Ancestry
Ancestors and the weaving of meaning
Genesis (1050)
Leofric (1016-1072), appointed first Bishop of Exeter by King Saint Edward the Confessor in 1050, was granted the lands that became Dittisham Rectory by the king upon Leofric’s elevation to the See of Devon and Cornwall. Leofric, a person of modest means, established Exeter as a centre of learning gifting the cathedral library its first fifty-five manuscripts.
Second Genesis (1328)
Richard of Gomersall
The Great Famine of 1315-1321 marked the end of the Middle Ages ‘warm period’, which had lasted since Leofric, and marked the beginning of the Little Ice Age that continued through to the 19th Century. The wet cold weather of the Great Famine killed 25% of the region’s population, decimated harvests, spread disease and death among farm animals, created lawlessness and sent most parishes such as Dittisham into ruin.
In 1328, Richard of Gomersall was appointed Rector at Dittisham as well as canon and then provost of Glasney College in South Cornwall. Richard learnt the local language, ‘Welsh’, and for the next 40 years re-established both Dittisham and Clasney. The church in Dittisham is testament to his industry.
In its rebirth, Glasney became famous as the home of Cornish language, culture and the arts. Arthurian and spiritual plays as well as stories of the earliest Cornish saints some being Celtic gods renamed, were written down and performed in the outdoor theatres and in the knave of churches across Cornwall and South Devon.
Glasney was born of a vision received three times by Bishop Bronescombe of Exeter in 1265. Saint Thomas the Martyr visited him and pointed to a place people called Glasney. He told the bishop to venture there and find the hollow where creatures wounded by arrows go to convalesce. And if you find this hallow look for a willow tree and, if inside the willow tree there is a swarm of bees, you will build your college there. A stump of a willow tree remained in the church until the reformation.
Auguring well: On Eloma’s inaugural retreat June 29th to July 6th 2024, a swarm of bees settled for three days on the grass adjacent to where we gathered. On the seventh day, a swarm darkened the sky as they flew over the Old Rectory. A cutting of a Glasney willow was planted at Eloma July 11th 2024.
English Civil War (1646)
Rector John Stroud
Pictured is Lord Fairfax, leader of the Parliamentarian forces. He arrived in Dittisham in 1646 and demanded that John Stroude, then Rector of Dittisham, let it be know on whose side he stands. Apparently, John responded with the question “can not Protestants and Catholics live together?” He was banished from Dittisham, the church was de-faced, and the rectory, with the archives, was burnt to the ground.
The English Reformation marked a profound religious and political shift for Devon and Cornwall. The new state religion, Anglicism, enforced English over Celtic languages, centralised and standardised religious practice in part through the Book of Common Prayer, and dispensed with any remnants of regional Celtic Christianity in the liturgy, rites, rituals, and ceremonies. At the same time, the Protestant ethos often masked and sometimes inspired the forces of capitalism and politics to justify the apparent civilising missions first of the Irish Plantations and then British colonial expansion. An influential group of men that both advocated and enforced plantations and colonialism came to be called the “West Country Men”.
Two influential individuals of the ‘West Country Men’ group emanated from the Greenway and Sandridge Estates on the Dart River, opposite and slightly upstream of the Old Rectory respectively. Humphrey Gilbert (1539-1583) was notable for the brutality he deployed against unarmed Irish Catholic civilians - old men, women, and children. He “order the decapitation of entire villages in order to have the path to his tent decorated with a lane of heads prior to inviting the submission of chefs and leaders” [Carmichael, C. (2015)]. He died while attempting to establish a colony in North America.
Walter Raleigh (1552-1618) was another of the West Country Men. Famous for his charm, intelligence, relationship with Elizabeth 1st, he did not avoid the callousness and cruelty shown to fellow humans or the rest of nature so common of the age. He was allocated 40,000 acres as an ‘undertaker’ of the colonisation of Ireland. He deforested the land and led the party that beheaded 600 surrendered Spanish and Italian soldiers at Smerwick. While he never step foot in North America he nevertheless named Virginia while in sight of it. He purportedly smoked the first tobacco on Anchor Rock just downstream of the of the Old Rectory.
Free School Movement (1816)
Rector Robert Sparke Hutchings (1781 - 1827)
“What was it that made this young man sail all the way to the Far East, to the island of Penang, to establish a school” which had such an impact on Malaysia and further afield, so mused Steve Foong an alumnus of the Penang Free School. In 2016, on the bicentenary of the School’s opening, Steve, together with eight other alumni, set off on a 22,000km journey across 20 countries to the ‘idyllic surroundings’ of the Old Rectory, Dittisham to find out.
The founder of Penang Free School was Robert Sparke Hutchings, the youngest of 16 children who, following study at Oxford, assumed the rectorship at Dittisham in 1805, a role previously held by his father. Alongside building “a new magnificent rectory house” with a school attached, he is credited with building the first road to Dittisham able to take carriages, in this instance to Dartmouth.
Robert only spent two years in the Rectory he built. He never returned after his ultimate departure in 1814 either to Dittisham or the UK, before his death aged 47 in 1827. Instead he remained in South Asia becoming heavily involved with the founding of the Raffles Institution, the oldest school in Singapore, and being instrumental in the Malay translation of the bible. But above all else he is remembered for the Penang Free School. Established as a liberal arts and handcrafts school, teaching was in Malay, open to all children, boys and girls, regardless of class, ethnicity or religion, with support for those children whose parents could not afford the fees While women were banished following his death, numerous minsters, industrialists, and artists of renown, are counted among the alumni including Tunku Abdul Rahman, the founding father of Malaya and the first Prime Minster of Malaysia.
There are parallels here with the deep interest and funding for what could equally be called ‘free’ schools and universities by Ellis and Elly Kadoorie, and the generations of the family since. In 1875, Elly Kadoorie established the Sir Elly Kadoorie School in Mumbai with classes taught in the local language, Marathi. Through the ‘Alliance Israelite Universelle’ Elly and his sons went on to establish the first girls’ school in Baghdad in 1895 with other following in Iraq, Syria and Iran. Ellis established schools for girls and boys in Hong Kong. In Palestine, the Khodori Institute, and the Kadoorie Agricultural School, serving the Arab and Jewish populations respectively, were established in the 1930s. This legacy continues today.
Women’s Education (1874)
Henrietta Kerr (1842 - 1884)
Mother Henrietta Kerr, born Boxing Day 1842 at the Old Rectory, went on to lead the Society of the Sacred Heart in Britain, and, before her death in 1884, helped established what is now Rigby Stuart College, the largest college of the University of Roehampton, London. Founded in 1874 by the Society, the college was and is a centre to train and inspire women in teaching and leadership. The college values of empowerment, community, and personal growth remain at the forefront of the college today as does open intellectual inquiry, social action, and principled freedom with respect for faith. In 1982, the College welcomed Pope Saint John Paul II.
Her father, Rector Lord Henry Kerr, succeeded Robert Hutchings following his death in 1827. Henry continually bemoaned the lack of ritual, the lack of devotion of the congregation. He kept a diary throughout his stay through to his departure in 1851. On April 2nd, 1843, he wrote “it is certainly sad to see how dull and careless our congregation are, and how little, how very little devotion, or even pretence at devotion, there is amongst them”. Eight years later, he left the Rectory and the Anglian Church and was received into the Catholic Church and the ritualised services he so sought. He understood, perhaps more than most, the role of ritual as the embodiment, and critical compliment, of myth, as religion maybe thought to be.
Auguring well: During Eloma’s inaugural week, stones from four sacred sites were buried at the Old Rectory. The location of the burial was shown to an individual in a dream. A nun appeared in the dream and pointed to the place where the stones were to be buried.
The Architect of Rock
John Paul Jones (1946 - )
John Paul Jones (born John Baldwin in 1946) is best known as the bassist and keyboardist for the legendary rock band Led Zeppelin. Before joining forces with Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, and John Bonham, he was already a skilled session musician and arranger in London’s bustling studio scene. His background in musical theory and ability to play multiple instruments allowed him to shape Led Zeppelin’s diverse sonic palette, contributing memorable bass lines, orchestral arrangements, and intricate keyboard parts that underpinned iconic songs like “Ramble On” and “Kashmir.”
While Robert Plant and Jimmy Page took on more prominent public roles, John Paul Jones was the “quiet” member who held the band’s sound together, earning him a reputation as the group’s musical anchor. Following the death of John Bonham and the subsequent dissolution of Led Zeppelin in 1980, Jones moved into production work, collaborated with a wide range of artists (including R.E.M. and Foo Fighters), and even pursued film scoring. His solo albums, such as Zooma(1999) and The Thunderthief (2001), showcased a remarkable flair for combining hard rock with experimental and orchestral elements.
In 2009, he joined forces with Dave Grohl and Josh Homme to form the critically acclaimed supergroup Them Crooked Vultures, further demonstrating that his influence and relevance extend far beyond his Zeppelin era. Today, John Paul Jones is regarded as a multi-talented composer, arranger, and performer—often cited by other musicians as a key inspiration for both his melodic bass lines and his boundary-pushing approach to rock music.