Cloister Cats. Richard Surman

Gabriel. The story of how she came to be the patron saint of such a modern and thoroughly secular medium is that Clare was in very poor health, which prevented her from being moved from her sick bed to the chapel even for Midnight Mass at Christmas. In despair at being unable to attend the mass, she lay back in her bed, and gazing at the wall, she saw an image form, of the mass that was being celebrated some way off. But I don’t think this means that watching television is generally accepted as offering similar spiritual benefits to partaking in the Mass!

      Inky: the cat who came in from the cold

Blackie

       Anglican Order of St Benedict, Burford Priory

       ‘In the reception of the poor and of pilgrims the greatest care and solicitude should be shown, because it is especially in them that Christ is received.’

       On the reception of guests, from the Rule of St Benedict

       HISTORY

      Burford Priory, unusually, returned to monastic use after an interval of some 400 years in private ownership. A religious house existed here from the 13th century – probably Augustinian canons, whose duties included the running of a hospital. There are traces of the old building in the present-day priory, despite substantial remodelling and rebuilding over the centuries when it was a private home, until it became a community again in the middle of the 20th century.

      The first major rebuilding of Burford Priory after the dissolution of the monasteries took place in the early 17th century, when Laurence Tanfield, a barrister and MP, acquired the property. The second period of modernization was during the occupancy of William Lenthall, one-time Speaker in Parliament. Clearly a man of oscillating loyalties during the time of the Civil War, he was a signatory to the death warrant of Charles I, but then promoted the restoration of the monarchy. In the 19th century John Lenthall, faced with a decline in family fortunes, had more than half of the old building demolished, and it decayed gently until Colonel de Sales la Terriere and his wife carried out major restoration work at the beginning of the 20th century.

      Then in 1948 a community of sisters based near Oxford, who were looking for a place where they could lead an enclosed contemplative community life, following the Benedictine Rule, happened on the Priory. In the 1960s the rule of strict enclosure was relaxed, and eventually the novitiate was opened to men. The present community of eleven is now mixed, and divides its time between work, prayer, study and hospitality.

      There has been a cat at Burford Priory since 1970, when the community took in a stray with an injured back leg. The second cat to arrive was Suki, brought to the Priory by the widow of a retired local doctor. Suki quickly endeared herself to Sister Mary Bernard, by clambering up her habit and settling immovably on her lap. She enjoyed a long and tranquil life there from 1978 to 1991. Then came Vosgi: a real community cat, he took over the whole building, roaming jovially from room to room, hogging the best place in front of the parlour fireplace during the winter, and continually trying to gain access to the kitchen – in the spirit of friendship for the brothers and sisters working in the kitchen, rather than out of interest in food, naturally!

      A cat who likes to keep her hair neat

      Blackie is the present community cat, who arrived in 2005. She had previously belonged to a Greek hairdresser whose wife had become allergic to cat fur; so from a rather chic ‘salon de coiffure’, Blackie then found herself in very different surroundings. She is rather a grand cat, more used to the scent of hairspray and pomade than rigours of community life, and thoroughly resistant to the allure of the Priory’s wild woodland. It certainly took some time for Blackie to settle in: carefully guarding a pink ball that was her treasure, she was very wary of this radical change of environment, and for a while all that could be seen of her was a pair of startled eyes staring from the undergrowth in the garden, or from deep in the shadows in the priory entrance hall. But both the present Abbot, Father Stuart, and Sister Mary Bernard, devoted a great deal of time and patience in encouraging Blackie to be more at ease, and little by little she came out of her shell.