An Interview with Adrian Rance-McGregor, former Trustee at St Ethelwold’s House

Adrian was for a long while a trustee at St Ethelwold’s and still writes our quarterly newsletter. He was instrumental in helping The Fellowship of St Ethelwold move to become a CIO (Charitable Incorporated Organisation). Adrian also works closely with The Abbey at Sutton Courtenay and is very knowledgeable about ecumenical matters and the Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Islam and Judaism). Adrian was the project manager during the upgrading and conversion of the cottage at St Ethelwold’s. In his career, Adrian was a museum curator.

Adrian wrote “There is something about St Ethelwold’s House and its garden that I find irresistible; I find I am drawn to the place and the people there rather like iron filings are to a magnet. As a historian and former museum curator I am of course drawn to the old buildings which carry within them the energies left by people of all sorts over the centuries. One can imagine them still being there sometimes. But it is more than that. St Ethelwold’s House feels like one of those places where the veil is thin between the world that we know and the spiritual world that in Christian terms is known as the Kingdom of God. It is what someone once referred to as a ‘little outpost of heaven’. When I came to the area in 2007 as the Director of The Abbey Sutton Courtenay, I didn’t know the place - or at least I thought I didn’t. Imagine my surprise when I became a trustee and looked through the archives to write a booklet on how Dorothea Pickering came to establish her Fellowship of St Ethelwold’s, only to discover a photograph of my parents in the garden together with Dom Bede Griffiths, one of the great 20th century Christian mystics, after whom I was given my middle name when I was baptised eighty years ago. Fr Bede has been a huge influence in my life, and I discovered that it was he who inspired Dorothea to open up her house as a spiritual centre, an ‘ashram in the west’. So, it is no wonder I love St Ethelwold’s and rejoice to see how important it now is to so many people.”

In the interview, Adrian discusses the role of spirituality in connection with the house, and how Dorothea followed through with her ambitions to make St Ethelwold’s a spiritual centre.

Three words: “Meditation, Community, Love,”

“Don’t look at the future, see what you can do today, see what you can do tomorrow and the day after that will take care of itself.”

“A place to find sanctuary, find peace, find others,”

“Every town should have a St Ethelwold’s”