidentally extinguished.”

I like to picture that more homely use of those flickering-cups, and their having provided a flicker of hope to the anxious villager whose hearth had gone cold, as well as holding on to that earlier image of prayer-soaked monks keeping their night-time vigils.

Our little church also has a light which shines in the sanctuary - usually perpetually. The one

day it is intentionally extinguished is Good Friday – the day some will gather in church to hear again of how the sky turned black as Jesus breathed his last, bowed his head and died. That is the day the flame is extinguished; the church is left bare and unlit. But three days later we return with our tall Paschal Candle held high, lift it into its floral-decorated stand, light the other candles in the church from it, and proclaim “Christ is Risen – ALLELUIA!”

When we have ourselves been soaked in the songs and prayers of Alleluia (and traditionally a little baptismal water too!), we then carry that same light of Christ out into our everyday lives – like our ancestor of long, long ago who took it to rekindle her family’s cottage fire. That is what our Christian celebrations of Easter are for – for a rekindling and a sharing of Christ-like light wherever it is most needed in our world and our communities, our hearths and our hearts.

With Easter ‘Alleluias & Blessings’

-Carolyn (Vicar)