Cogges Parish newsletter February 2004

From the newsletter ...

The big "0"

I'm involved in two celebrations in little over a fortnight. During February my "baby" is coming up for a big "0" -- her 30th birthday -- and if that makes her feel old, what do you think it does for her father?

The other event happened at the end of January. St Mary's Church, Cogges, celebrated a very big "0" -- 900 years, no less. That's thirty times thirty! But that's from the date of the first written record, when the old manor became a priory as the church and house were given to the Norman abbey at Fécamp. The church was already in use by then, and probably incorporates the remains of an even earlier Saxon church.

Cogges in the early 1100's was just a tiny village, where the main road to Witney from Oxford and Woodstock crossed the Windrush by a ford: it consisted of a handful of tiny, thatched wattle-and-daub cottages clustered around the priory and church, with the new, moated manor rising splendidly by the river. It feels like a different world from the Cogges we know today.

Every trace of that old village has disappeared, the priory has changed beyond recognition, and the fortified manor house was demolished centuries ago to be replaced by the house at the heart of the farm museum. Only the church remains, greatly enlarged but still the same, after more than 900 years.

Yet the church, old as it is, is far from a museum piece. It stands -- as it always has -- as a sign of God's presence in the world and of the enduring power of the Christian gospel to bring new life to individuals, families and communities. Visit the church any Sunday morning, and you will find, not some archaic ritual, but a place vibrantly alive, filled with people keen to know God's presence, to live in relationship with him, and to "make Christ known by word and deed."

Cogges may change -- the world may change, the pace of life may change -- but we have found the secret of security and peace. It's not just 900 years old but 2000 -- "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever."

David Page

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