Page 12 - The Portal magazine - March 2025

THE P RTAL March 2025 Page 12

The Church of St Elizabeth

of Portugal, Richmond:

A Bicentennial History

Joanna Bogle - Gracewing; Leominster, 2024

Reviewed by Fr Matthew Topham

VERY PARISH needs a history, if only so the incoming priest has some way of finding out where
Ethe more obvious mines are buried. Normally this history is dispersed – cloud-computing style – in the
(sometimes unreliable) memories of the plebs sancta Dei, but occasionally it crystallises in print. This can
have mixed results. The only real attempt in my neck of the woods is Arthur Humphrey’s hugely idiosyncratic
“East Hendred: A Berkshire Parish Historically Treated,” a work whose qualities did not impress everyone,
the Antiquaries’ Journal regretting that it “suffers from irrelevance and a lack of proportion.” Not all parishes
can run to a Peter Sefton-Williams, historian of Warwick Street.

Happily, Joanna Bogle delivers the goods it’s the signal contribution of this kind
in this straightforward trot through the of ‘insider history’ that such details are
storied history of one the oldest Catholic appreciated and preserved, rather than
parishes in England, St Elizabeth’s, ignored and discarded.
Richmond. Two hundred years in 122
pages makes for a brisk excursion, but I could have wished that the copy-
avoids the tyranny of what Other People editor had been given another run over
find fascinating. Bogle very ably gives us the target: the book is significantly
the highlights. marred by typos, hanging articles,
and misplaced punctuation, which is
Richmond being Richmond, quite a lot a shame. There are other indications
of these involves royalty, from Bloody that the book’s nippy pace in reading
Bess, who died there in 1603, to King Louis was matched in its writing, too: we’re
Philippe of France, and King Manoel of told twice within the space of five pages
Portugal, both of whom lived in the parish for a time, that homes in the 19th Century were lit by candles,
via, of course, St Elizabeth of Portugal, the titular. something which could have been caught by the
Perhaps also Elizabeth Doughty, the church’s foundress proofreader.
and benefactress, whose somewhat obscure claim
(made on her behalf) to succession is given a thorough Niggles aside, this book will be a useful resource for
airing. I will not be alone in wondering whether “Miss those getting to know, or to know better, St Elizabeth’s.
Doughty’s choice of St Elizabeth of Portugal as the There will be plenty of such folk about: this parish
patron of the church at Richmond is surely a nod to history isn’t one of those tidy-up-before-turning-out-
her own Royal claims” is more than merely a stretch: the-lights jobs which mark “the end of that which is
Doughty’s name was, after all, Elizabeth. Of the post- abolished,” but a waymarker as the parish undergoes
Biblical saints-Elizabeth canonised at the time, all significant revival. Even out here in Berkshire we’ve
of them are queens, save for St Elisabeth of Schönau seen folk on fire for the Gospel who’ve been reared at
(who indeed?). St Elizabeth’s under Fr Stephen Langridge. It clearly
merits the label Bishop John Wilson gives it in his
Royalty aside, there is much that is quotidian, foreword “a vibrant parish,” a term often bestowed
frankly and admittedly ‘normal’ and the book is full rather carelessly on anywhere which isn’t dead just
of details to make one smile, either at the sempiternal yet, but which here is borne out. If the final chapter of
facts of parish life – the endless fundraising, the roof, this capable history reads a little like a parish Mission
the churn of parish priests leaving – or at what has Statement, we can forgive the author’s enthusiasm for
changed – the Bishop’s concern, in 1908, that 150 at “the new chapters of the story of St Elizabeth’s [which]
an evening service might be rather on the low side! are being opened up,” and wish the place another 200
‘Micro-history’ is the fashionable term-of-art, and years and more.