The Bishop’s Bicentenary
Dear friends
Bishop Shute Barrington died in London two hundred years ago last month, at the grand old age of ninety two. He had been the Lord Bishop of Durham for thirty five years, the Bishop of Salisbury before that, the Bishop of Llandaff (that’s Cardiff) before that, and a Canon of both St Paul’s and St George’s, Windsor. Educated at Eton and Oxford he gave a lifetime of service to the church. With family wealth behind him he was in every sense a pillar of the establishment. A school in county Durham still bears his name, and there is a very fine marble memorial to him in Durham Cathedral, which I have seen. But the story of a glittering career hides great personal pain – his first wife died giving birth to their first child, who also did not survive, and his second wife then predeceased him, childless, by almost twenty years. What a sadness he must have carried, which possibly goes some way to explaining the energy with which he threw himself into his episcopate. Bishop Barrington was born at the family manor in Shrivenham, Beckett Hall, which has a very interesting history, and now, after being in War Office ownership since 1936, in a remarkable serendipity is the Headquarters of the Royal Army Chaplain’s Department, and the estate part of the UK Defence Academy.
However our connection in Langtree with this long dead prelate is much closer than West Oxfordshire. For his personal residence was the grand house and Thameside estate of Mongewell Park, now in the parish of North Stoke. By all accounts it was a favourite haunt, for he lies there still. Bishop Barrington’s tomb is in the nave of the semi-ruined church of St John the Baptist, which is close to the river’s edge at the heart of the estate, now the old Carmel College site. The church lies across the ornamental lake from his grand residence, still standing behind the hideous 1960’s concrete of the college buildings. You can make out his name on the eroding slab of the tombstone right by the south door as you enter. I find it interesting that, in perhaps a mark of humility, the Bishop (who would have regarded this church as his private chapel) chose to be buried with the commoners in the now roofless nave, rather than with the “well to do” with their fine monuments in the chancel – who remain roofed and preserved to this day. It is easy to visit the church, as there is a public footpath to it that runs directly through the estate from the corner of the lane coming down from the Mongewell roundabout. There is a bench outside, a gloriously quiet shady spot, where you can sit, anonymous, yards from the faded glory that rests, dilapidating, in the church at your back. May we each use rightly the time that is left to us on God’s earth, whatever heartaches or happinesses may be our lot.
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