BROTHER HAROLD SFF aged 93
HERMIT
Born Richard Harold Palmer (but always known as Harold), he had a comfortable upbringing in Purley, Surrey. His father ran Propert’s Polish Company, which made dubbin and boot polish. He was the oldest son in the family.
Harold was educated at Bishop’s Stortford College in Hertfordshire, before doing his National Service with the Royal Engineers at Borden Camp in Hampshire.
The Longmoor Military Railway ran through the camp, and Harold was put in charge of it. This engendered a lifelong love of railways.
After National Service, Harold worked for British Railways for a while.
He decided to become a monk. Harold joined the Anglican Society of St. Francis (SFF), based at Alnmouth Priory in Northumberland.
Harold was able to continue with his love of trains. He could often be seen pedalling his bike furiously – with his monk’s habit tucked in around him – in order to get to the nearby tracks to see a preserved steam locomotive travelling down the East Coast Line.
Harold did not always fit in with monastic life as he had his own opinions about how things should be done. Not for him the obedience often required, and he was regarded as a ‘difficult’ monk.
This led him to be sent as an oblate, to a monastery at Glasshampton in Worcestershire. Harold’s jobs were cooking, cleaning and being in charge of visitor toilets – keeping him well out of the way of the public and other monks.
However, it was this experience that changed his life. Years earlier at Glasshampton, Father William Sirr, a member of the Society of Divine Compassion, had wanted to create a contemplative community that lived a solitary life. Despite his efforts, Father William abandoned his vision in the 1930s. Nevertheless, his story inspired Harold.
Harold decided he would borrow William’s idea – and become a hermit.
He applied to the Society of St. Francis for permission, and to his own surprise it was granted. The only condition was that he would have to build and fund the hermitage himself.
To raise money, he began working in a London hospital, doing what he called, ‘dogsbody jobs’.
Harold also began researching hermits. He discovered the original one was in the Greek Orthodox church, upon Mount Athos.
Two Northumberland saints, St. Aidan and St. Cuthbert had also set up hermitages, the former on Lindisfarne and the latter on the Farne Islands.
During the Middle Ages, there were hermitages all over the country (fifty in the city of Norwich alone), but since then the idea had gradually died out.
Harold was aware that he needed to get a better understanding of what he was embarking on, so her toured monasteries and hermitages throughout Europe (Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, France, Italy and Greece).
On one occasion, he even found himself involved in a conference of hermits. “After a while I began wondering what had happened to me.”
Back in England, Harold needed to find a place where he could build. He looked at potential sites in Somerset, Shropshire and North Yorkshire.
Eventually, Harry Bates, the Archdeacon of Northumberland, showed him a site near the village of Eglingham. It was the old footings of an Eighteenth-century farmhouse.
Harold persuaded the landowner, Sir Ralph Carr-Ellison, to sell him the land cheaply.
In 1970,Harold began building Shepherds Law Hermitage, with his own bare hands. His objective was to create a ‘skete’, a small, comtemplative community.
He lived in a caravan on the site. It was extremely bleak, and winters were harsh.
One year, a strong wind blew the roof off the garage. It was so cold that Harold put hay bales all around his caravan – and found himself overrun with rats.
His initial chapel was just a lean-to, against a ruined wall, with pools of water on the inside. There was no hot water or electricity. He used to claim he lived off cold baked beans.
A car would come from Alnmouth Priory once a week, bringing Harold provisions and taking his dirty laundry. However, the car was stolen from the priory car park – and he never saw these clothes again.
Occasionally, needing a bit of luxury, he would cycle into Eglingham and walk the Archdeacon’s dog in exchange for a bath.
If Harold was lucky, he would get a helping hand from the students of Cudderton Theological College in Oxfordshire, as part of their summer holiday. But by-and-large, Harold built the hermitage himself.
It had four cells, with a kitchen, living room, bedroom and oratory.
Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, dedicated the hermitage in 1989.
The crowning glory was the chapel. Harold was only able to build this due to a legacy from his mother.
The designer was Ralph Pattison of Jesmond, a renown ecclesiastical architect, who specialized in stained glass. It was built in Romanesque style. Stones and bricks used in the chapel’s construction were collected from the shores of Lindisfarne.
The chapel was dedicated to both St. Mary and St Cuthbert and had stained glass windows representing both Cuthbert and Aiden.
The building (known as the Little Chapel of Faith), won the 2015 RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) first prize for the best new ecclesiastical building.
That same year, the hermitage got electricity.
Harold’s spare time was taken up in translating ancient Latin texts into English. He was regarded as one of the national experts on the subject.
He also wrote a monograph on ‘oneness’.
Harold lived a life of relative solitude, often going weeks without seeing anybody. However, dog walkers and the occasional bishop did drop in for a cup of tea. He had a mobile phone, just in case of emergency. He also had a quadbike, for travelling around the grounds and always wore a Thomas the Tank Engine hat.
Harold had a good sense of humour. He rescued a sign from a farmer’s field that read ‘Beware of the Bull’. He added one word to the sign.
‘BEWARE OF THE PAPAL BULL.’
Every day, Harold sang matins, terce, sext, none, evensong and compline in Gregorian chants. He had often translated the texts himself. He said his services were a mixture of Anglican, Roman Catholic and Orthodox.“I’m not a genius at prayer. I’m just an ordinary person who’s aware of the presence of God.”
On one occasion, Harold did applied to have his hermitage transferred to the Holy See, but his refusal to give up the Anglican aspect of his mission meant this never happened.
He converted to Catholicism, but the hermitage remained Anglican.
Harold never fulfilled his dream of creating a contemplative community. Nobody else came to live at the hermitage. He had occasional visitors (often Catholic or Orthodox – never Anglican) who stayed for a spell, but not on a permanent basis.
Aware that he was getting old, Harold set up a trust, to ensure Shepherds Law hermitage would continue after he had gone.
Brother Harold died on the feast day of St. Francis.
When Harold died, amongst his many theological texts were many books on railways.
A friend said of Harold’s work, “Through the ups and downs of Church history, some threads had been let go. Harold was trying to pick some of them up.”
RIP – Railway Inspired Priest
