James D Wenn was the first in the recent history of Soulton Hall to perceive the possibility that Saint Erkenwald, Patron Saint of London, was translated to Soulton by Old Sir Rowland Hill in the sixteenth century — and not destroyed according to royal instructions. The details of this unfolding discovery are set out elsewhere, but in this interview we wanted to ask James how he feels about his role in this moment, and what it means to him and his faith.
The Soulton Estate (that is, in a corporate sense) commercially draws upon James’ expertise via the consultancy he runs with his partner, James Syrett. However, both are friends of the family, and their backgrounds and expertise put them profoundly above business operations. For instance, James W was formerly Access and Participation Secretary at a land-based university, and his prior humanitarian career (he was once Casework Supervisor of the UK’s biggest refugee integration department) gives him participatory knowledge of applied sociology that is unique in the country house sector.
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James, it strikes us that having the name ‘Erkenwald’ to mind is rather unusual. How did the idea come to you that his relics might be at Soulton?
“I grew up in Cirencester — an ancient town immersed in the sacred histories of the Dobunni, the Thracian Cavalry and the pious medieval wool merchants. The ‘nearest saint’ is St Aldhelm in Malmesbury. This is important, as due to a medical issue I knew at primary school I would never have children, and Aldhelm was important in cementing in literature and religion the dignity of childless people. I always saw local saints therefore as part of a landscape of mercy and respect. At secondary school, King’s in Gloucester, I sat in the cathedral between the tombs of the founder, King Osric of the Hwicce, and King Edward II, who was revered as a martyr by the Welsh of the fourteenth century.
“Patron saints provide a focus to towns and cities in a profound way. I was aware London had lost its saint centuries ago — not just dispersal of the physical bone dust, as with Aldhelm, but also the obliteration of the pilgrimage shrine in the Great Fire of London.”
How does this connect to your observations at Soulton Hall?
“One of the reasons Soulton was overlooked (including by the late great Mark Girouard, who predicted this house in a developmental sequence) was its symmetry. Simply put, people assumed it was newer and less interesting than it is. In the mid sixteenth century, the lore goes that domestic houses were only slowly adopting the grandeur of symmetry that had been reserved for royal, military and religious works. What could account for a fast step out of domestic humility? Noting the church sensibility, I noticed that the only central opening in the building was in the basement, from a small room facing east. On reconstructing the original form of the house based on its twin (by another Mercer) in Wales, Bach y Graig, it looked shrine-like. Knowing the builder was a London statesman there was an obvious place to look for visual references, and that was when I looked up the Wenceslas Hollar drawing of St Erkenwald’s shrine. Everything went from there.”
It sounds like you had an instinct for the faith motivations of Old Sir Rowland. How would you frame that in terms of research?
“Well, honestly — and in spite of the postgraduate meme of ‘never reveal your research methods’, owning that even scientists advance by intuition sometimes — I do not see this as research. When I studied Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at Cambridge, I was immersed in the rich Latin literature of these islands, and in texts such as navigatio Sancti Brendani (‘The Voyage of St Brendan’) and translatio Sancti Suithuni (‘The Translation of St Swithun’). In this matter at Soulton I was, I maintain, a character within that culture, not an external observer. I have done important commercial work describing and re-presenting heritage at Soulton, and lecturing, but the actual finding of the relics in itself is separate — devotional — and emphatically not a gig. It is part of being of this culture.”
A lot of people would value distance and scientific objectivity in research, but you seem to be stepping away from that?
“As I said, I do not see this narrow matter as one of research! — But I agree. This is why our agreed collective approach was to subject the topic to the interfaith scrutiny of interested bishops and church officials, as well as to involve archaeologists. When a burial site for the saint was art-historically located following more conventional analytical activities, the Earth Rover Programme did geophysics to gather more data to inform a community of inquiry.
“For me as a man, I was and I am aware that people from a culture and with faith are the best people to approach a subject, but that part of honesty and courage is laying everything out to the widest scrutiny, which is what has happened.”
Did you find that process of scrutiny exposing or frightening?
“Yes and no… What was scary was being known by a lot of people as having gone through the academy as an historian and archaeologist. Epistemology is the field of ‘what makes knowledge’. Having had a sociology career I know that different modes of human activity have wildly different epistemologies. Part of stepping back and putting the physical ‘bones’ question of the Erkenwald mystery into the judgement of others was to protect the expectations on me as a qualified practitioner within an academic mode, when what gripped me within the (academically defensible) observations I made was instead a story of faith, culture, and identity.”
Faith, culture, identity. These are extremely important things. Is it important to you where the bones are, whether there are any? What is Erkenwald all about for the community of London and the community at Soulton in your view?
“I think the most important things for me are threefold. In ancient Thrace and Anatolia there was this idea that most people do not want to be remembered after death. They just enjoy the afterlife. Some special people, however — heroes — get buried in big earthen mounds around which you have festivals, and they act as go-betweens for communities and their collective memory. These are ancestors as parental figures, capable of giving a sense of agape or protective, nurturing love.
“Our local patron saints fulfilled and fulfil this active communing role across time, and the Middle-English poem ‘Erkenwald’ has this play across the centuries at its core, too. So my first need is that the abstract memory of these figures is respected for its grounding and reassuring presence in our communities of place.
“My second need recognises that whatever tangible material is left physically behind is subject to the performance of respect or disrespect. It is important, therefore, that active disrespect is prevented — disrespect would corrode community cohesion, but also feel like a wound to a beloved parent.
“The third is that active remembering, and participatory processes or rituals of respect, are a powerfully positive force in society.
“Sam Fender sings of ‘dead boys in my home town’, and one of the core focuses of my work in the Higher Education sector was looking at the underperformance of white working-class males. We have (as cognitive scientist John Vervaeke has said) a modern Meaning Crisis, made up of alienation: something that Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson classifies as an entire half of the definition of slavery! As an Anglo-Saxon saint, Erkenwald has something to anchor against these vulnerable feelings of drifting. The agape of an ancestral forebear is an important emotional comfort and bulwark against exploitability on the one hand, and self-destruction on the other.
“However, London from the very beginning was a multicultural, international city; and the very poem Erkenwald enshrines this, with a pre-Roman, Celtic proto-Lord Mayor character retrospectively baptised into heaven by the post-Roman, Germanic saint bishop because there are no barriers of time or space over which virtue will not recognise virtue. It is a radically inclusive message from our medieval heritage, and this makes it a very healthy focus for our admiration in my view.
“So to approach the first part of your question (do the bones matter?): yes and no. It matters to me that such a delicate and important legacy as St Erkenwald’s is not made discreditable by false claims. I am very glad of the independent archaeological approaches such as the geophysical surveys. However what strikes me as salient and relevant is that we are all now talking about what St Erkenwald means to us. We are addressing head-on how connection to place — and to each other — can foster conversations about what legacy of virtue we might ourselves leave, and this will always be much more important and powerful than dry bones.”
James D. Wenn, Heritage Expert and Consultant
