Twenty Years At St Hilary

by Bernard Walke

Reminiscences of an Anglican clergyman of St. Hilary in Cornwall.

225 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1935

Reviews

[Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a little gem this book has turned out to be. Twenty Years at st Hilary's originally published in 1935 reissued in 2002 by Truran books - recreates a forgotten world. For over twenty years Bernard Walke was vicar of St Hilary's in Cornwall arriving there in 1913. From his sanatorium bed in the 1930's while recovering from TB, he began to write his memories of the previous 20 years. His world is one we immediatly recognise, although we were born to late to live in it. Walke's wife Annie was an artist, and had artist friends, they were both friends of Compton Mckenzie, and Walke himself famously wrote plays which were broadcast on the BBC at Christmas from St Hilary's. Walke's pacifism during WW1 and his Anglo-catholicism brought him into conflict from time to time, but the man who emerges from this memoir is good man, a man of faith, humerous and generous at one with the countryside that surrounded him in his farming parish.

[J A Richardson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this after becoming interested in the artists of Lamorna and Newlyn, and then visiting the church at St Hilary. Annie Walke, his wife, was an artist and was the link between these two worlds. I was surprised by how engaging this book was, a glimpse of a world in a different time with different trials and tribulations. The context is bit like a cornish version of Lark rise to Candleford, or a Thomas Hardy novel except that the narrative was based on their real lives. He was clearly a creative, original thinker, writing plays for the villagers to perform which were broadcast for years on the BBC. He was an Anglican vicar practising in the catholic tradition which caused conflicts among the people around him. He also did a lot of good, and seemed to be kind and generous. And he liked donkeys.

[Tim Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the vicar of a rural in the west of Cornwall, Bernard Walke presents a series of vignettes of his life and work, which one might think had little relevance one hundred years later. However, he writes with a real empathy for the people and community he worked in, although acknowledging always feeling a sense of being apart from, and separate from the native Cornish. There is an attractive mix of celebrating Cornish life and melancholy of the changes occurring as a result of the First World War.

Walke's wife, Annie was an artist, part of the Newlyn School, and other well-known painters from the school and the Bloomsbury set contribute to the stories - Dame Laura Knight and her husband Harold, Dod Proctor, and even Bernard Shaw makes an appearance.

Walke has been described as a Anglo-catholic, working within the structures of the Anglican Communion but reflecting and drawing from the rites and practices of Roman Catholicism. This caused problems with some people, the final chapter noting how his Church was attacked by an extreme Protestant group. Fortunately the damage from this incident was repaired and much of the art Walke introduced to the church has been recovered and restored. It can still be seen both online and by visiting the church. Despite the criticism of a few, Walke clearly built bridges with much of the Christian community that flourished at the time, and it was moving to read of his efforts supporting unemployed tin miners and providing a sanctuary for children from London and for refugees from Austria in the aftermath of the War. He was a man who put his faith into action and left a legacy that can still be seen.

[Andrew Darling · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bernard Walke was the Vicar of St Hilary, in West Cornwall (the parish where I grew up) for 20 years in the early part of the 20th Century. He was an Anglo-Catholic, what many call 'High Church', in a part of the world where ostentation of any kind was frowned upon. Yet his parishioners loved him. He was a saintly man, the kind of cleric - I have known a number in my life - who makes me wish I could find it in myself to share his faith. This marvellous book is an account of his life in St Hilary. It juxtaposes major events (his church was ransacked and vandalised by puritanical zealots who disapproved of his 'Popish' tendencies) with the everyday life of a remote community in an age when most people did not venture much beyond their own few square miles of 'home'. Walke and his wife were close friends with painters and sculptors from the West Cornwall arts fraternity, and the book contains fascinating insights into the semi-bohemian culture of Newlyn and St Ives in the 1920s. The goodness of Walke is evident on every page. But this is far from being a religious tract (if it was, I would have thrown it in the bin). It is packed with beautifully-written recollections of an extraordinary life (regarded by the man who lived it as very ordinary indeed). He was, as Canon Donald Allchin writes in the introduction, 'a good man who could never be dull.'