Little Gidding

For the poem "Little Gidding" from the Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot, see Little Gidding (poem).

The Church of Saint John the Evangelist, erected in 1714 to replace an earlier church at the site

Little Gidding
Population	362 (with Great Gidding and Steeple Gidding)
OS grid reference	TL131819
Shire county	Cambridgeshire
Region	East
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	HUNTINGDON
Postcode district	PE28
Dialling code	01832
Police	Cambridgeshire
Fire	Cambridgeshire
Ambulance	East of England

Little Gidding is a parish and small village located in the Huntingdonshire district of Cambridgeshire, England near Sawtry. A small parish of 724 acres (293 hectares), Little Gidding recorded a small population of 22 residents in the 1991 British Census. With the neighbouring villages of Great Gidding and Steeple Gidding the total population is 362. Two miles away is Leighton Bromswold where George Herbert was a prebend and restored the Church of St. Mary. The driving distance between Little Gidding and Cambridge, to the southeast, is 30 miles.

Mary Ferrar had a tablet placed in the family’s parlour. Sir Thomas Hetley requested a copy, so, although the original has long been lost, the wording and the arrangement of the original text was preserved. Here it is as published in The Life and Times of Nicholas Ferrar by H. P. K. Skipton

Little Gidding was the home of an Anglican religious community established in 1626 by Nicholas Ferrar. This small community was founded around strict adherence to Christian worship in accordance the Book of Common Prayer and the High Church or Catholic heritage of the Church of England. Charles I visited Little Gidding three times. In the 20th century, American-British poet T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) was inspired by the legacy of Little Gidding and incorporated historical elements and symbols into his long poem, "Little Gidding" from his collection Four Quartets (1945).

History

Early history

At the time of the Domesday Book the only entry was merely Geddinge, indicating that the three parishes of Little Gidding, Great Gidding and Steeple Gidding were only separated later. Gidding, then owned by William Engaine, passed to his grandson, who gave Little Gidding to his younger son, Warner Engaine, in around 1166. At that time the manor was known as Gidding Warner, later becoming Gidding Engaine and by the 13th century Gydding Parva or Little Gidding.

The name Gidding means "settlement of the family or followers of a man called Gydda". Little Gidding is mainly remembered as the home of the Church of England lay religious community established by the Ferrar family in 1626.

Nicholas Ferrar's community at Little Gidding

Nicholas Ferrar from a portrait by Cornelius Janssens

St John the Evangelist Church, East end

In 1620, Esmé Stewart, the Earl of March (1579–1624) and Lord Lieutenant of Huntingdonshire (later, briefly, the 3rd Duke of Lennox), sold the manor of Little Gidding to Thomas Sheppard. Sheppard sold the property to Nicholas Ferrar (1592–1637) and his cousin Arthur Wodenoth (or Woodnoth) (1590?–1650?) in 1625 as trustees for Ferrar's mother, Mary Ferrar (née Wodenoth). The Ferrars and Wodenoths were investors in the Virginia Company and other colonial projects. With the collapse of the Virginia Company and a large portion of their fortune, the Ferrar family retreated to Little Gidding to take on a humble, spiritual life of prayer, eschewing material, worldly life. The following year, in 1626, Nicholas Ferrar was ordained as a Deacon by William Laud (1573–1645) then Bishop of St David's and later Archbishop of Canterbury.

The Ferrar family transformed their holdings at Little Gidding into a humble Anglican religious community. When they purchased it, the property consisted of a decayed manor house and a Medieval church associated with the Knights Templar. The Ferrars began repairing the site. The community was never a formal religious community, as with a monastery or convent, as there was no official Rule (such as the Rule of Saint Benedict), no vows taken, and no enclosure. The Ferrar household lived a Christian life according to High Church principles and the Book of Common Prayer, and engaged in tending to the health and education of local children, and in bookbinding. The Ferrar household was criticised by Puritans and denounced as "Protestant Nunnery" and as an Arminian heresy; in 1641 it was attacked in a pamphlet entitled "The Arminian Nunnery". The fame of the Ferrars and the Little Gidding community spread and they attracted visitors. King Charles I visited Little Gidding three times, including on 2 May 1646 seeking refuge after the Royalist defeat at the Battle of Naseby.

When Mary Ferrar died in 1634, she bequeathed Little Gidding to her son Nicholas. In December 1637 Nicholas Ferrar died, but the community continued under the leadership of his brother, John Ferrar, until the latter's death in 1657.

During a period of local unrest in the Civil War, John Ferrar and some of his family went to Holland, but they had returned by 1646. The religious community ended with the death of John Ferrar in 1657. There have been successive allegations of ransacking of the church and the estate during the Civil War but recent research disproves it. Kate E. Riley's 2007 University of Western Australia English Ph. D. dissertation The Good Old Way Revisited: The Ferrar Family of Little Gidding, c. 1625-1637 examined anew the community and challenged many long-held assumptions.

Although the Ferrar community remained a part of the Anglican ethos (Bishop Francis Turner composed a memoir of Nicholas Ferrar prior to his death in 1700), not until the mid-nineteenth century with the Catholic Revial or Oxford Movement and the revival of Anglican religious orders did Little Gidding reach the consciousness of the average Anglican parishioner. Since that time, interest in the community has grown and not been limited to members of the Anglican Communion. Accord to ascetical theologian Martin Thornton, much of the appeal is due to the fact that the lack of rigidity (representing the best Anglicanism's via media can offer) and ″common-sense simplicity″ coupled with ″pastoral warmth″ traceable to the origins of Christianity are exemplified by Nicholas Ferrar and the Little Gidding community.

The Friends of Little Gidding was founded in 1946 by Alan Maycock to maintain and adorn the church and to honour the life of Nicholas Ferrar and his family and their life at Little Gidding. Inspired by the example of Ferrar, the Community of Christ the Sower was founded at Little Gidding in the 1970s but that community ended in 1998.

The community is depicted in Joseph Henry Shorthouse's 1881 novel John Inglesant.

St John's Church

The parish church of St John the Evangelist is a Grade I listed building. The present church was restored and rebuilt in 1714 to replace a much earlier church on the site and restored and altered in 1853. It is brick with a Ketton stone (a form of limestone) facing and a Collyweston stone slate roof.

The nave is 13½ feet (4.11 metres) wide and 32¾ feet (9.98 metres) in length and fewer than 30 people can be accommodated in the stalls lining the wall of the nave. The chancel is 12 feet (3.66 metres) wide and 22¾ feet (6.71 metres) in width. On the south side of the chancel is a late 19th-century vestry which is a little larger than one half of the chancel. Also on this side of the chancel is the only surviving oak "wainscoting" Mrs. Ferrar had the church paneled with. The nave is currently eight feet shorter than it was in the Ferrars' time. This area was evidently unsalvageable when the church was rebuilt in 1714. The nave in the Ferrars added a west gallery and in March 1631/2 installed an organ. Neither is in evidence today.

Some of the fittings date from the period of the Ferrars; the brass font of c.1625, and 15th-century brass lectern with eagle desk, were given by Mrs Ferrar. The cedar communion table also dates from their occupancy. Although photographs take during the 1900s often show an organ within the church, a 1999 survey for the National Pipe Organ Register stated that as of 1999, there was no pipe organ in this church.

An Order in Council published in the London Gazette on 13 March 1923, combined the United Benefice of Great Gidding with Little Gidding with the Benefice of Steeple Gidding.

T.S. Eliot and Four Quartets

Main article: Little Gidding (poem)

The legacy of the Anglican community at Little Gidding had inspired American-English poet, T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) in writing the poem entitled Little Gidding, the final of four long poems that comprise the collection Four Quartets (1945). Eliot, a convert to Anglicanism who specifically identified himself as an Anglo-Catholic and was a life member of the Society of King Charles the Martyr, visited the Little Gidding Church only once, on 25 May 1936, six years before the poem was first published. Eliot, a noted critic, supposedly had been asked to read a play regarding Charles I visiting the community.

In the poem named after this site, Eliot combined the image of fire and Pentecostal fire to emphasise the need for purification and purgation and that it is humanity's flawed understanding of life and turning away from God leads to a cycle of warfare. Eliot aims to portray this suffering as restorative — that it was necessary to experience catastrophic pain before life can be renewed and begin anew. Humanity's errors in thought that led to this suffering can be overcome by recognizing the lessons of the past and focusing on the unity of past, present, and future — a unity that Eliot asserts is necessary for salvation. Eliot draws imagery from the history of the Little Gidding community and its role in the Civil War and the fall of Charles I (whom Eliot calls the "broken King"), relating this past to a present in which Britain was struggling with the devastation of The Blitz during World War II.

Annual events at Little Gidding

During the summer a Little Gidding Pilgrimage is held, sponsored by The Friends of Little Gidding. In recent years, the format has been a Holy Communion at Leighton Bromswold followed by dinner. Then the pilgrims walk the five miles to Little Gidding. Along the way, there are rest stops where prayers and meditation occur. Upon reaching Nicholas Ferrar's grave, prayers are offered followed by Choral Evensong in St John's Church. In 2013, the pilgrimage will take place on 13 July 2013.

On the Saturday closest to the anniversary of Nicholas Ferrar's death on 4 December 1637 a commemorative service is held at St John's Church. Also, the Friends of Little Gidding hold their Annual General Meeting at that time.

An annual T.S. Eliot Festival is organised by the Friends of Little Gidding and the T.S. Eliot Society.

See also

• Anglican religious order
• Nicholas Ferrar
• George Herbert
• Leighton Bromswold
• Little Gidding (poem)

Works on Little Gidding and the Ferrars

Note: This listing is not limited to items cited in this article.

• Acland, John Edward. Little Gidding and Its Inmates in the Time of King Charles I. with an Account of the Harmonies. Project Gutenburg Transcription
• [{web|url=http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O40-GddngGrtGddngLttlGddngStp.html%7Ctitle=A Dictionary of British Place-Names|year=2003|author=A. D. Mills]
• A History of the County of Huntingdon (Victoria County History, 1936) III:53–57
• MacDonogh, Rev. Terence Michael, ed. Brief Memoirs of Nicholas Ferrar: founder of a Protestant religious establishment at Little Gidding, Huntingdonshire. Chiefly collected from a Narrative by the Right Rev. Dr, Turner, Formerly Lord Bishop of Ely; And now edited, with Additions. 2nd ed. London: Jacob Nisbet, 1837. (The original of this important source is now lost.) Internet Archive downloadable PDF Google Books downloadable PDF
• Maycock, Alan Lawson. Chronicles of Little Gidding. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1954.
• Maycock, Alan Lawson (1938), Nicholas Ferrar of Little Gidding, London, New York: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, Macmillan.
• Moore, William W. The Little Church that Refused to Die. Allison Park, PA: Pickwick Publications, 1993.
• Ransome, Joyce. The Web of Friendship : Nicholas Ferrar and Little Gidding. Cambridge, Eng: James Clarke & Co., 2011.
• Riley, Kate E. The Good Old Way Revisited: The Ferrar Family of Little Gidding, c. 1625–1637. A 2007 dissertation from Australia (265 PDFs)
• Skipton, Horace Pitt Kennedy. The Life and Times of Nicholas Ferrar. London: A. R Mowbray & Co, 1907. Internet Archive downloadable PDF
• Turner, Francis see MacDonogh, Rev. T. M. (Terence Michael), ed.

External links

• Ferrar House, a retreat centre located in Little Gidding
• Friends of Little Gidding
• The Giddings, the website for the villages of Great Gidding, Little Gidding and Steeple Gidding
• Little Gidding, Cambridgeshire from a blog by James P. Miller (with photographs)
• St John's Church, Little Gidding
• Small Pilgrim Places Network; Little Gidding
• Records of St John the Evangelist, Little Gidding. Inventory of materials at the Cambridgeshire County Record Office, Huntingdon, UK
• Little Gidding Harmonies produced by the Ferrars

Videos

• Little Gidding–St John's Church October 2013
• A Visit to Little Gidding