Near our house, and nearer our Church Building runs the 43 bus. It follows an amazing route (shortly to change yet again) and sitting on it today it occurred to me that it offers plenty to blog about.
The route begins in Friern Barnet and if looking for Christian connections it begins right there as the Friern references the medieval Brotherhood of the Knights Hospitaller, founded in the 13th Century Kingdom of Jerusalem.
However the monumental buildings near the 43 bus terminus (now apartments) was one of London's more famous buildings in its day.
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It was an Asylum. Or as it would have been termed, a lunatic asylum. Not any asylum though - this was the largest asylum in Europe, and housed thousands of patients. Thousands. A small town. You can read all about it on the internet if you wish, including the stories of people who lived out their lives there. But my blog interest is Father Chester.
The revered father was one of the line of chaplains who served the institution. It is hard to imagine the agonising strain of such a ministry surrounded by such peculiarly weak parishioners.
But fear not. It was never entirely clear that the reverend father really ever met any of the said parishioners. Instead, he was famed for the High Mass that he held in the chapel to which he invited his clerical buddies from that wing of the Church of England.
'He was quite an odd bloke – very, very High Church – and he would have private Masses in the hospital chapel, and I don’t know if patients were included' He died while in office and without any family. Those clearing out his things were surprised to find what purported to be a relic of the true cross.
Quite where he came upon that, other saints relics and an array of church accessories that would not have been out of place in the Treasury of a great cathedral has never been explained. Friern Hospital was full of many mysteries, including ecclesiastical ones.
