History and meaning in UK’S Little Gidding

To the north of Cambridge, England there is a tiny village that is sacred to many in England and the English-speaking world. That village is Little Gidding, and it is a place worth remembering.

Little Gidding was a religious community founded by a man named Nicholas Ferrar. Ferrar was born in London on Feb. 22, 1592, and grew up to be something of a scholar, a businessman and a deacon in the Church of England. He traveled widely in Europe, where he met people from different religious traditions, until 1618, when he is supposed to have had a vision informing him he was needed in England. Upon his return, he was elected to the House of Commons and became an investor in the London Virginia Co. This investment produced a significant amount of money through the tobacco trade. Rivalries and Ferrar’s accusations of corruption of the colonial governor, Sir Thomas Smith, led to the company losing its charter and it being dissolved. Much of Farrer’s investments and finances collapsed with the company. Growing tired of the political life of Parliament, Ferrar resolved to devote his life to prayer and contemplation away from the city.

Ferrar and his large family moved to a deserted village called Little Gidding, where he bought the abandoned manor house and with it the empty local church with the remainder of his money. The family took up bookbinding to make ends meet. Nicholas and his family chose to live a strictly religious life. This included the education of the local poor children and care for their health. The community encouraged the idea of educating women. The family also kept one of its many members at prayer at all times, and together the community recited morning and evening prayer daily, according to the rites of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer.

Local Puritans condemned the community as being a “Protestant nunnery,” but the community took no vows and did not claim to be a religious order. The community attracted visitors, including three visits by King Charles I. The poet priest George Herbert, who was a friend of Ferrar, sent him a collection of his own poetry, which Ferrar had published, ensuring the fame of Herbert as an English divine.

Ferrar died Feb. 22, 1637, but the little community he founded continued for about 20 years until it was swept away in the iconoclasm of the English Civil War. Nonetheless, this little community remained well known, and when King Charles I was defeated in 1645 by Cromwell, Little Gidding was where the king first fled to save his life.

In May 1936, the American-born English poet T.S. Eliot visited Little Gidding and was impressed by the beauty and simplicity of the place. Not long thereafter Eliot began writing what is perhaps his most famous poem, “The Four Quartets,” a long work divided into four sections. The fourth and final section is called “Little Gidding.” It was written during the firebombing of London in World War II, while Eliot served as a fire warden during the attacks, and the whole poem was published in 1943.

Like the rest of the poem, “Little Gidding” focuses on the intersection of time, which connects us to the past and those who lived in it. Standing in the buildings and church at Little Gidding, Eliot somehow felt a connection to the people who were there long before him. The opening lines reflect the author’s experience of standing where others began their spiritual pilgrimage, although long after their day was gone. He writes:

“What we call the beginning is often the end And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.”

Eliot repeats this theme of discovering new places on a spiritual level, only to find they have been part of us all along. The memories of the past and the present appear to him connected, as they will go with each of us into the future.

“We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time. / Through the unknown, unremembered gate / When the last of earth left to discover / Is that which was the beginning.”

Eliot is deeply steeped in the culture of English Christianity, which has a deep respect for tradition. Although it is a Protestant Church, high church Anglicanism venerates the ancient and medieval heritage from before the Reformation. In his reflections, Eliot refers to the words of the English anchorite, St. Julian of Norwich, who was born in 1342, whose writings are beloved in their own right. For Eliot, Christianity was not simply a religion that a person believes, but it was that which formed the culture in which people lived, and hence forged a link to the past and the future. He writes:

“Quick now, here, now, always — / A condition of complete simplicity / (Costing not less than everything) / And all shall be well and / All manner of thing shall be well.”

Little Gidding survives to this day and has a number of visitors, although attempts to revive the religious community have all faded. Today’s population of the town is 363.