Our response to adversity - Lessons from a village churchyard

Robert O. Barns
Dec 29, 2023
4 min read

Written - 7th August 2023

With a tremor on the line the Southeastern service from Ashford international rolled into the station. The first stop on my quest for discovery? The quiet and sleepy town of St Margarets at Cliffe. Only a stone’s throw along the coast from Dover, it is a town which could be easily passed by, but if you’ll only pause to lift the cover, you will find it steeped in history. On a clear day like today the coast of France can be clearly seen sitting only 21 miles across the busy shipping waters of the English Channel.

Due to its close proximity with our continental Neighbours, St Margarets has served as the starting point to many cross-channel swims and in 1851 the start of the first submarine telegraph cable to be successfully laid between two countries.

Its closeness to France did however attract more than just swimmers and engineers to the town, and during the second world war many of the town’s inhabitant were replaced by military personnel with heavy artillery with a range to rival that of the aforementioned swimmers.

There were five guns in total including two 14inch naval guns respectfully named ‘Winnie’ and ‘Pooh’. The town was subject to heavy fire and shelling both from occupied France and from his Majesties own forces, who used the town to practice beach assaults and street warfare.

And while most of the town was rebuilt in the fifties there’s still the overgrown remains of bunkers and gun emplacements which had once served their country in its time of need, and now remain a reminder of the adversity which that generation faced, and most crucially stood up against.

The war came and went, the damaged homes have been replaced, but the response to the hardship, its shadow still remains. And it is this idea of the response to adversity that brings me here today, not to the gun emplacements but to the 12th century flint stone church and a tomb which I had first seen this past September, which bears the inscription that has stuck with me ever since,

‘She hath not shrunk from evils of this life

But hath gone calmly forth into the strife

And all its sins and sorrows hath withstood

With lofty strength of patient womanhood’

Mrs. Susan Stevens died 122 years ago and yet her legacy remains one which is both inspiring and challenging. She survived. She survived ‘unstained from the world.’ (James 1 v 27 ESV) and entered into life having run her race, having fought a good fight. A fight which every generation faces, and every individual must take part in.

Inside the church, above the choir’s pews there is a plaque which bears the name Kingsford Wood. beneath his name is inscribed these words

‘In youth, in manhood, and until his end

He was the widow’s wealth, the orphan’s friend

Reader like him good works with faith unite

Then thou mayst say I’ve fought a glorious fight’

A glorious fight? ‘to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.’ (James 1 v 27 ESV) Stevens’ and Wood’s legacies have together so perfectly captured this verse and over a hundred years later this is all they are remembered for. And what a legacy it is to be able to say ‘I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.’ (2 Timothy 4 v 7 NIV)

But if then this fight of which I write is indeed common to each and every one of us, for it is simply life itself, why lift up the legacies of these two individuals above any other? For this reason, not for the hardships they faced nor the victories they won but for their response to the fight that they found themselves in. For the cause and the outcome are so often beyond our control, but what we can control, our response to it all, that is what’s important, it is the foundation on which all of our achievements are to be built.

In the churchyard stands a tombstone, which has over the past 170 years been worn away be the forces of nature or human interference to the point that near the whole surface of the stone and the words it held have passed into history, yet these words are still preserved in the stone

‘John J

[1]851

Beloved for his kin[d an]d

Gentle spirit.’

Though all else passes away and is forgotten yet this still remains.

And what of the outcome? It is a question we all ask at some point in this fight. We feel that if we could only know that it will all work out in the end, we would have the strength to stand our ground when our mind tells us to run. But the outcome is not for us to know. We are simply called to fight in the faith that He who does know the outcome and can ‘do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think’ (Ephesians 3 v 20 ESV) will fight by our side.

On the end of Stevens’ tomb the inscription continues,

‘The good she tried to do

Shall stand as if ‘twere done

God finished the work

By noble souls begun.’

Sources for information regarding the history of st Margaret’s at Cliffe have been taken from Wikipedia available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Margaret%27s_at_Cliffe

and from St Margaret's History Society available at https://www.stmargaretshistory.org.uk/

and St Margaret’s at Cliffe Parish Counsel available at https://www.stmargaretspc.co.uk/history/