Thursday June 20th 2019 - Priory Church and Lighthouse, St. Bees

Another lovely morning arrived and with it the thought that before I could go anywhere I would have to sort the van out. The brake lights had finally gone out during the night and the battery was, as I suspected it would be, flat, dead, defunct, non-operational. I would have to call out the AA but before I could do that I needed to know the postcode of the site so I went up to the farm to ask someone what it was and spoke to a lovely young man called Jonathan who asked me what the problem was. When I explained about the brake lights he told me to give him half an hour to finish what he was doing then he would come down and have a look at the van for me - and true to his word he did. With a set of jump leads he started the van with his 4x4 then identified the brake light problem - a stuck-on switch - so with his head half under the dashboard and a fair amount of 'on-off-on-off' shouting from me at the back of the van he sorted out the problem in just a few minutes. His help was very unexpected but also very welcome and it certainly saved me the hassle of calling out the AA and being stuck on site until they arrived.

With the van sorted I was free to go out for the day; my quest this time was to get to St. Bees lighthouse by road, something I hadn't known I could do when I was there at Easter, but first was a return visit to the Priory Church. Since Easter I'd found some information about various aspects of the church so wanted to check these things out. First was the Sleeping Child Garden, a tranquil place where those who had lost a young life could find peace and comfort; designed by internationally renowned sculptor Josefina de Vasconcellos the development of it began in 2006 shortly before her death. A path made up of old broken gravestones led me through the main cemetery but there was no sign of the Sleeping Child Garden so I gave up momentarily and went into the church.

The organ in the Priory is justifiably famous as a masterpiece of Victorian organ building. Completed in 1899 it was the last major organ to be built under the personal supervision of master organ builder 'Father' Henry Willis who had rebuilt more than half the cathedral organs in England, and although it isn't noticeable just by looking at the front it apparently has nearly 2,000 pipes.
 

On a raised wooden 'deck' in a corner of the church were three stone effigies discovered during archaeological excavations of a ruined part of the church site in 1981. The effigy on the left is thought to be that of Anthony de Lucy, otherwise known as 'St. Bees Man' whose well-preserved body was discovered during the excavations; the centre effigy is dated to about 1320 and is thought to be the wife of Robert of Harrington, Agnes, who died in 1293, while the effigy on the right may be that of Robert of Harrington himself, known to have been buried at St. Bees in 1298. Although the middle effigy was obviously that of a woman the other two didn't really look much like anything other than lumps of stone and to be honest I felt rather underwhelmed by them. At least I managed to photograph some stained glass windows which I hadn't noticed on my previous visit.

Back outside I had another search for the Sleeping Child Garden and eventually found it round the opposite side of the building to the main cemetery but again I was rather underwhelmed. I'd imagined it to be a very pretty garden, open and full of bright flowers but it was surrounded by shrubbery, much of it overgrown, and of the three sculptures gifted by Josefina de Vasconcellos I could only find one of them; the small figurine I saw under the bushes must have been left by someone local.

From the church I followed my own previously plotted directions along and round various country lanes until I came to a small parking area at the side of a farm building; that was as far as I could go as the rest of the lane was private. It was about a quarter of a mile walk from there to the lighthouse and when I got there I suffered another disappointment; the single storey building next to it was obviously a private house and there was a high stone wall round the whole lot, meaning I couldn't get an uninterrupted view of the lighthouse itself. I was glad I'd driven there as I would have been seriously miffed if I'd walked the three miles from the village along the cliff top only to find I couldn't get a proper view of it!

A short way down the path was the lookout tower built right on the edge of the cliff and with a couple of shots of that, and some cows in the nearby field, I gave up and made my way back to the van. The sun had disappeared while I'd been in the church and some really dark clouds had arrived over the sea so I was just hoping I would get there before the heavens decided to open.

I'd originally planned to go back into St. Bees and have a wander round the village but with the sky looking decidedly dodgy there was no point going anywhere else so I cut my losses and headed back to the camp site. It was almost as cloudy when I got back there so the rest of the afternoon and evening were spent reading and watching one of the dvds I'd brought with me and hoping that the sunny weather would return the following day.