All Saints’ Church, Brixworth

Many of Northampton’s churches being locked up each day, I determined to go out on the bus and find a village church which deigned to open its doors. I randomly selected Brixworth which was a short ride north and I was not disappointed, for it boasts the largest surviving Anglo-Saxon building in England and has been a place of worship for 1300 years. Had I known as much about old churches as I sometimes pretend, then All Saints’, Brixworth, would have been high atop my list of priorities. The church’s own website speaks for itself:

Brixworth church is a rare and magnificent survivor from the past and poses many questions. Situated atop a hill on the north edge of the village, it was built in the Dark Ages when Roman Britain was dead and the Anglo-Saxon era had not fully emerged…

Its pronounced, rounded arches sitting upon piers and the recycled Roman brickwork and stonework all take us back to that period of time in which England, once largely Christian in later Roman times but had re-paganised, was rising again. This was not just in terms of national identity and culture, but spiritually, too. The Angles and Saxons eventually forsook their idols of Woden, Thunor and Frige, for the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, whose worship was on Sunday, a day of resurrection. Just as this tall, elegant church arose from the English soil after pagan darkness had once again mastered it, so gospel light returned to that dark age.

I have been around a good many old churches in my time, and most are just museums and memorials to the dead. At All Saints’, however, I walked about slowly and respectfully, for a service was taking place in a side chapel. I would have joined, but dared not offer distraction from devotion to God, so I simply listened from afar. There were Bible readings and even a talk on not worrying, but trusting God. The building might be ancient but this is no hollow mausoleum; the stones might be old, but here there is newness of life.

Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure: Isaiah 46:10

      D