3. Chapel
Chapel has already been mentioned frequently. I could not reconstruct from memory the unique form of this service in its entirety, but I will try to give some idea. For the Caldecott Hymn Books, see Postscript 2.
Various memories show that Caldecott had a Chapel of its own from the earliest times. There is even a glimpse of the Chapel at the Mote on an amateur video that can be found on Internet. The Chapel at Mersham le Hatch was in the former stables complex that housed the schoolrooms. As you entered the schoolyard by the big arch, the right side of the quadrangle had two doors: that to the Music Room on the right end, that to the Chapel in the centre. The Chapel was long and fairly narrow, with windows only on the left side as you faced the altar. The walls were mostly unadorned. Others have remembered a few paintings hung along them, including one by Salvador Dalì. I ought to remember that, but I am afraid I do not. Only the area around the altar was carpeted. Miss Leila, or whoever took the service, sat at a rather grand chair-cum-lectern on the left – not quite a raised pulpit. Readings and the talk were done from a lectern on the right. When Miss Leila herself gave the talk, in spite of her compromised mobility, she always insisted on moving across to the lectern. The altar itself was simple. The organs and the choir were at the back, to the right as you entered the door. So much for the physical appearance.
The primary issue that led to the split between Miss Leila and Miss Potter was the latter’s desire for the Community to become a full-dress Church of England School. Central to this, presumably, was the form of the Chapel services, so it would be interesting to know how they were conducted in Miss Potter’s day, how they developed since and when they settled into the format that was constant during my ten years. Unless written scripts survive from the earliest times, this question will remain unanswered. I seem to remember that there was a written form of service in my day, in beautiful manuscript, perhaps Miss E’s work. Maybe this, at least, has been preserved.
There was Junior Chapel, with Senior Chapel an hour later. For obvious reasons, I ceased to attend Junior Chapel after I was eleven and my memories of it are too vague to be useful. I think it was less formal, more like a Sunday School. If, for any reason, Chapel could not be held on Sunday morning, Evening Chapel was held. This was rare. When it happened, the first hymn was “The day Thou gavest, Lord, is ended” (to the usual tune of St. Clement). I cannot hear this hymn today without remembering the first time I sang it with the evening sun streaming through the Chapel windows.
The Chapel was non-denominational and the services followed a simple pattern that could be shared by all but Roman Catholics (who were driven to their own Church in Ashford), though strict Anglicans such as Miss Potter and, later, Mr. Griffiths, evidently found it unsatisfactory. At the heart of it was the lighting of the candles. While the choir sang, Miss Leila would prepare a taper and a senior girl would come forward, take the taper and light the candles. The hymns sung during this alternated, if I remember rightly, between the haunting tune known as Picardy, sung to words about light that I do not remember, or the more energetic “Thou Whose Almighty Word”. When the music finished, Miss Leila would declare “Let there be light” and we would reply “And there was light”. Miss Leila had a variant to the Biblical text that followed. After “The light shineth in the darkness”, in place of “and the darkness comprehendeth it not”, she read “and the darkness cannot put it out”. Interestingly, some modern translations have used similar words, but Miss Leila preceded them by many years. The service developed on Anglican lines for a while, the “Angels and Archangels and all the company of Heaven” leading to a choral “Holy, Holy, Holy”. There was no full-blown Nicene Creed, however. The choir also contributed an anthem – I remember in particular Wesley’s “Lead me, Lord” and Stainer’s “God so loved the world” – plus a sung Lord’s Prayer and a sung Amen. Obviously, there were hymns and prayers and the talk. When Miss Leila was unable to take the service, Miss Elizabeth usually stood in, and later Mr. King. I do not remember Miss Elizabeth taking Junior Chapel, though. In Miss Leila’s absence, this fell to Joy Blackaby while I was a junior. After that I do not remember, but Miss Joy quite often returned to speak in Chapel, Junior and Senior, after she had left the Community. She once horrified some of us (not just me!) by preceding her talk with “I Believe”, a 1964 hit by The Bachelors (but originally sung by Frankie Laine in 1953). The message she wished to convey was the many reasons there were for believing. Perhaps she found some converts, whereas I doubt if Miss Leila’s attempts to interest us in Britten’s “War Requiem” bore any fruit.
I do not know how a 21st century institution might cater for a school of multi-ethnic, multi-religion children. In its time, the Chapel service was a remarkable example of a format that could satisfy almost every Christian denomination and it remains in my mind as a perfectly conceived entity.
So much for what it was, but what was it for me? To begin with, I should say, an enigma. The one thing both my mother’s husbands had in common was unwavering, lifelong atheism. Though my mother was to end her days as a Methodist lay preacher, I doubt if her zig-zag path through the assorted denominations available in Northolt, Middlesex had begun in 1961. Many years later, I learnt from Betty Rayment that my mother had told the Caldecott authorities I was not to go to Chapel (maybe this was a sop to my father, who did not wish to have me sent there). Betty recalled Miss Murdin saying to her, “His mother says he’s not to go to Chapel, but he’ll have to go. I can’t just leave him alone in the playroom all morning”. And so I went.
Since I hero-worshipped both my father and my stepfather, I found it a convenient showstopper to tell my Junior Study contemporaries I did not believe in God. Most of them had some kind of “received religion” instilled in them, so the bombshell was quite effective. Nothing much was said to me by Miss Murdin or others. Perhaps she feared that, if a big issue was made of it, atheism might become contagious. There was the occasional spot of tale-telling – “Please Miss Murdin, Christopher doesn’t close his eyes during prayers [in the dormitory], he looks around the room”. Miss Murdin made no reaction. Perhaps it occurred to her, as it did to me, that the tale-teller could not have known this unless he did the same thing himself. My unbelief also led to an encounter with an older boy, Alastair Staines, who approached me on the school playground with a diffident smile and something of the air of an Oxford scholar.
AS: I hear you don’t believe in God.
CH: No.
AS: I, too, am going through a phase of believing that no God exists.
I went from extreme to extreme over the following years. By the time a troupe of Gideons descended on Ashford Grammar School and dished us all out with a tiny New Testament each, I was ready to believe the whole works and kept a Bible beside my bed (my contemporaries could goad me into thoroughly un-Christian outbursts by hiding it). It was difficult not to nod off when my chosen passage was a piece of abstruse military history, but I persevered and must have read the Good Book from cover to cover at least twice by the time I left Caldecott. As I mentioned earlier, Miss Meara opened to me the world of alternative translations. I have been involved with churches for most of my life, though I wonder how often I would go if I were not engaged to provide them with a musical service.
So where does the Caldecott Chapel come in all this?
In their various memories, on the Association site and on the FaceBook page, former Caldecott children of many generations have recalled it with affection. Perhaps we are all orphans of Miss Leila’s non-denominational Chapel. On the face of it, it seems impossible that there could exist a church where people do not bicker about whether you should be baptized or not, whether this should be by full immersion or not, whether communion should be granted only to those who are baptized, whether a non-ordained person can pronounce a blessing, whether incense is an inspiration to religious thought or just a nasty smell, or where the various committees are not dominated by warring family factions. Those of us who attended Caldecott in its heyday know that such a church can exist. I daresay many of us hold the memory dear.