Chapel of St Mary Magdalene, Ludlow

‘The ruins of St Mary Magdalene Chapel stand proud in the Inner Bailey of the Castle and offer a truly magical and unique setting for your wedding ceremony.’

So declares the page on the Ludlow Castle website, beneath a photograph of an attractive young couple marrying. She wears white with a garland of flowers about her head; her affianced is bearded and resplendent in tweed. The perfect place to wed if e'er there was one.

This ruined old church is peculiar for its roundness. There was once a square chancel, but that has all but gone, leaving this circular frame with its rounded Norman doorway and stone seating. It was probably modelled on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, built about a hundred years before on the supposed site of our Lord's crucifixion. Perhaps some returning crusaders had described it and determined to build a replica. Now it is a luxury wedding location, available to anyone with gold enough to pay.

Curiously, in Revelation 21 from verse 9, we read:

Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls filled with the seven last plagues came to me and talked with me, saying, “Come, I will show you the bride, the Lamb’s wife.” And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God… (NKJV)

Old Testament Israel was pictured as the LORD's betrothed, and the Church in the New Testament is described as Christ’s bride. Marriage is a wonderful picture of union between God and man, Christ and His people, Redeemer and redeemed. If old St Mary Magdalene’s Chapel at Ludlow reminded its first builders of old Jerusalem, the nuptial affairs of today’s usage beautifully reminds the Christian of the New.

For thy Maker is thine husband; the Lord of hosts is his name; and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel; the God of the whole earth shall he be called. Isaiah 54:5