Holy Trinity Blythburgh
The Cathedral of the Marshes
The Cathedral of the Marshes
The Cathedral of the Marshes
The ever-popular Blythburgh café and minimarket – the village hub – is back in full swing on the last Friday of every month.
Visitors throng to Blythburgh to visit the ‘Cathedral of the Marshes’. Almost every Thursday at 11 am they are met by Blythburgh resident Colin Huggins who offers a knowledgeable, free, tour of the church. Recently Colin welcomed his 1,000th visitor! We celebrated this milestone with tea, cake, and a special tour for members of the village.
We know that a story which draws visitors to the church is one of the spookier Suffolk legends: Black Shuck, the dark giant dog who’s said to have invaded the church with calamitous results. It was no surprise, then, to be asked if we would tell the story again for American broadcaster NBC who were shooting a feature about Arthur Conan Doyle and the Hound of the Baskervilles. Colin Huggins agreed to stand in the TV lights to spill the beans. The show was broadcast at Halloween. Colin – who’s rapidly becoming a media star – was then asked for a similar interview for Greatest Hits Radio.
A different kind of media interest then arose, when – in November – the upscale magazine Country Living hired the Blythburgh Church for a photo-shoot featuring, er, console tables. The spectacular backdrop served its purpose, though Black Shuck failed to show. . .
The Rev'd Richard Coles recently wrote a piece for "The Times" on the Blessing of the Animals at Blythburgh Church in Suffolk."I was in Suffolk last Sunday and caught the end of one of the more distinctive Church of England liturgies. It was a pet blessing at Holy Trinity, Blythburgh, “the Cathedral of the Marshes”, a magnificently plain and spacious and light-filled parish church between the River Blyth and the A12. I say plain — its decoration was mostly destroyed by the dreadful Puritan “Smasher” Dowsing in the 1640s, but its roof was too high for him to ground the wonderful carved angels, which he particularly disliked. They soar above us today, and I like to think of them singing “Gloria in excelsis” over his wreckers just to annoy them.On Sunday they were not the only feathered creatures, for there was squawking as well as barking and miaowing from the animals inside, and neighing from the churchyard too. Some find this sort of thing preposterous, others nauseating — Smasher Dowsing would probably have declared it idolatrous and shooed everyone away.I have blessed a few animals in my time — everything from tadpoles to a shire horse — not to stoke controversy but because I like the idea of the parish church opening for the community it serves. I think our job is not to set a standard of orthodox belief that must be met before people may participate, but to invite them to step over the threshold and to share in a common life that is radiant with light, buoyant with hope and abounding in grace."(Reproduced with kind permission of the author)
Read more on Rev'd Richard Coles writes about our Blessing of the Animals Service
Here is a selection of interesting talks and writings by Rev'd Malcolm Doney, Assistant Priest at Holy Trinity Blythburgh
Read the fabulous reviews of this production:
Read more on Holy Trinity Blythburgh Hosts Five Star Production of Benjamin Britten's "Curlew River"
Holy Trinity Blythburgh has been featured in a recent television show on local folklore:
