A few weeks back I spent a few days in North Yorkshire. We walked from the village we were staying in, along the edge of the North York Moors to Lastingham. The church at Lastingham has a Norman Crypt that dates back nearly 1000 years.
In 563 AD Columba set out from Ireland to found the monastery at Iona, off the west coast of Scotland. Seventy years later, Bishop Aidan of Iona travelled to Lindisfarne where he established a school for Anglo-Saxon boys to be trained as priests and missionaries. Among his pupils were 4 brothers: Cedd, Cynebil, Caelin and Chad. All four became priests and two, Cedd and Chad eventually became bishops.
Cedd founded a monastery at Lastingham and was succeeded as abbot by his brother, Chad, who not long after, left to become Bishop of Lichfield.
There is evidence that Christianity survived in Lastingham even after the destruction of the original monastery during the Viking invasions of the 9th and 10th centuries. In 1078, Stephen, who was then the abbot got permission from William the Conqueror to restore the monastery at Lastingham as a Benedictine house.
This was the crypt that is a shrine to St Cedd over the place where he was buried, and a new abbey church was built over the crypt. The Norman Crypt we visited in October 2022 is entirely the work of St Stephen and his monks nearly 1000 years ago, and has some of the original stones making up the structure and in particular the altar.
It was incredible to think I was standing in that place of worship, at an altar built by those early English Christians. It is a place that has withstood invasion by foreign armies, persecution of the monks by bands of outlaws, dilapidation during the reformation, and the wear and tear of the North Yorkshire weather – yes we had fog and rain whilst we were there!
Despite all these factors, the history of that Holy place remains.
Hebrews 12: 1 says, “therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”
So let us remember all those people who have gone before us and who have laid the foundation stones of our faith. Let us breath in the fresh air and throw off those things that hold us back, and stride out in faith along the path that God has set us. AMEN