[Mel Croom] (0:01 – 0:10)
Hi, my name’s Mel. I’m at the Rectory interviewing Leigh Winsbury, the vicar, as part of the Heritage Project [in Hatherleigh].
[Leigh Winsbury] (0:11 – 0:13)
Hello, this is Leigh, good to be here.
[Mel Croom] (0:15 – 0:20)
Leigh, as we said, this is part of the Church Heritage Project.
What does heritage mean to you?
[Leigh Winsbury] (0:21 – 1:21)
Well, I think heritage is a bit of a funny thing. We tend to think of it as looking backwards, but we all have a heritage and we all leave a heritage behind us. So I think we live this life in linear time, moving from the past to the future and living the moment.
But it’s good to think, what are we leaving behind us when we go? What difference have we made for walking across this earth and being involved with the people and the lives that we touch? And so for me, it is much more about what are we leaving behind?
What is the future going to be that we’ve left rather than getting carried away with the past? A lot of history groups get very excited about the past, but for me, it’s about what we’re leaving for the future. It’s been much more important.
I don’t believe that it was ever a golden age that we need to sort of preserve everything into an aspic somehow, but rather life is going to change, the world does change. How do we engage with it in a way that changes it for the better? That’s what it’s about for me.
[Mel Croom] (1:23 – 1:28)
How would you see the worship of the Church as being part of that heritage?
[Leigh Winsbury] (1:29 – 2:16)
Worship is a really interesting thing because we’ve all wanted to do, Christians, people of all faiths really, but in terms of Christian worship, we’ve all wanted to do the same thing, which is glorify God. I’ve got a particular, which I believe is a biblical picture of what worship does. I think it’s when humans take the stuff of the earth, what we’re made of, and agree with the words of heaven, the songs of the angels in heaven, we build a bridge, we make a connection, and somehow when humans worship God, the blessing and the mercy and the glory of heaven passes through us into the world around us.
I think it’s a really important thing that worship happens. How we do that has changed all kinds of different ways across the… Sorry, what was the question?
[Mel Croom] (2:20 – 2:35)
How would you see worship as part of the heritage? Going from what you’ve just been saying, has it changed? Does that mean worship’s changed over the years, or does it basically stay the same? If it changes, how does it change?
[Leigh Winsbury] (2:35 – 7:32)
Well enormously. All of our churches, so our parish church here, I’ve got five churches, they’re all around about the seven to eight hundred and fifty year old mark, which makes us all feel like we’re little passing blips in the history of our buildings, but they were all Roman Catholic churches when they were built, because they were all built before the Reformation, and that was a very different expression that really probably needed to change from what it had become at that time. At that time, when you went to worship, you wandered into the big empty building, no pews, nothing to sit on, there was a wooden screen called a rude screen across the front, and the priest and a couple of helpers went up to the altar, as they called it, did what we would call a holy communion, held the mass, all in Latin, scriptures read in Latin, most people didn’t understand a word that was going on, and people would go in and watch, and when they heard the bell, they knew that something special had happened, and they all went away again, and only the priest had the bread and wine, and it was all very distant, very separate, very sort of Old Testament model really, the idea of Moses or Aaron going to the Holy of Holies, while everybody else stayed outside, and hoped it went well, so that changed enormously at the Reformation, and the rude screen was removed in most of the Reformed churches, certainly gone in ours, there are bits of it, if you look around the building carefully, the leading stall and the pulpit have got bits of the old rude screen grafted into them, they moved them in, because this was a thing that happened, our forebears had no qualms whatever about chopping and changing the building to suit their needs, and their purposes, and their theological perspectives, so the rude screen went, got chopped up, made into other stuff, as the things became more important, the altar went, we haven’t got one, we’ve just got a little table for holy communion, we don’t call it the mass anymore, our readings are in English, Bible readings in English, and what became more important then was hearing the word of God, hearing the Bible actually read to us in our own language, so a pulpit was brought in, so you elevated the word, and whoever explained it was up there, because that became the big important thing, so all these changes were reflected in the construction of the building itself, and then over the years music has changed enormously, there’s always been singing, it might have been just the chanting of monks, or plainsong, and then for many years you’d have what we called the west gallery, you know you’ve got the front of the church, and the other end up on the tower, so stuck on the front of the tower would have been a gallery, and all the town’s musicians, all the same guys who played in the pub on the Friday night, and played for the wedding dances, and all that, they would troll in the pub, sorry in the church on a Sunday morning, get up there and pull out their vials, and fiddles, and harps, and things, and they would play what’s called west gallery music, and there is a wonderful west gallery choir called the Washaway Choir of Musicians down in Cornwall that will visit, and do give you a demo of that stuff, and that went on for a very long time before the organ was invented, that everybody thinks church music’s supposed to be an organ and a choir, well yeah, but it wasn’t always, and it won’t always be, you know, and then really in the 70s with the sort of hippie Jesus revolution came a lot of good Christian music in modern genres, and that’s become the norm in most churches across the land, so there’s mix going on now between the sort of, the organ stuff still goes on, organs and hymns are very trad, mixed up with the sort of modern stuff, and liturgy has changed and come and gone as well, the words we say in worship, up until about the 80s, early 80s the English Anglican service book had been used for pushing 500 years unchanged service words, and then common worship was written, we’ve got a whole breadth of liturgy now, and Tese stuff comes in, and Celtic stuff is used, and all sorts of things go on, and so liturgy is not the big thing that it was, though I still think it has a value, getting people to be able to speak out the words together, because that wasn’t allowed back in the Catholic times, only the priests were allowed to say the liturgy, so letting common people, ordinary sorts like you and me, join in with the spoken words was, that was an incredibly liberating thing at the time, now we think it’s dusty old stuff, but at the time they were amazed they were allowed to say the words, so lots of changes, but essentially we’re honouring God, we’re welcoming him in, we’re wanting to build that bridge between earth and heaven, and let him know we love him, and that really is the heart of worship, what it’s all about.
[Mel Croom] (7:33 – 7:55)
That’s really good, really thought-provoking, and I guess the church building’s seen some changes through the years, well you’ve mentioned some of them, and possibly the things like the church bells not being used during the war, what about the pandemic, how did that affect the church?
[Leigh Winsbury] (7:57 – 10:48)
Well we got away with murder, yeah we did very well with that in a way, it was quite bizarre, because everything’s shut for ages, including all the churches, they were all told to be shut, I wasn’t even allowed to go in, when I did get back in I found I’d left a candle alight for months, there was a huge puddle of wax on the floor, luckily it didn’t burn the place down, but the Church of England, we were I think blessed really, because the bishops were pretty supportive, and they said when it all became optional, whether churches opened or not, the bishop said whatever you choose to do we’ll get behind you, and if it goes wrong we’ll back you, and if you don’t want to open we’ll back you, but because of what I’ve just been saying about how important I believe worship is, I believe the nation needed it, I believe people needed to connect with God, needed to find a safe space where they could reflect on all the challenges that were going on, but also I think that the business of connecting us with heaven through the worship of the living saints on earth is critical, and when we shut that off, you know when the government said you can’t do that, I thought my goodness that’s a bit of a chance to take, you know every other national disaster, what has happened, the king or the government has called the nation to pray, on this one they wouldn’t let us, so as soon as they said we could do anything, they’re right, the doors are open, and we will do everything we can to worship as normal. We had a lot of people were shielding, so we had a bit of a change in music, the sort of thing that wouldn’t normally go down well, but it was guitar or nothing, so they let me play the guitar, and then that became fairly normalized, and we had a lot of people come who had never been to church or not for years, and we had a lot of people that had been traveling to other churches that hadn’t opened, who realized that the one on their doorstep was actually pretty good, so we totally bucked the national trend in that we grew right through Covid. Most churches, certainly the parish Anglican churches, did shrink through that year, and in Devon it’s been pretty bleak, and a lot of them have shrunk quite badly, a lot of people got out of the habit of going, and just didn’t pick it up again, which is very sad.
Of course there was a lot of online church provision that people got into, and they could sit on their sofa at home and go to some mega church in Texas without any effort, in their gym jams, eating their cornflakes, and they thought, oh I’m not sure I want to go out the road listening to the vicar anymore, so a lot of people did drop away, but for St John’s here that didn’t happen, we grew and became a much stronger church at the end of it than we were at the beginning, and it’s put us in a very good place.
[Mel Croom] (10:48 – 11:03)
That’s good to hear, what about the actual structure of the building itself, church buildings are notorious for needing things doing to them, what is St John’s like on that front?
[Leigh Winsbury] (11:04 – 13:46)
Well now, now it’s pretty good. I’m going to give credit to my my forebears actually, because there’s, I mean there’s always challenges with an old building, and when I first came the congregation was quite small and quite elderly, and they had worked like trains for many years to do what they could do, and had done very well. There’s a lot of work that was done that people forget about, when people like Claire Brussell was warden, she had all the windows sorted out that were all leaking lights, they did a lot of stuff, but there was a lot that didn’t get done, that in these last few years we’ve been able to get on top of.
So the first quinquennial report, we have to have a quinquennial inspection every five years, and the first one we had here I oh dear I panicked, and I found out since it was all the same stuff that they were saying in 1990, but I didn’t know, we knew we’d had some rocks falling off the tower, and we knew that water ran through the roof when it rained, so we got a long way, we sort of split the work into about five phases, and we did the porch, and then all the roofs, and the valleys, and then we’ve had the on the tower for about six months now, and they’ve nearly finished, they’re doing an amazing job, and really was just in time, because some very large bits of stone fell out as soon as they tapped some of the some of the mortar, and so a lot of stone’s gone in, so the roofs all sound, the towers sound, yeah so with all the repair work is pretty much coming to a close, and we’ve got a fantastic building subcommittee team that have been working on that, good architects, I’m going to name some names for posterity on here, Jeremy Chagpurn our our architect, really good, our wardens, Gary Bush and Jane Fawcett, Robin Wannacott the treasurer, had no idea what he was letting himself in for when I asked him to be treasurer, Marion Southwick doing the fundraising, Alan Cranley local builder who’s been with us all the way, Mark Wannacott tower captain of the Bells who’s been on that committee as well, working with the Exeter stonemasons and and others, Glyn, can’t remember his surname, did the roofs, some really fantastic people that have made us, brought us to the point where we are with the building, should be sound and not give anyone too many headaches for a good century, so yeah really chuffed to be at that place with it.
[Mel Croom] (13:47 – 14:01)
That’s encouraging to hear, people will be aware from the outside that things have been happening, what about the inside, there are plans to alter some of the things inside, is that right and is it allowed, or are you bending the rules?
[Leigh Winsbury] (14:02 – 15:57)
Oh as if I would, as if I would bend a rule, Covid, any rules, no it is allowed, it’s all very well strictly governed, it’s a grade one listed building and if you know about that kind of thing, if you’ve got a grade one listed building usually you can’t do a thing, everything has to be kept exactly as it is and go through the listed buildings planning if you need to do any repairs, well we’ve got to, the churches have a kind of an exemption, every diocese has got a little committee called the DAC, the Diocesan Advisory Committee and they are charged with overseeing and giving permissions for any changes and alterations, so you have to have full spec and drawings, you have to provide a document that describes in detail everything that you know that is of historical interest in the building, so that they know that you know what you’ve got, what the treasures are and then a document that outlines what your proposal of needs are and then you put in your desires, what you’d like to do and they have a look at it and decide whether it’s a goer or not and if you’ve got a good architect who’s designed things well and you’ve worked, you work collaboratively with them they come and visit, have a look and chat about what you want to do, so there’s no real surprises for them by the time an application goes in and then if they agree it goes to the Chancellor’s Office in the city in the big smoke and if the Chancellor gives it the rubber stamp you then have to wait 28 days and then you can do whatever it was, it’s called getting a faculty and that goes for everything from hanging a plaque on the wall to ripping out all your pews and burning the tower down, so whatever you want to do from small to huge requires one of those permissions called faculty but yeah we have got permission to do it.
[Mel Croom] (15:59 – 16:01)
So what are the plans at the moment?
[Leigh Winsbury] (16:03 – 19:07)
Well we’re underway, two lots underway which I think is phase six and seven, I’m not sure, I lost count but all the lighting’s going to be done, the wiring needs checking, we’ve got some blinky bits where water was getting in the tower so it’s going to be rewired and a whole new lighting scheme is going in because we’ve got these big dodgy 90s things that flash and buzz and I’m sure they’re going to go bang, some of them have gone bang, so there’ll be a lovely new lighting set in there which will show you much better the details on the roof, all the bosses and things are lost in the shadows and I mean you’ll be able to actually read your hymn book because it’s a bit dingy as it is, so lighting and electrics are being done and all ability access we’re doing as well, these are the easy bits, so there’s going to be a hand rail up the front path up to the church door, new ramps to the approved gradients, we’re going to open up outside towards the north door easier so that people hopefully can drive in with little buggies if they need to and there’s rails and handles and grips and things are going to go up around the place, so that’s the next two phases that are I think about to start and after that I finally get my loo, this all started because I wanted a loo, it was a simple request, when you’ve got five churches and you’re zipping about on a Sunday morning and you turn up and there isn’t one, ironically my two smallest churches are the ones with toilets but the biggest one here hasn’t, so the plan is to put a little toilet pod, all ability toilet pod in the foot of the tower, a lot of work going on inside the tower of course with the bells being rehung, new bell frame, clock being refurbed, floors going in and all that and the ringers are going to ring from a higher platform rather than right on down on the ground floor which they tell me is much easier, I wouldn’t know, they tell me it makes ringing much more fun, so there’s gonna be a loo in the foot of the tower and a little servery kitchenette thing at the back where those tiny little back pews are, they’re coming out and it’s gonna be like a little servery with a boiler and a dishwasher and so that my poor wife doesn’t have to carry sackloads of mugs home every Sunday and wash them up here, where you can stick them in that and push a button and because one of the restrictions, you know, hospitality should be basic shouldn’t it, and for me if the people of God can’t show hospitality as God does in our own building because we haven’t got a loo or a means of giving you a cup of coffee you know we’re lacking and it’s nice, we want to be able to use the building for other stuff as well, concerts and shows and plays and things and you can’t really use a building like that without having a few basic comfort facilities so that’s where we’re going, we’re just about catching up with the 1980s, doing these things where everybody else was some time ago, we’re just getting there.
[Mel Croom] (19:09 – 19:14)
So that’s a priority, what would you say are your other top priorities?
[Leigh Winsbury] (19:14 – 22:36)
My top priorities, gosh, I mean so I get people email me from America saying can I look for their great uncle Victor who’s buried in the church and I deal with the living not the dead, the dead are God’s problem, he’s got them, so for me it’s all about people and Jesus and bringing the two together, so all the projects that we do are about connecting people up, being the glue in community, I think Jesus is the ultimate community glue, his priority is to bring people together, what a big connection, bringing people back together with each other, with creation, with the maker who loves them, it’s all about joining up, we’re joining up our own broken hearts, gluing us together on the inside, this is all the people stuff, so for me as a vicar of five churches which is at least two too many to do well, I would like to leave behind me as my heritage if you like, coming back to the beginning, I’d like to leave behind me five healthy churches with enough people in them to be confident that they are going to be there providing a witness to God’s love into the future, into beyond my time here, strong enough to do that, doing the worship, making that connection between heaven and earth and reaching out meaningfully into their communities, there’s been a bit of a swing where churches have been poor and weak and have sponged a bit of their community, expecting the community to support the church and I believe it should be the other way around, I believe that the church is God’s people and that God’s people are his gift to the community, not the other way around, so we want to be serving outwards, so all the funny little projects that we’ve had on the go here run to that end, like the gym, so we opened a gym because it’s good for people physically and mentally and it brings them together and the youth club and the wildflower project because we believe that God loves his creation and wants to involve people in its care and that’s been brilliant, coffee mornings you know where people who live on their own out in the wild get a chance to come in and know they’re going to meet some people, all of these things are about bringing people together because that’s God’s priority for us to not be alone, to not be cut off but to be joined into his life and the life of his people, so that’s the biggie, my sort of number two priority that I’d love to do before I croak, fall off my perch, is leave a good healthy solid set of buildings behind so whoever comes after me doesn’t have the headaches I’ve had, when they have the QI inspection they get all the ticks and go yay we can get on with the mission of God instead of worrying about buildings because you know they’re a blessing and a curse buildings, they’re great to have as a resource but you’re always working on them and they’re big and old and traditional so it’s not cheap but yeah so that’s my little tick list really, to leave healthy lively churches behind me in sound buildings that aren’t leaking around their ears while they’re trying to sing hallelujahs that’s that’s where I want to go.
[Mel Croom] (22:36 – 22:47)
That’s all really encouraging, very exciting actually, is there anything else you want to add in terms of how you see the future?
[Leigh Winsbury] (22:47 – 24:26)
Oh in the future well if you’re listening to this come along, don’t sit there listening to a podcast on your computer come down the church and join in. What do I think the future’s got? Well who knows, I mean the future’s a bit of a mystery isn’t it?
I think the future is bright for St John’s, I must admit I was very worried when I first came here I thought gosh this is going to be, I was just concerned that because churches are closing all over Devon, I think the stats when I last heard them were that there are 600 parish churches in Devon and 400 of them have a congregation of six or less aged 80 and over. So that paints a pretty bleak future for a lot of churches and I didn’t want the ones in my care to be in that bracket. So you know nothing wrong with getting old because if we get old in Jesus we know where we’re going so there’s nothing to fear but to leave a healthy community of faith on the ground when we all go off to glory that would be really great and I think St John’s is at the moment a very good place to do that.
We’ve probably added a couple of generations to the typical generational age but we could do with adding two or three more generations because you know we want some kids and families and teens and all the rest of it because the church family really wants to reflect the community but it’s setting and we don’t quite do that yet but we’re well on the way and I think St John’s has got every chance of doing that well in the next decade or two and should be strong for a good while to come yet.
[Mel Croom] (24:28 – 24:30)
That’s brilliant, thank you.
[Leigh Winsbury] (24:31 – 24:34)
Thank you very much Mel, see you soon.