Buried Treasure

James Bruce • May 2, 2025

This is what Yahweh asks of you, only this: that you act justly, that you love tenderly, that you walk humbly with your God.

Micah 6:8 informed the activities of a small charity, the Movement for Faith and Justice Today, based at 1B Sydenham Road in central Bristol from 1995 to 2010. Living at 1B in the summer of 2006, I happened to be making heavy work of giving up smoking. I'd just finished praying a novena to St Rita of Cascia, patron saint of impossible cases, when Adrian, a housemate, told me about an incident in a nearby parish. A meeting of the St Vincent de Paul Society was being organised, and someone needed to contact the parish sister. When they tried her mobile phone, one of the digits was wrong. But the person on the other end said they knew 'Sr Mary', as she was their child's godmother, and gave the caller the correct number. It was a God-incidence, and it partly inspired me to successfully kick my habit.

In those days I felt St Patrick was probably originally from Portishead. This belief was unsupported by any evidence, but the general idea wasn't bad. Formidably exhaustive recent scholarship suggests he very likely did come from somewhere near one of the seaside resorts on the Bristol Channel coast. It's no longer safe to assume that attempts to identify his home turf are like pinning the tail on the donkey.

That isn't to pretend that a thick crust of folklore and mythology hasn't attached itself to Patrick over the centuries. Yet some people might be surprised to learn that modern historians freely accept the authenticity of his two surviving written works. The autobiographical Confessio and the Letter to the soldiers of Coroticus tick all the right boxes in the way they've come down to us, as well as in terms of their style and overall narrative coherence. Crucially, they are also fully in tune with known contemporary events. In other words, they contain everything one could hope to find in the mid-fifth century writings of a successful missionary Bishop of Ireland. According to the Confessio:

"My name is Patrick. I am a sinner, a simple country person, and the least of all believers. I am looked down upon by many. My father was Calpornius. He was a deacon; his father was Potitus, a priest, who lived at Bannavem Taburniae. His home was near there, and that is where I was taken prisoner. I was about sixteen at the time... I was taken into captivity in Ireland, along with thousands of others."

Developing a hypothesis first put forward by author James Hunt in the 1960s, Harry Jelley made the case for Banwell near Weston-Super-Mare. Careful examination of the placename occupies a sizeable chunk of his 1998 book, 'Saint Patrick's Somerset Birthplace'. Jelley also noted that the correct venue had to be in an area of recognised villa settlement and susceptible to seaborne raiding from the west.

Independently, Professor Andrew Breeze catalogued his own reasons 'to locate the villula of Calpornius on the plain north-west of the Mendips in the vicinity of Banwell'. His paper 'St Patrick's Birthplace' was published by the Welsh Journal of Religious History in 2008. After restating his core argument in the English Historical Review in 2013, Breeze appears to have discovered Harry Jelley's work. 'Somerset, Bannaventa Tabernae, and the Dates of St Patrick' appeared in the peer-reviewed Journal for Late Antique Religion and Culture in 2023. The following extract from the opening paragraph is remarkable for its lack of equivocation.

"When so much on St Patrick is uncertain, it is good to say that one problem is now solved. The local historian Harry Jelley in the 1990s analysed the famous (and notorious) phrase at the beginning of Patrick's Confessio, where he describes his father, 'qui fuit vico Bannavem Taburniae, villulam enim prope habuit, ubi ego capturam dedi': in English: 'who lived at Bannaventa Tabernae, because he had a small estate nearby, where I was taken prisoner.' Jelley identified the saint's home of (emended) Bannaventa Tabernae ('marketplace by a hill and with an inn') as Banwell, a village near Weston-Super-Mare, North Somerset. He later set out the case in a book. The upshot is clear. Patrick came from a prosperous and thoroughly Romanized part of Britain. It had many villas and was close to the civilized amenities of Bath."

Having read Prof Breeze's article online earlier this year, I had the idea of making a pilgrimage to Banwell. My plan would be to take a train on Monday 17th March from Bristol to Weston-Super-Mare. Adrian had moved to Weston a few years before, so we agreed to meet up at Corpus Christi RC Church for mid-morning Mass; though soon afterwards he had to cancel, as his cousin was coming for a rare visit that day. All was not lost however. On Sunday 16th he suggested we meet up in the afternoon, to make what in 2006 we would have called an SVP visit.

The surname of Corpus Christi's parish priest is uncannily similar to the real name of Yate-born fresco-sprayer Banksy, whose work is derived from that of Parisian artist 'Blek le Rat'. In his homily for St Patrick's Day, Canon Tom Gunning quoted a passage in the Confessio:

“...before I was brought low, I was like a stone lying deep in the mud. Then He who is powerful came and in His mercy pulled me out, and lifted me up and placed me on the very top of the wall.”

On the seafront a stone's throw from Corpus Christi is a theme park called 'Pirate Adventureland'. And not many stepping stones in the other direction, a private residence I passed had a row of perennially nodding little figurines in the window, including an Irish leprechaun. Chintzy old stereotypes like these have contributed perhaps to the climate in which it was once said that '...in Patrician studies, no stone has been left unthrown'. Moreover that remark was reportedly made as long ago as 1961. In 1998, Jelley's theory was greeted by a headline in the Glasgow Herald that was jagged and projectile-like in the extreme. 'St Patrick was English, claims author'. No one says Patrick was English. He was Romano-British; or in the patois of the first Angles and Saxons who settled areas remote from Somerset, decades after Patrick was born, Welsh. Incidentally though, since he established the authority of Rome in a land hitherto untouched by imperial rule, it's hard to think of anyone more deserving of the honorific title 'Last of the Romans'.

Another sight on my walk inland was the forlorn-looking hulk of the passenger ferry 'Bristol Queen', built in Dumbarton on the Clyde in 1938. In 2008 Professor Breeze looked at the contention that Patrick was from the same part of the world. Efforts to make the evidence fit this credo are hampered by the fact that north and north-western Britain were military zones, all but devoid of Roman villas. Patrick also tells us his father was a decurion; a type of town councillor for which no one had any use north of Hadrian's Wall. Furthermore, the relative tranquillity of Patrick's native environment is highlighted in the observation that "despite the chaos of Britain about the year 400, Patrick returned home years later to find his family still there."

Getting lost on the way out of Weston, I didn't reach Banwell until 2pm. In St Andrew's Church I prayed to St Patrick before climbing Wint Hill, where the site of a Roman villa was indicated on a map in my copy of Harry Jelley's book. But I'd been told it was on private land. All I could apparently do therefore was hold my camera above the level of the hedge and try to get one or two lopsided photos. It was then I noticed a gentleman standing on the other side of a nearby wall. Asking him about the villa, he pointed me to a patch of ground in the field where he'd just been walking his dog. I could tramp around among bits of half-submerged masonry, easy to imagine as remnants of late Roman building work.

There was little time for much else. At 3.15 I caught the bus back to Weston train station, where Adrian was waiting. In his car we discussed other things, as I intended to save the explanation of my Banwell pilgrimage until we'd reached our mutual friend in Bristol. And that was quite interesting. When I showed them the book I had with me, Adrian said that Jelley was his cousin's maiden name.

James Bruce is a pilgrim and writer who raises funds and awareness for school-feeding charity Mary's Meals: http://www.marysmeals.org.uk

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Walking Through Scripture: A Resource for Pilgrims Today

By Fleur Dorrell • August 1, 2025

'Walking through Scripture' is a free and creative new resource by Fleur Dorrell.

Another Day in Paradise, but "Why are we walking?"

By Eddie Gilmore • July 21, 2025

I was in the north of Italy recently on the Via Francigena, the ancient pilgrimage path to Rome that begins in Canterbury. My wife, Yim Soon and I were with a group from L’Arche in France who are walking to Assisi in one-week sections. It was the second day, we were going up an interminably steep hill, it was hot, and we had ‘slept’ the night before on a floor, and with that motley group of twenty-five sharing two toilets (one of which had a door with no lock!). Yim Soon turned to me and asked, “Why are we walking?” The pair of us had done a lot of walking up until that point, and we had a lot of hiking still to come, so that was a very reasonable question to ask. One immediate answer was that we had the unexpected gift of time. I had moved to Ireland at the end of 2023 to take up a new job but things hadn’t worked out and I left in August 2024. We’d let out our house in the UK until June 2025 so Yim Soon had said to me, “Let’s walk!” I’d immediately agreed and our plans quickly took shape. We would do the Camino in Spain in October, the Lycian Way along the Turkish coast in February and March; then in April and May, we would follow the Way of Francis to Assisi and Rome. We also had an invitation to spend the winter with an old friend of Yim Soon from Korea who was now living with her family near Atlanta. This would include spending Christmas at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, the Trappist monastery of Thomas Merton that I’d always dreamed of visiting. There is a pleasing simplicity to life on the road. You scrunch your sleeping bag and the rest of your stuff into a rucksack in the morning and you walk. That's it! A lot of the usual worries of life seem to drop away and the biggest anxiety becomes making sure you don't get lost! Or where the next café con leche is going to come from! There's just something calming and centring about the age-old act of putting one foot in front of the other. There is also something about it that brings people together and draws out their story. And what incredible people we met on our various walks, and what wonderful stories we heard. And how we laughed with one another. The beautiful scenery is therapeutic too. In Turkey we were treated to one amazing view after another as we paced up and down the mountains that fringe the Mediterranean. In Italy we passed each day through yet another stunning medieval fortified hilltop town. And since we were doing all 500 miles of the Camino Francés, we would see the stark changes in landscape as we crossed the north of Spain: from the Pyrenees and the mountains near Pamplona, through the flat, arid meseta, then into the verdant hills of Galicia as we neared Santiago. There is a heightened awareness of the natural world: the sunrises, the sunsets, little wild flowers that appear as if out of nowhere. Food is deeply appreciated and I don't think that a meal at a Michelin restaurant could have satisfied me as much as the bread, cheese, tomato and cucumber I ate one day on a beach in Turkey, which we'd reached by a rocky and slightly hair-raising trek down a mountain. On the Camino I developed the art of the second, or even third breakfast. We had earned it! I also loved the shared international meals, and there’s one that particularly stands out. I’d been looking forward to returning to the municipal albergue (pilgrim hostel) at a town called Nájera because of what had happened there nine years before when I’d been doing that same walk. I’d got in with a group of Koreans, partly on account of having a Korean wife, and they’d prepared a banquet and invited myself and my Australian friend James to join them. We’d also got in with the Italians and they wanted to feed us as well. Then a Spanish guy Gerado offered us food. We could have eaten three meals that evening, and I was determined that on this next visit it would be me doing the cooking for some of the lovely people we’d met on the way. I got to work in the kitchen, with a little help from my international friends, and a large group of us sat and shared a feast. There were people from different countries and continents and speaking different languages; there were twenty-year-olds who seemed happy to hang out with those of us who were three times their age; and there was a range of backgrounds and beliefs and reasons for walking. It was utterly joyous. And after we’d eaten I picked up a guitar and started the singing, and various members of the group took a turn, and we were joined by others in that very diverse dining-room. The first song I did was one I’d written after that first Camino in 2015 and I told the story of how it had been inspired. James and I had been sitting on a bench outside the albergue in the early morning, waiting for the water to boil for our tea. The sun was just starting to rise above the trees and there was the sound of rushing water from the river, as well as the first birdsong. We were sitting there in companionable silence and then James said, “Another day in paradise.” Those words became the title of a book about pilgrimage which I wrote years later. They are also the first line of the chorus of my song ‘El Camino’ which I sang in that same albergue in Nájera in October, 2024. And I was so touched when one of the young people in our group, Lucy from Croatia, remarked at the end, “Wouldn’t it be cool if one of us came back here in nine years’ time and cooked for the other pilgrims and kept this story going!” Why do we walk? Well, yes, it’s the food, the fellowship, the fun, the breathtaking scenery, the little daily miracles and random acts of kindness, and the opportunity to live a bit more simply and to discover that we can be very content with very little. But it’s also, as my friend James observed one morning when sitting with me on a bench outside a pilgrim hostel in Spain, an opportunity to give thanks for another day in paradise. Eddie Gilmore is a Hearts in Search of God project collaborator. For more about Eddie and his books click here .

Become a Pilgrim of Hope for a Day!

By Phil McCarthy • July 20, 2025

Registration for Day Pilgrims is now open. On some days there are new shorter sections. Registration will close on 21st August 2025, so REGISTER NOW to avoid disappointment! The theme of the 2025 Jubilee is ‘pilgrims of hope’ and this has inspired a national walking pilgrimage with four main Ways converging at the Cathedral of St Barnabas, Nottingham, on Saturday 13th September 2025, for shared prayer and celebration. The four main Ways, named after the Evangelists, SS Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, start at the Catholic cathedrals in Cardiff, Leeds, Norwich and London, and will bless our nations with a Sign of the Cross and with the Gospels. The routes use established hiking routes and are off road as much as possible. A small group of 4-6 'perpetual pilgrims' will walk the full distance of each Way, and up to 20 day pilgrims will be able to register to join for stages. On some days there are opportunities for shorter walks.

The Pilgrimage of Hope is open for day pilgrims to register!

By Phil McCarthy • June 5, 2025

Registration for day pilgrims to join the 2025 National Walking Pilgrimage of Hope is now open! The Pilgrimage of Hope is a national walking pilgrimage with four main Ways converging at the Cathedral of St Barnabas, Nottingham, on Saturday 13th September 2025, for shared prayer and celebration. The four main Ways start at the Catholic cathedrals in Cardiff, Leeds, Norwich and Southwark, London, and will bless our nations with a Sign of the Cross and with the Gospels. The routes are named after the Evangelists and use established hiking routes and are off road as much as possible. A small group of 4-6 'perpetual pilgrims' will walk the full distance of each Way, and up to 20 day pilgrims will be able to join for day stages. Stretches which are suitable for wheelchairs and buggies have been be identified. There will be opportunities for non-walkers to provide enroute support, hospitality and prayer. There are possible feeder routes to the four main Ways from all the other Catholic cathedrals of England & Wales for keen long-distance walkers, so people from every diocese can organise their own pilgrimages. More information and registration Information about how to support the Pilgrimage with prayer and hospitality and how to register to walk stages as day pilgrims can be found here . Wishing you every blessing and joy during this Jubilee year, as we strive to become ‘pilgrims of hope’. I hope to meet many of you in Nottingham on 13th September. Buen camino! Phil McCarthy, Project Lead

Walking in the steps of London's saints

By Colette Joyce /ICN • June 4, 2025

A group of 25 pilgrims gathered at the English Martyrs Church by Tower Hill last Thursday morning, Feast of the Ascension, to take part in the Westminster Way Jubilee Year Pilgrimage, led by Westminster Diocese Justice and Peace Co-Ordinator Colette Joyce. At each station we prayed and reflected on saints connected to London and the inspiration they continue to be for us today: St John Houghton and the Carthusian Martyrs of the Reformation, the missionary St Augustine of Canterbury, St Anne Line who sheltered priests and held secret Masses in her home during the Elizabethan persecution, St Erconwald, St Ethelburga and St Etheldreda. We remembered the scholars of the 7th century who brought learning and education to both men and women, and St John Henry Newman whose own spiritual journey of conversion and prophetic sense of the nature of the Church had a profound influence on the 20th century leading up to the Second Vatican Council. From the church we walked past the Tower of London, where so many Catholic martyrs met their fate during the Reformation, stopping to pray at the site of the scaffold where St John Fisher and St Thomas More were executed. Our next stop was Mary Moorfields, the only Catholic Church in the City of London. From here we walked to the Charterhouse, once a Carthusian priory and home to the first martyrs of the Reformation. The Prior, St John Houghton and Companions were hung and quartered for refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy. Watching from his cell window, St Thomas More witnessed the monks being dragged on hurdles from the Tower of London on 4 May 1535. He is said to have admired their courage and faith as they went to their deaths, viewing them as "Cheerfully going to their deaths as bridegrooms going to their marriage." From here we walked to St Etheldreda's, Ely Place, one of the oldest Catholic churches in London. Built around 1250 as the town chapel for the bishops of Ely. After the Reformation It had several owners . For a a time it was used by the Spanish ambassador as a private chapel. During Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth, it was used as a prison and a hospital. The Rosminians bought St Etheldreda's in 1874 and have restored it beautifully. As we were walking during Laudato Si' Week, pilgrim leader Colette Joyce invited pilgrims to reflect on the flora and fauna of London on our way. London is a surprisingly green city, blessed with around twenty percent tree coverage - which makes it technically a forest! We are especially grateful to the Victorians who planted the ubiquitous London Plane trees which can be found in streets and parks all over the city, while there are more than 400 other species of tree to discover. "The entire material universe speaks of God's love, his boundless affection for us. Soil, water, mountains: everything is, as it were, a caress of God… contemplation of creation allows us to discover in each thing a teaching which God wishes to hand on to us." (Laudato Si', 84-85) After a stop at Corpus Christi Church in Covent Garden - where former parish priest Fr Francis Stanfield wrote Sweet Sacrament Divine and Mgr Ronald Knox preached his famous homilies on the Blessed Sacrament - we made our way down the Strand, past Traflagar Square, through Whitehall, down to Westminster Cathedral. On our arrival, we weary walkers were greeted by the Cathedral Dean, Fr Slawomir Witoń. We ended our pilgrimage with prayers in the Martyrs Chapel and a reflection from Fr Slawomir on the life and witness of St John Southworth, patron saint of clergy in the Diocese of Westminster. The pilgrims received the final stamp in their Pilgrim Passports and a blessing before returning home. Colette Joyce, Westminster Diocese Justice and Peace Co-Ordinator Read more about the Westminster Way: https://westminsterjusticeandpeace.org/2025/06/02/walking-the-westminster-way/ This article was first published on Independent Catholic News: Independent Catholic News Image: Pilgrims at Westminster Cathedral (Archdiocese of Westminster)

The Psychology of Pilgrimage

By Phil McCarthy • June 3, 2025

In this podcast I discuss the psychology of pilgrimage, especially as it relates to visiting First World War battlefields and cemeteries.

Walking the St Wulstan Way

By Peter Chisholm • May 31, 2025

Pilgrims joined Fr Gerry Walsh tracing St Wulstan’s life and legacy, from Worcester Cathedral to Clifton Cathedral as part of the Catholic Church’s Year of Jubilee, “Pilgrims of Hope” celebrations. Participants explored their faith while journeying through stunning landscapes and historic locations.