St Wulstans Millennium 2008
St Wulstan's Millennium 2008
Feast day of St Wulstan - 19th January - born 1008
A TALK GIVEN ON OUR MILLENNIUM YEAR
By Gill Duval.
As you know the celebrations of St. Wulstan’s Millennium began a year ago on Jan 18th but the idea for celebrating the Millennium was thought of a year before that, when a few of us realised that 2008 was to be an interesting year. We wanted to mark the thousand years since St. Wulstan’s birth in order to let people know about Wycombe’s own real saint and perhaps to let Christianity be known a little more as well.
The very first idea to mark the millennium was to have a talk by a university expert on Mediaeval English Bishops and we found one on the internet, Dr. Julia Barrow of Nottingham University, who had written a book about St. Wulstan, and booked her for 11th May.
We wrote quite early in the year to Worcester Cathedral to ask if we could join in their celebrations and they wrote back that they had intended to write to us anyway to invite us to their St. Wulfstan Millennium Heritage Open Days in September. They also invited us to their St. Wulfstan Study Day and several of us went to it. “Wulfstan” is the old spelling of his name
The first actual happening was the placement of our huge Millennium notice outside the church, which was organised by Fr. Stan Actually, when you drive up Totteridge Road all you can see are the words– Stan’s Millennium! We did ask the press but the photographer came too early and so missed our magnificent notice. In fact our only disappointment has been the lack of interest from our local newspaper.
In the meantime we knew that you, your Grace, (Bishop Peter) were coming for our Confirmations on January 18th (St. Wulstan’s feast being on January 19th) and so thought it would make a wonderful double celebration, especially as St. Wulstan himself, when he came to High Wycombe, “confirmed many”. We invited people from other churches to our celebrations, and for our Mass and Luncheon on 20th January we had over 120 people.
A couple of years before these plans were thought of Brian, our Choirmaster, had run a competition for a hymn to St. Wulstan so we already had a hymn with an easy to sing “tum-te-tum” tune.
Julia Barrow’s talk was the next function, held in All Saints Church – the church which St. Wulstan had come here to dedicate. It was introduced by their vicar Rev. David Picken and was extremely well attended and Julia herself really enjoyed it. She has even gone on to give more talks on the subject elsewhere.
Perhaps our most ambitious project was the Millennium play ”The Saint Who Came to High Wycombe” performed by about 90 children from the two High Wycombe Christian Primary Schools, St. Augustine’ Catholic School and H.W. Church of England School. The play was written by Dawn Williams and performed very enthusiastically in All Saints Church on the afternoon of the 9th July, to which you came with Bishop John Nott. I myself thought the whole production absolutely wonderful – I had imagined an interesting play but what materialised was something amazing – I feel those children will remember St. Wulstan for the rest of their lives. Our local artist, Simon Taylor, Pat Taylor’s son, created the two drawings of St. W. that you were both given as presents.
The coach trip to Worcester Cathedral, organised by Maureen Mooney, to which members of several different churches came, was on Saturday, September 13th and included tours of the cathedral behind the scenes. We saw the Ancient Seal & Charter of St Wulfstan in the Cathedral Library, watched the Stone Masons actually at work, and climbed the tower to see the Ringing Room and Bell Chamber and the magnificent views over flooded Worcester. And to crown the day, Father Stan cleverly persuaded the authorities to let him say Mass in St. Wulstan’s actual crypt!
Our next project was our Millennium Youth Day celebration on 21st November. This was organised by one of our active young mothers, Chloe Hudson. It was, again, a really clever and original day, well attended by our young people and involved pyrotechnics of our sins, doughnuts and prayer stations! The confessional was turned into a contemplative area with Taize chants, candles and cushions and the young people also prayed with other young Catholics across the country through the YFaith website.
We have had two Millennium concerts with other churches, 6th July and 4th January, organised by our Choirmaster, Brian, I want to say that throughout the year little miracles have occurred to enable all this to happen and by no means the least; was this little story. The concert arranged with the C of E Church in Terriers distressingly fell on Wimbledon Men’s Finals day! What happened? It was arranged that rain stopped play until later in the afternoon so that the concertgoers didn’t miss a thing!
Four Primary schools joined in our next project, held throughout the Autumn term, The St. Wulstan Millennium Painting and Colouring competition. There were three separate age-groups and 3 prize-winners in each. The results were all put up in our brand new town library in the Eden centre in High Wycombe. We were the first exhibition ever held there and this privilege was achieved by Elizabeth Dinnage. Another of those little miracles by which this enterprise has been blessed is that the library put Father Christmas in the same room as our exhibition which meant we had many more hundreds of people look at our millennium paintings than would otherwise have been the case. You can see most of the amazing results, including the 9 prizewinners, after Mass today in the Parish Room. The actual exhibition was arranged and mounted by Chloe Hudson, and Fiona Zacharek.
During all this year and for all the functions, Malcolm Dodwell has dutifully created wonderful posters and handbills, and our little committee, which has included a representative from All Saints, Joan Streeter, has achieved amazing results. Today’s luncheon and the one a year ago, have been organised by our little band called The Millennium Committee, led by Elizabeth Dinnage with her hard working helpers which included Bernadette Doyle as well as the others mentioned this morning. Thank you all so much.
We have produced St. Wulstan
souvenir Holy Pictures with his own prayer on the back, for sale in the
narthex at 30p and we have had quite a few articles in smaller papers
and publications about all this, including in The Vine.
And today we have our final celebration Mass and luncheon
We have has such a good time
and all the enterprises have been remarkably successful.
It all, amazingly, has cost very little money, a subject that worried
us considerably at the beginning. We have even ended up with a small profit
and haven’t been a drain on Parish resources at all. So –
the whole enterprise has been very economical as well as ecumenical!
We won’t be here for
the millennium of St. Wulstan’s death; he did live to be so very
old. That is for those as yet unborn to do.
So thank you, thank you all for your part in it all.
Further Reading