St Ethelburga

St Ethelburga's

Centre for Reconciliation and Peace

faith is a source of conflict... and a resource for transforming conflict

who was st ethelburga?

St Ethelburga of Barking (there are two other St Ethelburga's!) lived until 675AD was the first Abbess of the great Benedictine Abbey at Barking In Essex (of which little remains), one of the first religious houses for women in the country.

She epitomises for us a strong woman who exemplifies virtues of committed social action and self-sacrifice..

It was founded by her brother Erkonwald who later became Bishop of London and was beatified.She is specially noted for her heroic conduct in caring for the sick during an outbreak of the plague in 664 which eventually killed her and most of her community

During this time she is said to have had a vision of a light "brighter than the sun at noonday" which inspired her and her community to works of great compassion during the plague.

The Venerable Bede wrote of her "her life is known to have been such that no person who knew her ought to question but that the heavenly kingdom was opened to her, when she departed this world."

More about St Ethelburga

More about Barking Abbey

Stained glass window

The original 19th Century glass window was seriously dmaaged in the explosion that wrecked St Ethelburga's church in 1993. A new window was commissioned from Helen Whitaker which incorporates fragments from the older window