The fifth anniversary...

...of the establishment of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, was marked  with a Mass at the Church of the Most Precious Blood, celebrated in the Ordinariate Form.   The choir of the John Fisher School, Purley sang settings by  Merbecke...thus making history, as a Catholic school choir singing Anglican chant at a Mass celebrated with traditional Cranmerian prayers....

Fr Peter Geldard - currently chaplain at the University of Kent at Canterbury -  preached, noting that sometimes what seems an apparently small event turns out to be one of the most significant in history, citing various instances including, randomly, the Treaty of 1830 in which Britain guaranteed the integrity of Belgium,  the tea tax of the 1760s and its effects on the American colonialists, and John Henry Newman kneeling before Dominic Barberi at Littlemore one stormy Autumn evening...

Afterwards, a reception at the Hop Exchange, surely one of the most magnificent buildings on the southern bank of the Thames, and previously unknown to me. Hops were brought up to London Bridge  by the trainload, from the Kent hopfields,  and there were many brewers locally.