St Mary's Church, Whicham

St Mary's Church at Whicham in Cumberland was locked when we called, perhaps because it was late afternoon or the wardens' over-caution. We could not but notice the great hill to its rear in the shadow of which it sat. The fell in question is Black Combe, which, at 1,970 feet above sea level, falls thirty feet short of being an official ‘Hewitt’ mountain, despite its relative distance from other elevations, lending it a taller feel.

Assuming that St Mary’s doors open on the Lord’s Day, worshippers going in and out of the building must surely meditate upon that great fell’s proximity and beauty, regardless of its technical failure to gain mountain status. Perhaps Psalm 3 has been preached here over the centuries, the sixth verse of which declares:

Thy righteousness is like the great mountains; thy judgments are a great deep: O Lord, thou preservest man and beast.

Black Combe may be thirty feet too low to be a great mountain, but the God who made it is never thirty feet too shallow to make a wise judgement, nor thirty inches too distant to preserve us from life's problems.

A  D