We Will Remember Them: A Place to Remember, Reflect and Find Hope This November
On Sunday 8 November, the county will gather on Guildford’s Stag Hill to honour those who have fallen in conflict.
The County Service of Remembrance begins at 10.45am, with a Requiem Eucharist at 6pm for those who want a quieter hour. It follows All Saints and All Souls, when the cathedral remembered lives of faith and loved ones who have died, and it leads into a week of further remembrance.
The cathedral is part of this story. Its foundation stone was laid in 1936, when the hill was still open ground and the world had not yet gone to war. Then the work stopped. Men who might have laid brick were sent to lay down their lives, and for years Guildford Cathedral existed only as a plan and a hope.
When building began again, it was slow and it was shared. Ordinary people gave what they could by buying a brick, and many had their names set into the very fabric of the building.
The cathedral was consecrated in 1961, the work of a generation that had known loss and chose to build anyway, and it keeps a particular kind of faith: that after the worst, something can be raised that is not a monument to war but a place of peace.
Remembrance here is also about the people we miss. On Sunday 15 November, the cathedral will remember Andrew Watson, the late Bishop of Guildford. Evensong at 6pm, with his daughter Lydia Padfield, will be followed by the launch of his books The Way of the Desert and Maundy: Leadership and Identity in Life and Death.
Please check www.guildford-cathedral.org for the latest opening hours and event information.
