Ludlow Church

St Laurence's Church at Ludlow, Shropshire, is the only church of that county to warrant five stars in Simon Jenkins’ England’s Thousand Best Churches. He is, of course, far too niggardly with the awarding of his stars, but we may certainly see a great building when he deigns to be generous. As I came out of Ludlow railway station, I saw St Laurence's gigantic tower and thought "what a shame that so attractive a town should make do with a mere Victorian replica!". How wrong I was. Not for nothing is it called the Cathedral of the Marches, this being an old term for the Anglo-Welsh borderlands and the colourful conflicts they so inevitably hosted.

Everything about St Laurence's seems to be tall and grand. Perpendicular is the main style, for it attracted significant donations from a mysterious fraternity called the palmers or pilgrims. Having been to Jerusalem (which was as expensive a feat as it was dangerous in the middle ages) they formed a guild. This association was an exclusive club, for which they had their own chapel built while giving generously to the rest of the building. Equally remarkable is the fifteenth-century stained glass in their chapel windows, below, which evidently survived reformer and puritan alike; the palmers must have been influential indeed. Wrote John Leland in 1540 of St Laurence's: "[it is] very Fayre and large and richly adorned and taken for the Fayrest in all these parts". And little has changed since.

It is much easier to travel to Jerusalem now than our medieval ancestors would have found, though I suspect its levels of danger are little reduced. Yet when we attend church for worship, share together the Lord’s Supper and hear read and proclaimed God’s word, the scriptures, there is a sense in which we are carried up to Jerusalem. While the earthly one would be interesting enough, the Bible speaks of another, heavenly Jerusalem, one to which all the saints are heading. Passage thereto is free, though there are dangers along the way. May our gatherings for worship transport us, albeit briefly, to God’s presence. May we look up and not down, for-

…you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels…Hebrews 12:22, and

...now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them. Hebrews 11:16

There is the throne of David,
And there, from care released,
The shout of those who triumph,
The song of those who feast,
And they, who with their Leader,
Have conquer'd in the fight,
Forever and forever,
Are clad in robes of white.

Bernard of Cluny, 1145: Jerusalem the Golden