Pilgrim Ways

buried. James Mawdsley was released in the autumn of 2000, having served fourteen months in solitary confinement.

Wardley Hall Dom Bede now travels to the Salford diocese and to Wardley Hall, home today to the Bishop of Salford. Known as Skull House, the skull enshrined on the staircase wall is that of the Manchester Benedictine martyr, St.Ambrose Barlow. He was brought up at Barlow Hall, near Didsbury. Situated in Worsley, about six miles from Manchester, the skull came to Wardley Hall after the priest's execution at Lancaster in 1641. His head had been impaled on a spike outside what is now Manchester Cathedral.

Harvington Hall Heading south, the meticulous Benedictine takes his readers to Worcestershire's Harvington Hall, home to the leading Catholic recusant family, the Throckmortons (also of Coughton Court, Warwickshire). In the churchyard stands a cross commemorating the Franciscan martyr, St.John Wall (executed at Worcester in 1679): "who, obeying God, rather than man, for twelve years ministered the sacraments to the faithful in this and other parts of Worcestershire in daily peril of death." During penal times, Harvington, Chaddesley Corbet, Purshall Hall, Badgecourt and Rushock (where Fr.Wall was captured) were the centres of Catholicism in north Worcestershire. For more than two hundred years the upper room at Purshall Hall, where Mass was secretly said, was kept sacred by successive occupants: When a man pent up his brother men, Like brutes within an iron den, Proud of Persecution's rage, Their belief with blood have sealed.

A copy of Fr.Wall's last speech, given at Red Hill, overlooking Worcester, is held at the library of the Catholic Seminary of St.Mary's College, Oscott, near Birmingham. It concludes with the words: "I beseech God to bless all that suffer under the Persecution and to turn our captivity into Joy: that they that Sow in tears may reap in Joy." To enable an exhibition of photographs depicting the story of Harvington to be staged in 2000, a grant was awarded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. The photographs, taken by pioneer photographers Benjamin Stone and Thomas Lewis between 1896 and 1910, were used by Dom Bede Camm in Forgotten Shrines. Those photographs and Dom Bede's account stimulated significant interest in Harvington and after World War One, following a period of decline and neglect, when the house was put up for auction the property was acquired and given to the Archdiocese of Birmingham. They restored it and have cared for it ever since. Some of the walls still have their original Elizabethan wall paintings and the hall contains the finest series of priest-holes anywhere in the country. Some of them are almost certainly the work of the great Jesuit brother, Saint Nicholas Owen (alias Little John), who was finally captured at Hindlip House, near Worcester in 1606 and taken to the Tower (see Chapter Twelve). In 1743 the Throckmortons built a Georgian chapel which has been restored with an eighteenth century altar, rails, and organ. It is decorated with red and white drops for the blood and water of the Passion of Christ. Throughout the Reformation many religious paintings were whitewashed.

In 1936, those at Harvington were discovered and revealed. The modern pilgrim can visit and spend time here. Harvington Hall is open on several days each week from 11.30 am until 5.00 pm. Further details appear in the Appendix.

Pembridge Castle