Oxford Morning

On our first morning in Oxford, September 13th, we went out early to have breakfast at Brown’s Cafe in the Covered Market.

Our first Full English without the beans. We tried the fried bread instead of toast…never again. It tasted like some bad fried food at a Fair.

On the way to the Bodlein to get tickets for a tour we strolled around the Radcliffe Camera and The University Church of St. Mary. Early morning was a good time to be there before more foot traffic started.

University Church of St Mary the Virgin

From its beginnings over a thousand years ago, St Mary’s has witnessed the foundation of the University of Oxford and some of the most significant events in English church history.

Fellows of Oxford Colleges were regularly invited to preach at the church in the 18th Century – in the case of John Wesley, on three occasions.

Wesley’s years in Georgia, subsequent conversion experience and new found energy to spread the Gospel to all who would hear, had by 1741, distanced him from Oxford both physically and spiritually.

In 1741 he returned planning to deliver a condemnatory sermon at St Mary’s but was persuaded by a friend to substitute this criticism of Oxford’s lack of godliness for the sermon on the ‘almost Christian’, which he preached on 25th July 1741.

No such restraint applied in 1744 when towards the end of his sermon on ‘Scriptural Christianity’ he made a powerful attack on the University’s spiritual apathy. Not surprisingly, Wesley was not invited to give the University sermon again.

Indeed, he recognized that effect his sermon might have reflecting: “I preached I suppose the last time at St Mary’s. Be it so…. I have fully delivered my own soul.”

This time around I didn’t take photos inside the church because during the Mourning Period for Queen Elizabeth II most churches and cathedrals requested that visits were limited to signing of condolences. Many of the College chapels were closed during this period. On our visit in 2014, photos from the indoor of the church can be seen here.

These photos are from the High Street entrance to the University Church of St. Mary.

After our tour at Bodlein (which requires it’s own post) we returned to the Covered Market to M. Feller & Daughter traditional butcher to buy some lamb sausages, bacon, and a half dozen eggs. Then we made a stop at Sainsbury Grocery store for tomatoes, mushrooms, butter and other goodies to have at the apartment so we could make our own breakfast.

We took everything back to the apartment and regrouped to meet a tour guide for a 2-1/2 hour tour on Tuesday afternoon.

Back to the USA and Colville we are getting more in sync with the Pacific Time Zone.

Keeping Florida friends in our prayers!

Getting Settled in Oxford

We arrived to Heathrow airport on Monday September 12th in the early afternoon. We were amazed at the customs procedure. There were several entry stations where you enter singly and put your open passport in a scanner while a camera takes your photo. After the scan, if no red flags pop up, you proceed to the baggage claim area. No human interaction at this point. We were flabbergasted but happy with the streamlined procedure. Next we followed the signs to baggage claim and waited for our bags to appear on the moving belt. Again we were happy to see them both appear and then we looked for signs for the central bus station located at Heathrow Terminal 3 . It was a long walk and when we found the bus station we looked for the The Airline Bus, Oxford. The first bus we spotted was with a cranky bus driver who felt his bus was full but a few stalls down there was another bus with a happy bus driver ready to take our bags and let us know a return ticket would save us money. On board and ready to go. The journey would take at least 80 minutes with the stops involved along the way. When we got to Oxford it was a prime traffic time so the journey took longer. We got off the bus and got our luggage and proceeded to find our apartment. Our Airbnb hostess gave us great directions and instructions. It was only 0.2 miles to our apartment from the bus station.

To get into the apartment complex we had to enter a security code for the door to open.

We found our apartment and entered another code to get the key from a lock box. In and ready to dump our bags and settle in before we headed out to find a pub for a meal.

We found our way to New Inn Hall Street heading for St. Michael Street to find The Plough Pub on Cornmarket and St. Michael Street.

The Plough was closed so we headed back a few businesses on St. Michael to the Three Goats Head Pub. We found a table and placed our order.

We both enjoyed a Steak and Ale Pie and we had a conversation with a couple from Finland. Maybe half a conversation as we both tried to get beyond a language barrier.

On the way back we discovered a connection to the Wesley family on New Inn Hall Street.

Walking back on St. Michael you can see the Wesley Memorial Methodist Church on New Inn Hall Road.

Oxford is full of connections to the Wesley family. John and Charles Wesley followed their elder brother Samuel to Christ Church; their father, also Samuel, was a student at Exeter College; and their grandfather John studied at New Inn Hall (from which New Inn Hall Street takes its name).

If you follow this link you will find some interesting history of the Wesley family in Oxford and beyond.

On the same road we passed St. Peter’s College.

This was the apartment building where our airbnb apartment was located on the Oxford Castle and Prison location (part ruined Norman Castle). The Swan and Castle is a pub in the Wetherspoon Pub chain. A cheaper pub that is open from 9am until 1pm. We weren’t aware of this fact before we booked our apartment. This wasn’t the type of pub we would choose.

The second balcony up is our apartment. Outside tables were situated below our balcony and windows. The drinking age in the UK is 18 and because this pub was one of the cheaper pubs many young people congregated to drink and smoke and enjoy themselves loudly each night. OYE. Such a nice apartment in a wonderful location with this downside. Thankfully we packed earplugs and there was a fan in our bedroom that we utilized for white noise. It was quiet from 2am until 8am so that was a plus. We decided to go with the flow and enjoy the upside to this apartment and not get in a snit about the downside.

Looking out our apartment window we said goodnight to our first day in the United Kingdom.

Back to the present we are getting more acclimated and feeling less tired. Hopefully we’ll be able to sleep longer into the morning, too.

Oxford Archives ~ University Church of St. Mary…

St Mary’s stands in the physical centre of the old walled City, and the university grew up around it. In medieval times scholars lived in houses with their teachers and the university had no buildings of its own, so it adopted St Mary’s as its centre. The church continued as a parish church, but by the early 13th century it had become the seat of university government, academic disputation, and the awarding of degrees.

The Oxford Martyrs ~Each of the three anglican bishops, Latimer, Ridley and Cranmer, who were burnt at the stake in Oxford during the reign of the Roman Catholic queen, ‘Bloody Mary’, underwent part of his trial in St Mary’s. Their principal crime was not to believe the doctrine of transsubstantiation, although Cranmer, as Henry VIII’s Archbishop, had also played a crucial role in the downfall of Queen Mary’s mother, Catherine of Aragon.

This bit of history at St Mary’s really was interesting to me to read…

John Wesley, founder of Methodism, often attended the University Sermon in his Oxford days, and subsequently, as a Fellow of Lincoln College, preached some of his most stirring sermons before the University here – notably the famous sermon the ‘Almost Christian’ in 1741. In 1744, again in St Mary’s, he denounced the laxity and sloth of the senior members of the University. He was never asked to preach here again. ‘I have preached, I suppose,’ I wrote, ‘the last time in St Mary’s. Be it so. I am now clear of the blood of these men. I have fully delivered my soul.’

In 1947 a disastrous fire destroyed the original 17th-century ‘Father’ Smith organ. Its replacement, by J W Walker, had become unplayable by 1981. The present organ, the third, was built in 1987 by Metzler Orgelbau of Zurich with the intention of recapturing the spirit of the original ‘Father’ Smith. It is undoubtedly one of the finest instruments of its kind, and incorporates the few of Smith’s decorative pipeshades which survived the fire.

While traveling I never have the time to thoroughly study the history of the places we visit. In preparing my posts for my blog, after the fact, I learn so much more information and history and I find out all the things I missed while visiting these amazing places. That’s why I always am ready for another trip to see the things I missed. There’s only so much my brain can absorb in a short visit.

And now in the present I’m glad to be reading this posts from 2014 and knowing what we didn’t know the last time we visited. This time around I’m taking more time to research before we go.

Trinity College ~ Oxford (Archives)

This is a post from my archives from July of 2014. We traveled by train to Oxford from the Cotswolds leaving our rental car behind which is a very good idea when visiting Oxford.
You can read about the history of Trinity College by clicking here. After our walking tour of Oxford on our 6th day in England Dear and I enjoyed some lunch and then walked about on our own. We visited two more of the University of Oxford Colleges, Trinity and Magdalen. We had to pay a small entrance fee to walk about these colleges.

The Chapel was consecrated in 1694 and was hailed by contemporaries as the most magnificent Chapel in the University. Its dynamic integration of architecture, sculpture and painting is unrivalled amongst surviving ecclesiastical interiors in England.

Deposition of Christ ~ (copy after Andrea del Sarto) by Gaetano Cannicci, 1870.

We were in Oxford the summer of 1974 briefly on our way to Blenheim Palace with our Singing group before we were married. If my memory serves me correctly it was in Oxford that I purchased the tea set for the Teapot I bought in Canterbury in 1973 on our singing group tour (Royal Albert, Moss Rose). In 2004 on a Literary trip to celebrate our daughter’s graduation from high school we visited Oxford for a day. We parked in a park and ride outside of town and took a bus to the city center and set out to find all the places that C.S. Lewis and Tolkien were known for. We had lunch at the Eagle and Child. We spent some time at Magdalene College and walked the path where Lewis and Tolkien walked. After getting back to our car we ventured off to Wolvercote to try and find the cemetery where Tolkien is buried. With our daughter’s determination we finally did find it and found his gravesite.

Back to July 2022 here in the States. We hope on our journey this September to attend Evensong at Trinity and at Magdalene colleges. Since our time in Oxford will be extended from just several hours to many days we hope to enjoy more leisurely visits to much of Oxford that we didn’t have time to see in 2014. We’ve also been researching churches in the area to attend on the Sunday we are there.

Not the Singing Variety

More of the squawking or chirping variety.

Whether they squawk, chirp or sing they are fun to watch, especially the swallows who are back in full company.

Inside Cathedral of St. Helena

Continuing on our Land That We Love Tour here are the photos I took inside the Cathedral of St. Helena. This is a photo intensive post. Couldn’t leave out any of the photos I took. Dear and I had the cathedral to ourselves on this Tuesday afternoon.

The Cathedral of St. Helena was constructed at the turn of the century during the episcopate of Bishop John Carroll. It is an outstanding example of Geometric Gothic architecture, patterned after the Votive Church of the Sacred Heart in Vienna, Austria. Stained glass windows, white marble altars, statues carved of the purest Carrara marble, and genuine gold leaf decorates the sanctuary. The pews and woodwork are all done in hand carved oak. The magnificent lighting fixtures are of hand-forged bronze with a special lacquer finish. Outside, majestic twin spires rise 230 feet above the street.

In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. Genesis 22:18

Abraham and Isaac

He is risen.

Jesus said to him: Feed my lambs, feed my sheep. John 21:15

All power is given unto me in heaven and on earth.

Baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. John 3:5

To read about some of the history of St. Helena Cathedral click here.

Cathedral of St. Helena

Before we left on our Land That We Love Tour I noticed there was a cathedral in Helena, Montana. After we toured the Capitol and had our meal in downtown Helena we used our phone google map to find the cathedral.

The outside today and I’ll share the amazing interior on another day. We were happy to find the front door of the cathedral open.

The Cathedral of St. Helena

Montana and Wyoming

We have moved further east on our ‘Land That We Love Tour‘. We took a back road out of Helena to get back to the I-90 interstate east to Wyoming.

This little church was in Montana.

Fall colors were pretty off the interstate as we approached our Wyoming destination.

We arrived in Sheridan for the night and right away Dear was in trouble.

Better put your hands up, Dear!

On our travels on Wednesday we listened to some more sermons in 1 Peter and some good music and also enjoyed periods of silence except for the tires on the pavement. We are pondering the attributes of God and these verses.

Isaiah 55:8-9

⁸For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
⁹For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Hats Off to Mothers

On Saturday we had a lovely event at our church in honor of Mothers. We enjoyed special music, skits, and a devotional. For our meal we had tea sandwiches and salads with cupcakes for dessert. That’s me on the right with the Fascinator on for my version of a hat.

On Sunday we had an encouraging church service and after church we went out to lunch with our Colville kids and grands. Josh and Laura sent me this gift that will have a special place in our home.

If you look closely you’ll see each of our children’s names. Such a thoughtful gift.

Happy Monday Everyone. Hope this new week is a good one. I’ll be mowing the acreage today. Spring grass grows fast!

Awana Awards Night

Our little Cubbie enjoyed her first Awana Awards night on Wednesday. Cubbies are the 3 to 5 year old group.

She really lights up for her friend.

She had lots of fans in the audience to watch her receive her award.

Approved Workmen Are Not Ashamed, AWANA. 2 Timothy 2:15 is the theme verse.

There were hotdogs, chips, cookies, lemonade and games for the kids outside after the Awards Ceremony.

JJ enjoyed himself.

On Thursday our temps got up into the 80’s! Our community participated in the National Day of Prayer at the Colville Courthouse lawn. Several pastors including ours prayed for different groups, our government, our schools, law enforcement and military, our familes, our businesses, and our churches. Stevens County Commissioners read a declaration pertaining to the National Day of Prayer.

We have a busy few days ahead of us here at our Country Bungalow. Do you have any plans for Mother’s Day Weekend?

The Happy Wonderer ~ ellen b.

To honor and encourage

Category Archives: Churches