Echternacht

On Thursday our hostess drove us to Echternacht, a smallish town north-east of Luxembourg city. It’s famous for a couple of things, particularly, the Catholic Abbey and its surrounding university, and the Roman remains. The latter is particularly special: for instance out near the local lake are the foundations of an old Roman villa, still intact (with some restoration as well) and showing the extent of the building as well as the pool in the front of the house. This is almost as long as the main building. I presume it was decorative rather than for swimming purposes (!)
The Romans populated this area pretty thoroughly in the past, and, as I’ll mention in the next post, their ‘leftovers’ are everywhere.
In the town of Echternacht itself we went and visited the Abbey which is primarily known for its association with Willebrod, [sometimes Willebrord] a British bloke who decided that the people of the area needed evangelising - some 1300 years ago. He was so popular that people have been making pilgrimages along the routes he took in his evangelising ever since. The church he built in Echternacht at first, was soon too small, and one of the wealthy Christians of the area donated funds to build a much bigger one. (Willebrod was dead by this time.) This second church was destroyed by fire around the year 1000, if I remember rightly, and so a third (and bigger) church was built. The French Revolution damaged this one to a great extent, and with the ensuing secularisation of the area, the shell of the church was used as a place for tradesmen to work in.
In due course, Christianity (particularly Catholicism) came into its own again, and in the 19th century the church was restored to such an extent that it was virtually a new church. Unfortunately, this church was thoroughly bombed in the Second World War, and so a fifth reincarnation of Willebrod’s church came into existence. This is virtually a new building, with absolutely superb modern stained glass (wonderfully colourful) but little else in the way of decoration. The old crypts are still there and Willebrod’s tomb is in one part of them. A sketch of his effigy on one of the tombs (the one we saw has a kind of stone boxing over the top) shows the effigy not in the usual state of repose, hands folded across the chest and eyes closed, looking as though the work is done. Nope, Willebrod is on his back, but is up on his elbows, eyes open, looking for all the world as though he’s had a rest and ready to go again.
Echternacht is full of cafes and gift shops - in the area we were in - but has lots of charm. We stayed and had lunch - onion soup with soggy croutons in it for mine hostess and me, and some sort of sausage dish for Celia. She’s been very keen to try out the sausages, but hasn’t quite made it generally. There’s such a choice of sausages, it’s hard to know where to start. And of course, they don’t exactly fit into the Weight Watchers’ scheme of things.

Dereham and Withburga

Visited Dereham today. We’d passed through it (in fact, we’d stopped and had a cup of coffee there the other day) but hadn’t really looked at it. So a return trip was necessary.
It turned out not to be overly exciting, because many of the old buildings that might have made it interesting were demolished in the 60s, when it was fashionable to do such a thing and the historic places hadn’t got their teeth into preservation. Now Dereham consists mostly of newish buildings, and more to come. The main shopping area isn’t large - we covered it in about twenty minutes - and so the major sight to see was the church, which, surprise, surprise, is called St Nicholas’ Church, as are most of the churches in Norfolk, it seems.
But this church has some interesting features. Firstly instead of having a tower attached to the church, it has a ‘detached’ tower, and quite a substantial one too. The bells are lodged there.
Secondly, William Cowper, the poet, is buried in the church, and there’s a large memorial stained-glass window above his burial place. Two other people he was closely associated with are also buried there.
And thirdly, the Christian presence in this town goes back to the 7th century, when Withburga, the daughter of the then king of East Anglia, came to the place along with other women, and began to minister to people. She was greatly revered, and there are several interesting stories about her. At one point she had nothing to give the workers building the convent but dry bread. After praying about this, she was directed to send her maids to a certain place each day, and each day two does came and provided milk. Unfortunately this eventually aroused the ire of the local land overseer, and he drove off the does with his dogs. It didn’t do him much good: his horse threw him and he broke his neck!
After Withburga died, her body was buried in the cemetery belonging to the Abbey of Dereham. 55 years later, her body was found to be uncorrupted, and was moved into the church itself. However, the Abbot of Ely wanted to bury the body beside those of Withburga’s two sisters. So he took a group of armed men with him to Dereham, invited the townsmen to a feast and made them drunk. He then carried off the body. There was great distress when the Dereham people discovered the loss of the body, and they pursued the Abbot and his men. According to one story the body was placed in a barge just before the Dereham men arrived; in another a battle took place. Whatever the case, Withburga’s remains wound up at Ely - but not for long. The Vikings turned up (as they had done for decades) and destroyed much of the church at Ely, including the place where the women’s bodies were buried. No one now knows where they lie.
However, in a kind of compensation for the loss of their saint, a spring appeared at the site of Withburga’s tomb, and continues to run to this day. It’s become a place many pilgrims over the centuries have come to.
The photograph is of the well.

Bury St Edmunds

Spent most of today in Bury St Edmunds – once we’d woken up (at around 9.30 – very late even for us). Did the touristy thing, checking out the Abbey, and taking lots of photographs. The place is a constant reminder of its Christian heritage, with most of the streets in the centre having saints’ names or names associated with the church. There are other names, too, such as the usual market names, but the place is rife with Christian associations.
I didn’t know a thing about St Edmund until today. He was a king of East Anglia in the 9th century, and was slaughtered by the invading Danes (who camped at Thetford, incidentally). Whether he died on the battlefield or whether he was martyred by refusing to take up a sword against the invaders is not known for sure. The typical picture of Edmund is of him punctured with arrows, rather like Sebastian – there’s just such a picture in the Lady Chapel in the Abbey, with the angels pulling the ‘soul’ of Edmund out of his body and bringing him before God.
Bury is relatively hilly: not so much as my home town, but with enough hills to keep you fit. It has several op shops (charity shops), so we had plenty to keep us occupied. I found a pair of cufflinks in one of these shops and offered them £10 (they were marked at £11.99). They ‘weren’t allowed to change the prices,’ so I didn’t buy them. But in another op shop they were selling everything for a pound or less, and I got a more interesting and outlandish pair of cufflinks and a matching tiepin for a pound. Every town we’ve gone to has several op shops, often within spitting distance of each other. Literally, if you’re a good spitter.

The photo is of the Abbeygate, which stands alone at the moment, leading into the Abbey gardens, which are open to the public. I met an Black American woman in there yesterday with an albino ferret on a lead.