Sylvia Lucas – Westminster Diocese Medal
This is the story of someone finding their voice. Sylvia was born in deepest Suffolk in 1938. In 1940, dad had left to help the war effort, and Sylvia’s mum was pregnant with a second child. When the Battle of Britain broke out in the skies above, expectant mothers were bussed two hundred miles away to safety, on Government orders. Not yet three, Sylvia was left first with a neighbour, then with a stern, frosty relative. Little Sylvia ran away, looking for her mum, and was nearly killed by an enemy plane. The nearby gas works and station had just been bombed and the plane dived low, machine-gunning tanks stored in a field – narrowly missing Sylvia. That trauma led to her becoming an elective mute.
She hardly spoke, but she loved reading. There were few books in her Protestant working-class home, but she read the Bible and Pilgrim’s Progress, and there were framed quotes from the Gospels on the wall that spoke to her: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God.” Her beloved grandmother encouraged her in her faith, taught her to play the piano and they sang hymns together. Sylvia was only ten when she first played the organ at a church service – she could speak through music and prayer, even if she struggled to find words of her own.
As the eldest girl, she was expected to do chores at home and look after her younger brothers, but she got into grammar school, and at 13, travelled to Germany as part of a post-War exchange programme, staying with a Catholic family in the Alps. In a shocking act of teenage rebellion, she converted to Catholicism on her return. At school she was becoming braver too, telling staff that she too wanted to be a teacher. “You can’t teach,” she was told, “You hardly speak!”
But her headteacher was more supportive. At the time, you needed five O Levels to become a teacher. Sylvia’s parents wanted her to leave school at 15, before doing any exams – but the headteacher insisted that Sylvia take O Levels. Even then, her parents took her out of school for a seaside holiday during exam week, and Sylvia had to get the train back to school to take the tests. She passed, but at 15 she was living alone in Norwich, working in a telephone exchange. And while it seemed as if she was no closer to becoming a teacher, the job as a telephonist forced her to speak to strangers all day, every day. The crackle on the line meant she had to speak loud and clear. She was finding a voice.
She applied to teacher training college, near Middlesbrough, close to where her grandmother was living, and soon found work as a primary school teacher. Still very shy, and often lonely, she met Bill. He had a job at the steelworks, he was a talented artist, and like her he’d been to grammar school. Both felt like misfits. He followed her example and converted to Catholicism, they got married and soon started a family. When he got injured at work, he moved to the Drawing Office, drafting plans for a new steelworks, and Sylvia encouraged him to follow his dream and study art. By now they had five boys (I was number three) and Sylvia, teaching at a Catholic school, had earned her Catholic teaching certificate.
Sylvia says she overcame her shyness by realising that it was a kind of selfishness. She had to turn her thoughts outwards. God wanted her to speak. Those around her – adults and children – needed her to speak. If sometimes she still struggled to speak up for herself, she could – with God’s help – speak up for others.
Bill got in to art school in London, and London needed teachers, so we all moved south, spending the summer living in a tent, camping on the edge of Epping Forest: mum, dad and five boys under ten. We were offered a council flat in Hackney and Sylvia began work as a teacher at a tough school in Homerton, while Bill started at art college. She was supporting all of us – a family of seven – as well as taking us to church every week, and making the Catholic calendar integral to family life, celebrating saints’ days, baking soul cakes for All Souls’ Day, decorating Paschal Candles at Easter. I grew up with a vivid sense of the absolute reality of God.
At her school, Sylvia pioneered the Nurture Group, a new way of helping children with special needs, and became headteacher aged only 34. We moved to a nicer house – although Hackney in those days was pretty rough. Now there were six boys and the older ones were becoming teenagers. There were inevitable tensions in the family. Sylvia found strength (as well as peace and quiet) at Aylesford Priory, and became part of the Carmelite Third Order. The ‘desert spirituality’ of the Carmelites connected Catholicism to the austere Protestantism of her childhood: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God.” She became head of Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic primary school in Wanstead. It was soon rated Outstanding.
It was only after she had found her voice professionally, that Sylvia really found her voice at home. As a big family of argumentative boys, we talked a lot! And having a teacher mum who played the piano, and an artist dad, meant that we grew up in a hothouse of creativity. Every one of my brothers (except me) could play a musical instrument. All six of us have gone on to publish a book. I became a children’s author and illustrator, three of my brothers have PhDs. We’ve done ok – thanks to our parents. Sylvia has 10 grandchildren, including Cecily.
After retirement Sylvia continued to work in education, at the Institute of Education, as an inspector of Catholic schools, and as patron of Nurture Groups International. I remember her excitement when she discovered St. Joseph’s parish, and her joy at having found a close community. As we all know, she’s certainly found her voice. And she has made a huge contribution to St. Joseph’s, as a eucharistic minister, reading at Mass, playing the organ, starting Children’s liturgy, leading children’s Stations of the Cross on Good Friday, and being a catechist for Confirmation. She has also led the Carmel in the City spirituality group, worked with London Citizens, facilitated ecumenical links with local churches, and organised pilgrimages to Aylesford.
I want to end with a passage from the story of Elijah that has special meaning for Sylvia. “And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.” God is there, speaking through even the smallest of voices.
David Lucas
Len Matthews – Westminster Diocese Medal
Len was born in Wapping in September 1927. He was the second of seven children, two boys and five girls. Len and two of his sisters (one of whom, Jean, is here today) still survive. Their parents had met whilst they were working at Gibbs’s soap factory in Wapping, though grandad later became a dock labourer in the London Docks, a very insecure occupation in those days. He was often without work.
Grandad was from an Anglican family, but he had married a Catholic, and so the children were brought up as Catholics, attending St Patrick’s RC Church in Green Bank, and St Patrick’s School next door. Len became an altar boy and served mass regularly. There is a photograph of Len in his cassock and cotta, aged about 8 or 9, taking part in an open-air procession in Wapping.
After St Patrick’s School, Len and his elder brother Jimmy each won a scholarship to the Cardinal Vaughan School in Kensington. This was an independent Catholic school which had been founded in 1914 in memory of the third Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Herbert Vaughan. It later became a state-funded grammar school under the Education Act 1944.
In the first weekend of the Second World War, grandad went into the army, and became a Catholic, his wife our grandmother and her daughters were evacuated to Brighton with St Patrick’s School, and the Cardinal Vaughan School was evacuated to Windsor. In Windsor the Vaughan School shared the premises of the rather posher Beaumont College. Grandad travelled the length and breadth of the British Isles. After D-Day, he went to France, the only time he ever left Britain.
In the last days of the war, at 17, Len volunteered to join the Navy. By the time he got on board a ship, however, the war was over. He spent the next two years in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon), Singapore and Australia, basically helping to close down military establishments that were no longer needed. After that, he came back to the UK to live at home and study for a degree in Classics at Queen Mary College, London. Then in 1950 he had to find a job. Initially, he was employed by John Lewis in Oxford Street, in the buying office of the carpet department.
In the meantime the family had moved out of the East End to a new housing estate at Harold Hill, near Romford in Essex. There were better jobs locally than there had been in Wapping. They attended a new church there, the Church of the Most Holy Redeemer. Grandad spent a lot of his spare time in church activities, later being awarded the Bene Merenti medal by the Holy Father.
Len travelled back and forth to work in London by train from Harold Wood. He became friendly with a young lady who did the same, and who was also a Catholic, attending the same church. It was our mother, Noreen, then O’Connell. Noreen and Len started going out, and were married in 1954. Noreen suggested to Len that, rather than buy carpets for John Lewis, he ought to become a teacher. So he did, first at Chase Cross Secondary School in Romford, and then the Bishop Ward School in Dagenham. While they were in Essex, they had three children: me, my sister Anne, and my younger brother Kevin.
In 1960, Len applied for and was appointed to the post of first headmaster of a new Catholic secondary modern school in Farnworth near Manchester, St Gregory’s. He was 33 years old. My sister Sharon was born there later the same year. Our mother did not really enjoy moving to Manchester, away from her friends and family in the south, and finding that the local words for many things you bought in shops were completely different from the words she knew. When she went shopping, she had to resort to pointing at things and saying “I’ll have some of that, please”, rather than be met with blank looks from the shopkeeper.
But we weren’t in Manchester very long. In 1963, Len repeated the application and appointment process, and was appointed the first headmaster of the brand new St Edward’s Catholic Secondary Modern School in Poole, in Dorset, which folded imperceptibly into Bournemouth, then in Hampshire. So, we moved to Poole. Usually, I would take the bus to school and home again, shepherding my sister (and later my brother, too) there and back. I was 8 or 9 years old. You can’t imagine it happening now.
In addition to his professional role in local Catholic education, Len played a full part in the life of the parish, belonging to the local Society of St Vincent de Paul, visiting parishioners, helping to count the mass collections, and so on. (On one occasion he took me with him to see a new parishioner, JRR Tolkien, whose work, The Lord of the Rings, had then attained cult status in my year at school. It is my one claim to fame, that I sat at Prof Tolkien’s desk in his study.)
In 1973 we moved house, to live on the other side of Bournemouth, in Christchurch. I went to university the following year, and Anne the year after. Two years later, Kevin started at Oxford University. But at the end of his first term, in autumn 1978, Kevin was diagnosed with a pituitary adenoma, a tumour at the base of the brain, which had to be removed by surgery.
Although he survived the operation, it left him with brain damage, and both his sight and his mobility were seriously affected. His short term memory and his ability to absorb new information were badly compromised. He could not continue with his degree course, but had to live at home, attending a day centre for handicapped people. This was a tragedy, for he was without doubt the cleverest of us four children. He had also decided that he wanted to be a priest in due course. Well, God had other ideas.
In 1984, Len decided to take early retirement, in part because he wanted to be able to help Noreen more with the burden of caring for Kevin. So, after 21 years in charge, he stepped down from his job at St Edward’s. A new lifestyle beckoned. But this too did not last long. In March the following year, Noreen was diagnosed with plasma cell leukaemia, and, within a few weeks she was dead, at the age of 50.
Len now had to look after Kevin on his own, though obviously we all did what we could. But both Anne and Sharon, both teachers themselves, were married with children of their own, and I was living and working in London. Kevin developed epilepsy, and it became apparent that the tumour was regrowing. In the end he did not live long. The following January, Kevin suffered a powerful epileptic attack and died in his sleep. He was 26.
Len did not want to go on living in the family home, so full of memories. He also decided to go back to work. He found a new job in London, in the Westminster Diocese Education Service. He sold the house in Christchurch, and moved to London. He worked for the Education Service until he retired again at the age of 65. During this time he was appointed as a governor (in 1987) of the Cardinal Vaughan School, where he had been a pupil in the 1930s and 1940s. He also became involved with The Passage, a charity for the homeless in Westminster.
In 1992 he was awarded the knighthood of the Order of St Gregory by the Holy Father. In a letter to Len dated 17 July 1992, Cardinal Basil Hume wrote:
“I want to thank you so much for all the work that you have done for the Diocese over the years that you have been with us. I know that you have worked long and arduous hours way beyond any ordinary expectations; and your own skill and legal and practical knowledge, as well as your frank but discreet abilities, have served the educational field in Westminster in a really outstanding fashion.”
After his second retirement he started to travel more, usually with a priest friend, Fr Brian Legg. He visited many parts of the world, including the USA, India, Sri Lanka, Australia and New Zealand (where our mother’s sister Sheila had emigrated with he husband and children in the 1960s). In 1996 he sold his London flat, and went to live with my sister Anne and her family in Bletchley, until 2001 when they all went together to live in Cyprus.
After a few years, missing the classical music concerts he so much enjoyed, he decided to move back to the UK. For a few months, he lived with my sister Sharon and her family in Poole (where Sharon was now a teacher). Although he had access to local classical concerts, he also used to come up to London for an evening concert or two. Eventually we decided that he needed a base in London, and bought a flat in the Barbican in 2005.
So, Len moved into the Barbican, and through Fr Peter Newby discovered St Joseph’s Church, and also St Mary Moorfields. He also reconnected with The Passage, teaching English as a foreign language to homeless people. The rest of the story you know: CAFOD, Traidcraft, readings in church, the parish council, the Hume Memorial Garden, the trips to Lourdes. Almost twenty years on, he is still here. And still going to concerts.
Paul Matthews 3 November 2024