THE P RTAL
September 2013
Page 20
Hassocks, Prisoners and the Ordinariate
by Catherine Utley
If you
are a Londoner who of thing which speaks to me of is not bound by the school termAnglican Patrimony. Each church times, there is something to be said project is individual; in St Peter’s C for taking your holiday away early or of E church in Hammersmith, where late in the summer so that you can I was recently, FCW is just finishing have London to yourself in August. off the last of 60 kneelers, with the It makes you do things that at other names and dates of the parish’s vicars times of year you would never get incorporated into the work and around to doing. Last weekend I personal messages from the workers found myself at Kew Gardens, visiting the thatched who have stitched them. cottage in its grounds which was built for King George lll’s wife, Queen Charlotte in the eighteenth learning to stitch ... changed lives Many of the prisoners who work with FCW have century, as a place for the royal family to rest and spoken publicly and movingly about how learning to take tea during walks in the gardens. stitch has changed their lives, enabling them to put wonderful enough just to look at their anger and worries aside, re-kindling in them self On display there for the summer are six samplers, esteem and giving them something to give. I like to embroidered in intricate detail, depicting people, think that the Ordinariate might somehow, some day plants and animals from Kew during the Georgian era. benefit from Fine Cell Work’s craftsmanship. In the These pieces are wonderful enough just to look at, but meantime, Ordinariate members might like, anyway, the thing that really makes you stop and think about to take time to look at its website and be inspired. them is that they were worked, not by professionals www.finecellwork.co.uk who have devoted their lives to the art, but by current nd prisoners - men and women - many of them serving September 22 long sentences, who have taken up the challenge to The holidays are over though, Autumn is approaching turn the hours they spend locked up in their cells to and the Friends of the Ordinariate are gearing up for this creative and purposeful end. busy times ahead. On 22nd September, our initiative to raise awareness and understanding of the Ordinariate 230 prison stitchers on its books among diocesan Catholics culminates with a letter Fine Cell Work (FCW), the charity which dreamed from the Ordinary which is to be either read out or up this idea, works with prisoners, training and placed in every Catholic Church in England and Wales. engaging them in the engrossing art of embroidery, We will follow this up with requests to parishes the while at the same time, enabling them, through it, to length and breadth of the country to host explanatory earn a wage that will one day ease their integration into talks and appeals from Ordinariate clergy. family life and society. It currently has more than 230 prison stitchers on its books, each of them sewing for raise the profile as well as funds Among our other plans are a celebration to mark the between 20 and 30 hours a week, becoming masters of their craft and attracting prestigious commissions, introduction of the new Ordinariate rite in September, an Epiphany Service in January and, later in the New from such bodies as the V&A and English Heritage. Year, we will host a series of talks by visiting speakers Fine Cell Work to follow the celebration of Evensong and Benediction. What, you may ask, has all this to do with the The aim, as always, is to raise the profile as well as Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham? funds. Watch this space for the details and be sure to Well, nothing, directly, except that Fine Cell Work also join us if you can! takes on a large number of ecclesiastical commissions Catherine Utley is the fund-raising co-ordinator – for altar cloths and vestments as well as embroidered for the Friends of the Ordinariate kneelers, hassocks, banners and flags, – the sort