REMEMBRANCE FOR PERCY AT FRING ALL SAINTS Previously unreleased LIVE per...

The best way to start these notes is with a recent email to us from Lancelot's great grandnephew Daniel Williamson... "While going through my gran’s loft recently we discovered a photo of Lancelot which we didn’t know we had. We’re not sure but believe he’s late teens here. It’s the only photo we have of him, and we thought you might be interested to see it, especially as it’s much clearer and higher quality than the picture currently available online." We are more than interested! It's wonderful to see a proper family photo of this excellent young man. Lancelot joined the RAF aged 19 so 'late teens' suggests he's 19 here. We gave the (edited) address and performed the song you hear on this video as part of a memorial service for him on Sunday 13 July 2025, the 80th anniversary of his fatal aircrash. At that time, we also released a film of the graveside blessing and a second (outdoor) performance which followed the service    • In Remembrance of Lancelot Percival Willia...   but wanted to reserve this present one for Remembrance Sunday. This audio is our part of that in-church service and has a unique resonance, echoing inside the 700 year building beside which he is buried, so that one can almost imagine 7 centuries of Fring worshippers joining in the acknowledgement of a brave, unselfish, loving (and still very young) man who gave six years and his life to defend the England this church stands for. The video combines the wonderful new family photo with press cuttings about his life and 'splendid' RAF career along with footage of the church (including our sides-person Bernard Clark setting up before morning service) a week later. (The actual song and address during that service were not filmed, only recorded).

Peacock's Tale and a Pixie Harpist... In an English Country Garden live music video

https://youtu.be/ZJ_XCoPB080

We get together with our old bandmate and soul mate Vanessa Wood-Davies to play this homage to a young man from our village of Sedgeford who spent his 19th to his 25th year flying and fighting above the two main fronts of the Second World War (Europe and Asia) before dying in a tragic crash trialling an advanced training plane at home a month before the hostilities finally ceased. Our hosts and most of our audience were already born and have lived the entire 80 years since, grateful for the many young men like him who risked (and lost) it all on a wing and a prayer.

In An English Country Garden (Peacocks' Photoshoot with Bhas Allan)

  https://www.tiktok.com/@peacocktale/video/7511661056788303126 for Bhas's film of the performance

“I tried to save The Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me.” (Frodo in LOTR) Tolkien wrote that during World War Two (and with his own front line memories of friends lost in World War One) and it probably sums up how many survivors felt; as well as summing up the plight of those who didn't survive. Recording this in an English country garden in Lancelot's own Norfolk parish - the bee loud glades, the tidal wave of birdsong - it really did feel like this was what Flight Sergeant Pilot Lancelot Percival Wiliamson fought 5 years, aged 19-25, to save. What he HAD helped to save in July 1945, on home leave from a year in the Burma campaign (after 4 years in the skies above Europe winning two mentions in despatches and not getting shot down, winning those existential battles) But not, alas, for him. A fatal training flight on the early morning of Friday 13 July above Little Eaton in Derbyshire meant he never got the chance to enjoy the 'Shire' we are sitting in here. This is our thank you. We'll be playing this homage (with our neighbour and musical friend harpist Vanessa Wood-Davies on harp) at the church in which Percy is buried on his 80th anniversary, Sunday July 13 2025 as part of a special memorial service starting at 9.30 am. Three generations of his family will be present. I landed a crocked plane, when still just a fitter, 5 years derring-done, never shot down in flames, In a cloud of unknowing, I flew for the sunrise And came down to Earth but lived up to my names. Six knights of Logres to carry my coffin, Six Logres ladies to walk by my side, Through hellfire and slaughter to a wheatfield of poppies And a home hedge on Friday the 13th of July. Beat the drum slowly and play the pipes only, Play up the dead march as we go along And bring me to Fring All Saints and lay me down easy, I lived in the free air that breathes through this song. Instrumental break Repeat first verse. Lyric © Gareth Calway 2023

Septuacentenary of a Parish Church

scenes from the Passion 
in an Easterly procession
line a Norfolk lane
and heavens above

turn heaven-lent snowdrops
through an orientation
to daffodils of fire…
through death
we remember 
with bread
poppies
wine
music
good 
words
thoughts
deeds
to 
LOVE

A real communion with infinite repercussions
Bringing all Faiths together like beads on one string
(Though whether preventing, or after, a Flood, God knows.)
I am Not. You and I are not We but One.

Let there be:

Light broad-churched in through
angel wing mirror-rainbowed
clean glass, open door

ONE
heaven-blue earth-green blood-stained 
eastern window;

An orientation; a turn to the East.

This Early English new build that went up all in one go
(The Tower taking a tad longer) as English emerged
From Norman French as the national language. And
Structurally stable for seven hundred years.
Unusual. Amid a green and pleasant, wooded farmland
(Non-Satanic mills!) well pastored, well wardened,
Well furnished with flowers, cheerful, friendly,
On a well-lit, airy hill and reached by idyllic lanes. A
Congregation with an ear for a Book of Common Prayer,
An uncommon hymn and a warm word of welcome. This
Is the heart of the matter. This has lasted. This is eternal.

Genesis of a Church (Fring All Saints AD 1330)

Genesis of A Church, Fring, 1330 AD

 

 

On this higher ground

Let us house an altar

Where the Word may resound

Through time, prayer and psalter.

 

On this heavenly spur

Let us grow a tower

Where the great stir of Easter

May bud, leaf and flower.

 

He cam also stille

Ther his moder was

As dew in Aprylle

That fallyt on the gras.[1]

 

Defeats, factions, debts,

A weak tyrant king’s

Gone the way of all flesh

Burns for higher things[2].

 

In these emerald trees

Lifting monks’ eyes above

Earthy labour, dis-ease,

Let us sing divine love.

 

He cam also stille

To his modres bowr

As dew in Aprylle

That fallyt on the flowr.

 

In these sandcastle days,

A boy on the throne[3],

Let us hold fast and raise

Firm foundations of stone.

 

Let here be Light

To summer the heart

Through spring, heyday, fall, blight,

Candling the dark.

 

He cam also stille

Ther his moder lay

As dew in Aprylle

That fallyt on the spray.

 

Let here be stillness

On strips, hill, vale, farm,

Green pastures and waters

That flow like a Psalm.

 

Frea’s[4] folk, we are grass, bone,

We come to pass;

But soul-fashioned stone,

We build to last.

 

 

 

 

---

[1] The refrains in italics are from an anonymous mediaeval lyric about the Annunciation.

[2] Edward II, murdered at Berkeley Castle in 1327, his reign defined by usurping nobles and humiliating defeats in Scotland.

[3] Edward III, heir at 14, 18 when he assumed direct control in 1330. 

[4] The place name Fring is according to the ONC “probably ‘ingas’ (the settlement of) the family or followers of a Saxon named Frea.” That his name may be a nod to the Norse goddess Freya (from whence ‘Friday’ ‘Freya’s day) is a poetic reminder that churches were typically built on sites sacred to earlier faiths. The beautiful natural setting on a low hill overlooking a timeless rural England is strikingly numinous.

Bring Me To Fring All Saints - the remake

A new recording and a new film for the anniversary of its subject, Flight Sergeant Pilot Lancelot Percival Williamson, 1920-1945, late of this parish who died on July 13 1945 after five years service in the RAF on two major fronts of the Second World War, aged 25. He joined the RAF in 1939, aged 19. He was agonisingly close to surviving the entire war when, by a cruel irony, he died in a plane crash on a solo training flight in Derbyshire just after his last home leave in Norfolk. 'Percy' hailed from Eaton Farm Sedgeford, went to school in Fring, sang in Heacham church choir and (a week before his death) played cricket for Sedgeford and is buried next to his older brother at Fring All Saints, North West Norfolk.. We performed this homage as part of the Remembrance service at Fring All Saints in November 2023 since when the gravestone has happily been cleaned and made much more legible, hence the new film. Our thanks to the person who carried that out as well as to Tim Snelling Sedgeford village historian whose excellent research gave us many of the images and press cuttings you see here and in the new abridged companion spoken word version (link to follow) The tune is a traditional folk song about a good young man cut down in his prime. The aircraft you hear at the end of this film was flying over as we finished recording so we left the mikes open. (A similar happy accident occurs in the new spoken word version). I landed a crocked plane, when still just a fitter, 5 years derring-done, never shot down in flames, In a cloud of unknowing, I flew for the sunrise And came down to Earth but lived up to my names. Six knights of Logres to carry my coffin, Six Logres ladies to walk by my side, Through hellfire and slaughter to a wheatfield of poppies And a home hedge on Friday the 13th of July.

Beat the drum slowly and play the pipes only, Play up the dead march as we go along And bring me to Fring All Saints and lay me down easy, I lived in the free air that breathes through this song. Instrumental break Repeat first verse.

Remembrance

Bring Me To Fring All Saints