Peace in the Park

I am not sure I know what county lines means. Probably after a fashionable dinner in north London, when the nose candy appears, people ask for just a Rutland unless they are really up for it and might like a Yorkshire.

But I remember when it meant seeing signs like “You are now entering Catherine Cookson country” (South Tyneside) or “Land of the Prince Bishops” (Durham). Those were the days until Henry Eight buggered it all up and bishops went from prince to pauper overnight.

Saint Earconwald, or Erkenwald, was Bishop of London (673-693) as well as being a Saxon prince.  These things ran in families in those days. His sister, Ethelburga, was also a saint: founder of All Hallows by the Tower and Abbess of Barking.

The inscription on the stone at the base of the cross reads:

This cross was erected to the glory of God to commemorate 2000 years since the birth of Christ. It is on the site of a manor given to Saint Erkenwald, Bishop of London, by King Caedwalla of Wessex, in the 7th century, for spiritual use probably by his sister, Saint Ethelburga, Abbess of Barking.

Battersea Park is still used for spiritual purposes, although not as King Caedwalla envisaged.

“The idea of Battersea Park being home to one of Japan’s foremost Buddhist sects may strike the casual visitor as incongruous – to say the least. But to early morning joggers and dog-walkers it will not be a surprise. A saffron-robe clad Buddhist monk, gently beating a drum as he does a daily perambulation at sunrise from his temple to the Peace Pagoda, is a familiar sight.

The Reverend Gyoro Nagase first arrived in England in 1978 from Aichi prefecture, near Nagoya, in Japan, to assist in the construction of the first Peace Pagoda in the UK in Milton Keynes. In 1984 he moved to London, as part of a team of 50 volunteers and Buddhist monks and nuns of the Nipponzan Myohoji Buddhist Order, to construct the Peace Pagoda in the park, which was completed the following year. They were living in what is now the Children’s Zoo but, as the site was expanded, the Buddhist order was offered a storeroom, in the trees near the Old English Garden, by Wandsworth Council, on the understanding they carried out all renovations and the conversion into a temple. Gratefully the offer was accepted, the work was carried out by volunteers and today, with just one remaining monk, that temple has developed into a successful centre for the sect, attracting Buddhist followers from not just London and Japan, but also people from China, Sri Lanka, India, Burma and Taiwan who are now living in the UK.

The Rev. Nagase spends his day in Buddhist meditation, ‘other works’ and in maintaining the pagoda, a job not made easy by the fact that people climb up it and make a mess on the second floor, an area forbidden to the public. He relies on donations to live and is grateful to the bread he gets from a local Caribbean bakery and vegetables from a Chinese vegetable shop. Any help is welcome, not least with his heartfelt pleas for assistance in cleaning the pagoda.“ (Battersea Park, Gillian Sutch)