ist from Dobelle

FROM A CORRESPONDENT
There is now a new car park at lonely | Christian forms of baptism and burial were
Morwenstow near the lychgate and the more important to the vicar than the living
old lych-house, where R. S. Hawker of Christian lives. He was at one time

much “worked up with a fancy that Tait,
used to have the drowned sailors laid

elected Archbishop of Canterbury, had not
out and shrouded before burial. Down been properly baptised !
to the right is the vicarage built by The man's whole character was compact
Hawker, with chimneys in the likeness of contradictions. In July, 1861, he wrote:
of miniature church towers rising No! I do not like Hymns. First of all

,
among the trees. To the left is a gate

I know of none to be compared in value

001

Cor 166 (29) ist from tobell

or in sound doctrine with the very worst a National Trust sign marking the

version of David's Psalms. Every Hymn to Vicarage Cliff-and so to

that I ever read is more or less tainted awker's hut, which he constructed of with unsoundness in thought or in expreswreckwood saved from the beach below. sion. Besides, how they utterly destroy

uniformity—the great object of our Church The top of Hennacliff, “king of

and State ! Cornish headlands ”, frowns above, and

HARVEST FESTIVAL 1959: beneath are those deadly rocks. Here, ided in the hut between, the vicar composed

Yet in the whole church there cannot be much of The Quest of the Sangraal and

have been a priest less uniform in his prac-
nio

tices and more idiosyncratic than R. S.
those concluding lines :
had
the There stood Dundagel, throned, and the

Hawker. He is often remembered chiefly
great sea

for his 1843 inauguration (or revival ?) of the Lay, a strong vassal at his master's gate,

harvest festivals, but these services, though
heers

And, like a drunken giant, sobb’d in sleep. now very widespread and attracting the
Laided Today Morwenstow church is included

largest country congregations of the year,
in the itinerary of various coach trips from

are regarded by the stricter kinds of church

people as a rather dubious developmentthe holiday resorts and time is allowed for sion

a walk to the cliffside. Hawker, who died ayol

a kind of popular “frill not known to halt in 1875, might have grinned a little sourly.

the Book of Common Prayer.
lery

Hawker served not only the first or most
Garg
BITTER COMPLAINTS

northerly of Cornish churches but also
Robert Stephen Hawker was not defi-

Welcombe, the last in North Devon. On cient in self-esteem, An eccentric indivi- | Sundays he would ride from one to the

other. It is still a lonely land, one dualist, he liked to throw around his weight suspects little changed except as to road (or rather his opinions) and sometimes in surfaces. later life he stated clearly that ne should

Once, when he was returning from Wel

have