ST AIDAN’S CHAPEL OF EASE, OSWALDKIRK GERARD SIMPSON
T
he chapel of St Aidan built in the years 1961 - 1963 was appropriately named after the great friend and adviser of St Oswald, the patron of the nearby Anglican church, who brought St Aidan from Iona in the seventh century to convert his kingdom of Northumbria. Before the church was built, Mass was said in private houses and then, as the congregation grew, in the Village Hall. It was a condition of employment for the first lay teachers at the College that they lived in Ampleforth, Gilling or Oswaldkirk and so when the church opened it had a regular congregation of around 50 which included several large Catholic families. Fr Cuthbert Rabnett (A28) and Fr Edmund Hatton (O40) appealed for funds. Parishioners saved up for 20 years to build the church which cost £11,270. Adrian Stewart (C43), and later a member of the Physics Department, remembered being one of the first Old Boys of the College to subscribe in 1953. By 1972 parishioners were inviting visitors to help them clear the remaining debt of £2,300. The site was donated by Richard Fairbairns (O34) and the Architect was Ewan Blackledge (O37). Sarah Fram of Easingwold, Ewan’s youngest daughter, said her father had great ideas but was restrained and disappointed by the brief that the church should be built on a shoestring! However, William Hunter (O65) described it in the book, Ampleforth Country, written by Ampleforth students and published in 1966, as ‘a handsome modern building which strikes one forcibly from the road with its simple front and commanding golden cross. Although modern in style, it is dignified; simplicity is its keynote’. The south facing windows in the church, behind the altar, were specially tinted to cut down the glare from the sun and were designed and executed by Derek Clarke (B31) of Edinburgh. The figures representing choirs of angels around the throne of God were sandblasted into the glass. The style of representing angels without heads, signifying super-human qualities, comes from Sicily and the Middle East. Unfortunately, they were fitted without expansion joints and gradually cracked. One of them survives and is specially framed and mounted inside the church. Across the rear of the church John Bunting (W44) carved four oak panels with the 14 Stations of the Cross. The pews were from the old Abbey Church. Fr Edgar Miller (O61) remembers as a junior monk the hard work of sanding them down to remove all the dark stain!
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