The Saintly Ladies of Beetham with an angel
I have an interesting relationship with the West Country. I would love to live there some day. But, more importantly, it’s where I escape to whenever I need a bit of space. It’s where Sandra Reeve, the movement practitioner is based and it’s where I have brought into fruition Little Blue Man as a walking performance. I have been working with Sandra this last year. Incidentally I found out about her many years ago through a dancing nun whom I used to talk to whenever I visited St Mary’s Convent in Wantage. Sister Rhona was her name and she featured as a recurring image/idea/theme in The Dig.(1992). Rhona was an ex-PE Teacher turned nun and she was very interested in movement and the sacred space. I heard about Suprapto Suryodarmo through her and in turn Sandra Reeve. It took me another fifteen or so years to follow Rhona’s advice and seek out Sandra. Sandra practices in a lot of places but her work for me sits in the borderlands of Dorset and Devon – that bit of that gorgeous coast that is Lyme Regis and Charmouth. So we come to my point.
Making work in Dorset
There is something about Devon and Dorset that seems to hang over me whatever I am doing. I wonder if it has anything to do with Nana getting that new position in a big house in Barnstaple, Devon….that unfortunately didn’t work out for her in 1947, a main theme in The House (2015): Devon the place of little cottages in the countryside.
In Beetham village, also a place in the countryside with little cottages which is the place I am currently working from through winter and into spring, there are two saints pinned to the wall of the church there; one is Saint Walburga or Walpurga and one is Saint Lioba or Leoba. Both these women were born in Devon and learned to be nuns in Wimbourne in the 8th Century. How come they got wrapped up with a little village in Cumbria? Both left England and ended up in Germany. I guess they were mates in Devon and Germany – they had St Boniface in common. They are my ladies of Beetham and here is their flower slipper:
The Princess Saint’s Slipper Flower
Leoba was a miracle baby because her mum and dad were old and barren – like Elizabeth and Zacharias who miraculously conceived John the Baptist rather like God and Mary did with Jesus. Leoba seemed also to have power over the elements: she saved a village from fire, a town from a terrible storm, a convent’s reputation, a life of a fellow nun and she continues beyond the grave someone stopped twitching and another person’s iron rings burst open making him a prisoner no longer. Walburga on the other hand seems to have some connection to the Grain Goddess, which makes a lot of sense considering the mill is nearby. For me it connects with Godiva
Godiva, grain goddess
The third lady I have to tell you about is Princess Alexandra who has become a recent focus for this new work. She has two plaques in Beetham: one at the Heron Theatre (2001) and the other at the Heron Corn Mill (1975). That makes her the patron saint of Heritage Theatre for me. Princess Alexandra also opened Leofric Lodge my dad’s place in Coventry in 2009. She was born on Christmas Day in 1936, which gives her something in common with the mythologies above.
Princess Alexandra and Heron Corn Mill 1975
Where Princess Alexandra stood in 1975
Princess Alexandra and the Heron Theatre, Beetham
Plaque commemorating the visit of Princess Alexandra to Heron Corn Mill and the Paper Mill on 15 July 1975