TRAFALGAR DAY!
200th Anniversary - October 21st
1805 - 2005
NO WHERE ELSE flies the
White Ensign on top
of its tower but the village with the Nelson Touch - As we would
EXPECT.
*
Daily Mail
Tuesday, October 18,2005
*
Roy Hattersley’s
COLUMN
[A weekly diary of travels
through our
English Heritage]
In search of England
Sunday
morning in Burnham Thorpe-At All Saints, the fine 14th- century
parish church, the service is almost over.
Each member of the congregation turns to the left and right and shakes
out stretched hands in a gesture of friendship. Coffee and biscuits are ready at the back of the nave to fortify
the worshippers against the cold walk home. Similar scenes are being enacted
all over England.
But
no other church flies the White Ensign from a flagpole on top of its
tower. Indeed, nowhere else in England
is that particular White Ensign- flown by the Royal Navy before the Act of the
Union with Ireland- ever unfurled?
It blows in the Norfolk wind by permission of the Board
of Admiralty to commemorate England’s victory at the battle of the Nile in
1798.
All
Saints is Horatio Nelson’s church and Burnham Thorpe is his village. Apart from the sea, it is the only home he
knew. He was born there - the son of
the rector of ALL Saints -on September 29 1758, and it was from Burnham Thorpe
that, after a not altogether successful attendance at three Norfolk schools, the
frail 12-year-old went to sea as a midshipman in the Raisonnable (a captured
French 64-gunner) under the command of his uncle Captain Maurice Suckling.
Nelson’s mother and father
are buried side by side in the sanctuary of the church. The font, in which their son was baptised,
still holds the water, which blesses the 21st century children in
the village.
Last
Sunday, five days before the 200th Anniversary of the Battle of
Trafalgar, Burnham Thorpe was already en fete . Thirty-three houses had
been decorated to represent the 33 English ships which faced the French and
Spanish combined fleet on October 21,1805.
Appropriately
enough, the boldest name sign that hangs outside the village’s front door was
Agamemnon. That ship was captured on the fateful day by one of Nelson’s ‘band
of brothers’. His Admiral welcomed his entry into the fray with the joyous cry
‘Here comes the damned fool Berry. Now we SHALL have a BATTLE’.
The
Burnham Thorpe village hall -
Built
as a temporary place of worship when the Admiralty restored the church for the
centenary celebrations in 1905-
Commemorates
the battle with signal flags strung across its vestibule. Of course, they read:
‘England expects that every man will do his duty’
Inside the hall the goods for sale strike a more prosaic
note. A T-shirt is printed with
representations of nelson’s medals and honours and the picture of an empty
right sleeve folded across his Garter sash.
On
the wall, a sculpture depicts the final moments on board the Victory. But the dying Admiral is surrounded by
allegorical figures representing Justice, Mercy and Truth, not his loyal crew.
It
is no means certain that nelson’s life justified those virtues presence at his
final moment. But last Sunday Burnham Thorpe was in no mood to consider his
personal foibles. Veronica Sabin, a
member of the congregation at morning service, did admit that she felt sorry
for his wife, deserted in favour of Emma, lady Hamilton.
But she went on to
say that he WAS the MAN who kept ENGLAND safe from invasion for 200 years.
Joyce
major, the daughter of a sailor and once a Wren, added that he was ‘good to his
men’ -a view of naval discipline not shared by all the admirals of his
time. But it was neither his reputation
as’ a man to love’ nor his tactical brilliance which made him England’s
authentic hero.
It was not even his
dash and daring. He became a hero
because he believed that heroism was his duty.
The reputation has survived 200 years. Last Sunday- a full
seven days before the climax of the Burnham Thorpe celebrations -
men and
women from all over Britain were making a pilgrimage to the little Norfolk
village.
George
Wills of Edmonton wanted to pay tribute to ‘something England can be proud
of’ and Dean Tomlin thought that ‘nelson had the right idea about the
French’. Anna, a schoolgirl from Norwich could cite the names and dates of the
three battles. She thought Nelson was
‘great’.
It
would be wrong-and both resented and rejected by the Reverend Jonathan Charles,
the current Rector of Burnham Thorpe- to describe ALL Saints as a shrine to
Horatio Nelson. But there is a great deal about him in the church.
Two great White Ensigns, of
the modern design, hang on the wall at the west end of the nave. They once fluttered from the stern of HMS
Nelson.
The
lectern and the reredos were made from wood taken from HMS Victory’s bulwark. A
bust of the great man in his prime looks down on the tombs of his mother and
father.
Burnham
Thorpe is one of England’s most tranquil villages. Yet it produced one of
England’s most turbulent sons. From
church to the village hall and along all the streets of decorated houses, which
make up this week’s ‘Nelson Trail’, the moral and message is clear.
It
is men like Horatio Nelson who, by making England safe created what Shakespeare
called
‘the
envy of less happier lands’.
[Font altered-bolding
&underlining used]
* * *
OCTOBER 18-2005
*
H.F.1354
