Thank you to the Church Times for this lovely Diary item from Glyn Pagin, which we quote sections of below:
A MARGERY ALLINGHAM sometimes gets me through a delayed train journey; and it was recently her Look to the Lady — the novel in which Albert Campion has to protect the Gyrth Chalice, held in a secret chapel in one of the great country houses of England (and rather well looked after in its own way).
So, fleetingly, fact and fiction mingled in my head when I heard from Tim Ashton about a concealed domestic chapel — in Soulton Hall, Shropshire — to which the public had access for the first time this month.
The house was that of Sir Rowland Hill, statesman and religious thinker (not to be confused with the later Penny Post founder), to whom Mr Ashton is related. The chapel is located behind the central window on the house’s only symmetrical façade.Mr Ashton tells me that it was purposely designed by Hill so that effects of the light on Good Friday and Easter morning evoke the cross and the empty tomb.
…Hill’s special interest to Church of England people is that he was on the Privy Councils of the Tudors, and “used Soulton Hall as a clandestine base for his most daring act — the publication of the Geneva Bible”
…
Tradition has it that Archbishop Matthew Parker stayed in one room, now named after him….
…
Ashton is himself very protective of a place from the age of martyrs, and photography in the chapel is not allowed…
