Interesting places, interesting people

Title: Steeple Chasing: Around Britain by Church

Author: Peter Ross

Publisher: Headline Books, 2024

ISBN: 978-1-4722-8195-1

Price: £10.99

I’m sorry I was persuaded to review this book. It had been sitting for a while in my To Read pile because I suspected – and now know – that it’s not the book to read in a hurry to meet a deadline: it’s the book to take to a deckchair in the garden: sip, savour and reflect upon.

A journalist and writer, Peter Ross’ previous book A Tomb With A View won the 2021 Scottish National Book Awards for Non-Fiction. His prose is elegant, erudite and easy to read, with the odd sting within the honey.

Steeple Chasing is set against the background of the pandemic. Ross says, “I had grown tired of the present with its anger, fear and lies. I was losing faith in the future. I wanted to delve into our deep past, to be buttressed and braced by history. A close examination of churches and the customs associated with them offered, it seemed, a chance to reconnect with who we were, and reconsider who we might yet be.” In fact, Ross visits more than buildings: the Angel of the North, a modern ‘sacred place’, contrasts nicely with ancient holy wells.

However, church buildings do form the bulk of Ross’ travels. The book does not follow a geographical plan, but is grouped by theme (including Painting, Bone, Bats and Stone) and area. So we move from the Benedictine monks of Pluscarden Abbey in Scotland, singing all the Psalms every week, to Southwark Cathedral and its cat, from the angel roofs of the East Anglian churches to the stonework of Kilpeck in Herefordshire with its challenging anatomical depictions. For dedicated church crawlers, there is probably not a great deal that is new; it is the present guardians who shine out here.

Does Ross find his security? He says he finds comfort, but much of what he has to say reads like a lament and a warning. His guides are well into their eighties and nineties; parish priests admit their congregations are dwindling, money to maintain or repair fabric is exasperatingly challenging. Wales is represented by a church now closed for worship and the holy well at Fynnon Fair maintained by the good will of the farmer on whose land it stands. Ross reports that it is estimated 70% of places in worship in Wales will close in the next 20 years.

In the end, I found this book more about people than place: the past and present worshippers who have contributed to the “carapace of prayer” as Ross calls it. Without them, any church is just a “building with interesting things in it”.

Judith Leigh