Little Gidding

At the time of the Domesday Book, the only entry for this area was Geddinge, indicating that the three parishes of Little Gidding, Great Gidding and Steeple Gidding were separated later. Gidding, then owned by William Engaine, passed to his grandson, who gave Little Gidding to his younger son, Warner Engaine, in around 1166. At that time the manor was known as Gidding Warner, later becoming Gidding Engaine and by the 13th century Gydding Parva or Little Gidding.[6][7]

The name Gidding means "settlement of the family or followers of a man called Gydda".[8] Little Gidding is notable as the home of a Church of England lay religious community established by the Ferrar family in 1626.

Nicholas Ferrar from a portrait by Cornelius Janssens

In 1620, Esmé Stewart, the Earl of March (1579–1624) and Lord Lieutenant of Huntingdonshire (later, briefly, the 3rd Duke of Lennox), sold the manor of Little Gidding to Thomas Sheppard. Population had declined in this rural area. Sheppard sold the property to Nicholas Ferrar (1592–1637) and his cousin Arthur Wodenoth (or Woodnoth) (1590?–1650?) in 1625 as trustees for Ferrar's mother, Mary Ferrar (née Wodenoth). The Ferrars and Wodenoths were investors in the Virginia Company[9] and other colonial projects.

With the collapse of the Virginia Company and a large portion of their fortune, the Ferrar family retreated to Little Gidding to take on a humble, spiritual life of prayer, eschewing material, worldly life. The following year, in 1626, Nicholas Ferrar was ordained as a Deacon by William Laud (1573–1645) then Bishop of St David's and later Archbishop of Canterbury.[10]

The extended Ferrar family transformed their holdings at Little Gidding into a humble Anglican religious community. When they purchased it, the property consisted of a decayed manor house and the village's medieval parish church of St John. The Ferrars began repairing the site.[10] Nicholas Ferrar was joined by his brother John Ferrar and his family, and their sister Susanna (Ferrar) Collett and her family. The community was never a formal religious community, as with a monastery or convent. They did not have an official Rule (such as the Rule of Saint Benedict), no vows were required, and no enclosure. The Ferrar household lived a Christian life according to High Church principles and the Book of Common Prayer. They engaged in tending to the health and education of local children, and in bookbinding.

An example of bookbinding work produced by the community

The Ferrar household was criticised by Puritans and denounced as a "Protestant Nunnery" and as Arminian heresy; in 1641 it was attacked in a pamphlet entitled "The Arminian Nunnery". The fame of the Ferrars and the Little Gidding community spread and they attracted visitors. King Charles I visited Little Gidding three times, including on 2 May 1646 seeking refuge after the Royalist defeat at the Battle of Naseby and was given temporary refuge by John Ferrar.[11]

When the matriarch Mary Ferrar died in 1634, she bequeathed Little Gidding to her son Nicholas.[6] In December 1637 Nicholas Ferrar died, but the community continued under the leadership of his brother, John Ferrar, until 1657, when he and his sister Susanna Collett died within a month of each other.[12]

During a period of local unrest in the Civil War, John Ferrar and some of his family went to Holland, but they returned by 1646.[13] There have been successive allegations of ransacking of the church and the estate during the Civil War but recent research disproves it.[13][14]

The Ferrar community conformed to the Anglican ethos. Bishop Francis Turner (1637 – 1700) composed a memoir of Nicholas Ferrar.[15]

William Hopkinson bought the 700 acres estate in 1848 and became Lord of the Manor of Little Gidding;[16] he is buried in the graveyard. It was not until the mid-19th century, with the Oxford Movement and the revival of Anglican religious orders, that the average Anglican become aware of the Little Gidding community. It featured prominently in the popular 1881 historical novel John Inglesant by Joseph Henry Shorthouse. Since that time, interest in the community has grown beyond members of the Anglican Communion. According to ascetical theologian Martin Thornton, Nicholas Ferrar and the Little Gidding community exemplified an appeal based in a lack of rigidity (representing the best Anglicanism's via media can offer) and "common-sense simplicity" coupled with "pastoral warmth" related to Christian origins.[17]

The Friends of Little Gidding was founded in 1946 by Alan Maycock, with support from T. S. Eliot, to maintain and adorn the church, and to honour the life of Nicholas Ferrar and his family and their life at Little Gidding. Inspired by the example of Ferrar, the Community of Christ the Sower was founded at Little Gidding in the 1970s but that community ended in 1998.

In the period 1801 to 1901 the population of Little Gidding was recorded every ten years by the UK census. During this time the population was in the range of 39 (the lowest was in 1901) and 70 (the highest was in 1811).[21]

From 1901, a census was taken every ten years with the exception of 1941 (due to the Second World War).

All population census figures from report Historic Census figures Cambridgeshire to 2011 by Cambridgeshire Insight.[21]

In 2011, the parish covered an area of 724 acres (293 hectares)[21] and the population density of Little Gidding in 2011 was 22.1 persons per square mile (8.5 per square kilometre). From the 2011 Census the population was included in the civil parish of Great Gidding.

The legacy of the Anglican community at Little Gidding inspired American-English poet, T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) in his poem entitled Little Gidding, the final of four long poems that comprise the collection Four Quartets (1945). Eliot, a convert to Anglicanism who identified as an Anglo-Catholic and was a life member of the Society of King Charles the Martyr,[22][23] visited Little Gidding church on 25 May 1936. This was six years before he published his poem.[24] Eliot, a noted critic, supposedly had been asked to read a play regarding Charles I visiting the community.[25]

In the poem named after this site, Eliot combined the image of fire and Pentecostal fire to emphasise the need for purification and purgation, saying humanity's flawed understanding of life and turning away from God leads to a cycle of warfare. Eliot intends to portray this suffering as restorative — that it was necessary to experience catastrophic pain before life can be renewed and begin anew. Humanity's errors in thought that led to this suffering can be overcome by recognizing the lessons of the past and focusing on the unity of past, present, and future — a unity that Eliot asserts is necessary for salvation.[26] Eliot draws imagery from the history of the Little Gidding community and its role in the Civil War and the fall of Charles I (whom Eliot calls the "broken King"), relating this past to a present in which Britain was struggling with the devastation of The Blitz during World War II.

During the summer a Little Gidding Pilgrimage is held, sponsored by the Friends of Little Gidding. The format in recent years has been Holy Communion at Leighton Bromswold, followed by dinner. Then the pilgrims walk the five miles to Little Gidding. Along the way, there are rest stops where prayers and meditation occur. Upon reaching Nicholas Ferrar's grave, prayers are offered followed by Choral Evensong in St John's parish church.[27]

On the Saturday closest to the anniversary of Nicholas Ferrar's death on 4 December 1637, a commemorative service is held at St John's Church. The Friends of Little Gidding hold their Annual General Meeting at that time.[28]

An annual T. S. Eliot Festival is organised by the Friends of Little Gidding and the T. S. Eliot Society.[29]