Pilgrim Ways

To the west of Stonyhurst, and two miles to the south of Knowle Green, lies the small town of Ribchester, once a Roman garrison. St.Wilfred's Church lies by the River Ribble in Ribchester. Crosses in the graveyard show evidence of Christian worship here in Saxon times. The Norman arch in the north wall dates from 1193; the chancel from 1220. The building suffered at the hands of the Cromwellian Puritans in the seventeenth century. Next to the church is a small museum tracing the town's origins as the meeting place of the northern roads from Manchester, Lancaster and Carlisle. To the east of the town is the tiny settlement of Stydd. Here, cheek by jowl, is the two hundred year old Catholic church and the ancient chapel of St.Saviour's, Stydd. The church of St.Peter and St.Paul was constructed during penal times and designed to appear inconspicuous. The mandatory eighteenth-century simplicity has a particular appeal in our over-embellished age. St.Saviour's is equally simple and is reputed to be the oldest ecclesiastical building in Lancashire, having been built in the reign of King.Stephen. Stydd was originally the setting of a small priory of the Knights Hospitaller of St.John, where shelter was given to pilgrims. On the chapel wall is a small reminder of this period, a commemoration of the work of the St.John's Ambulance Brigade.

After Queen Elizabeth prohibited its use by Catholics, the chapel was administered by the Anglican authorities in Ribchester, who occasionally hold ecumenical services there. The present Rector, the Revd.John Francis, told me that he guessed that there must have been a holy well nearby and after consulting local farmers duly uncovered a well which was identified by another farmer as St.John's Well. Father Francis has two interesting stories to tell about the chapel. After Margaret Clitherow was crushed to death in York for harbouring a Catholic priest (1586), her body was thrown on a dung heap. When it was recovered six weeks later it was still incorrupt. Her right hand was removed and is preserved at the Bar Convent in York (see Chapter Fifteen, The Recusants). It was assumed that her body was buried in the grounds of the home of a sympathetic Catholic, who later conformed and wanted the body removed. Parish records list a mysterious internment at around this time.

Two hundred years later it is where a Jesuit, Sir Walter Vavasour, who died in 1740, chose to be buried; and, even more extraordinarily, it is where Bishop Petre, the Pope's Vicar Apostolic to England in the eighteenth century, is also buried. They clearly believed this to be greatly hallowed ground. Bishop Petre's tomb in Stydd chapel bears the inscription: " Here lies the most illustrious and Reverend Lord Francis Petre - he died in the Lord on December 24th of the year 1817, at his age the 84th. May he rest in peace." An ecumenical carol service is held by candle light at Christmas time and on the last Sunday of the month, throughout the summer, Evensong is held at 6.30 pm.

Stonyhurst To Towneley Hall To the south west of Stonyhurst, in Burnley, is the home of the Towneley family. There were once some eight priests' hiding holes in Towneley Hall; two remain open to public view. The Hall was an important secret Mass centre and was used to shelter priests, especially those travelling between Lancashire and Yorkshire. The secret altar, disguised to appear like part of the furniture, is now at Ladyewell House, Fernyhalgh, but many of the original artifacts may still be viewed. The official guided tour takes about 90 minutes. Robert Nutter was born in Burnley around 1557, and was the younger brother of the martyred priest, Blessed John Nutter, who died in 1584. Educated at Blackburn Grammar School, he was ordained in 1581.

Captured in 1584, he was tortured in the Tower and banished. He risked all and returned to the missions, was duly arrested, and in 1600 he was executed with Edward Thwing, a priest born at Heyworth, near York.