30/06/2026
We continue to enjoy our home at St Katharine’s and every opportunity to meet, eat and
sleep here. The communal table in the dining room is always a magnet for members and
an invitation to sociability; it is an established feature of the room as it was in Bedford
Place. Other communal tables have their tales to tell, and one in particular has caught our
eye – as we report later in this newsletter.
It is a great pleasure again to offer a few Penn Club events, all of which will be run at or
from St Katharine’s.
Dates for your diary
10-12 July 2026
The Penn Club members’ weekend is now open for booking. The elements of the weekend, all individually bookable, are as follows:
10 July, 6.00pm: reception with the Master of St Katharine’s in the lounge
Overnight accommodation available.
11 July, 9.15am departure from St Katharine’s. Gather at 10.00am at Caffe Nero
outside St Paul’s underground station (where those not staying overnight at RFSK
may join the party); the walk starts at 10.30am.
We visit historic Smithfield in the City of London, seeing the Church of St
Bartholomew the Great, Cloth Fair, the courtyard of St Bartholomew’s Hospital and
Smithfield Market.
12.30pm lunch at the Butcher’s Hook and Cleaver, a Fullers pub and restaurant in
Smithfield.
Afternoon at leisure.
5.00pm: recital by Helen Nattrass on the 18th-century chamber organ in St
Katharine’s Chapel
5.45pm: Penn Club Annual Meeting in the lounge
6.30pm: Penn Club Annual Dinner in the dining room
Overnight accommodation available.
12 July: breakfast; at leisure or Sunday worship; depart.
19 September, 10.15am-4.00pm
“I will lament, and love”: a St Katherine’s Quiet Day with the Very Revd Mark Oakley
reflecting on the poetry of George Herbert.
Limited overnight accommodation available on 18 and 19 September: please enquire.
STOP PRESS!
7 October: a return visit to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Depart 9.45am from St
Katharine’s; or meet at the exit from Kew Gardens station (District line) at 10.45am. We
are keen to see the Henry Moore - Monumental Nature exhibition and, before it closes for
an extensive refurbishment next year, the great Palm House; but there is no fixed itinerary.
Admission will again be free for Penn Club and St Katharine’s House members.
Lunch in the gardens at 12.30pm.
The Palm House at Kew
The previous night, 6 October: dinner and overnight accommodation available at RFSK.
18 November: the annual Festival of St Cecilia service in aid of Help Musicians UK, this
year at Westminster Cathedral at 11.00am
The full programme of retreats at St Katharine’s may be found on the website:
Peaceful London Retreats
Recent events
Along Cable Street: on a rainy night in February this year a group of 11 of us from the
Penn Club and St Katherine’s House visited Wilton’s Music Hall to see a performance of
Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta Iolanthe. Charles Court Opera brought their own distinctive
magic to the operetta with wonderful singing and great staging. The plot centres around a
romantic entanglement between two unlikely groups: Fairies and the House of Lords.
Strephon, a shepherd, who is half mortal and half fairy, has fallen in love with Phyllis, a
ward of court, but her guardian, the Lord Chancellor, considers him unsuitable and also
sees himself as a possible suitor….. Needless to say all comes right in the end, in part due
to the fairies’ immortality and agelessness. Particularly striking was Matthew Kellet who, in
the role of Lord Chancellor, gave a wonderful performance of the “nightmare” song in the
second Act.
To west London: Penn Club members enjoyed a visit to Kew Gardens in glorious Spring
sunshine in April, with lots of time to explore the Gardens and to visit Kew Palace. Built in
the 17th century, the Palace became a favourite residence of the Hanoverian Kings and
particularly of King George III and Queen Charlotte and their family. Much smaller than
other Royal Palaces, it gives the impression of an intimate family home and according to
the novelist F***y Burney, who was for a time a member of the Royal household, allowed
them to live much more like “the simplest country gentle folk”. The Palace rooms reflect this view and look much as they must have been in the eighteenth century. There is an
impressive collection of paintings and family portraits.
The visit to Kew was facilitated by Kevin McCullough, Community and Public Engagement
Manager at St Katharine’s, to whom we offer our warmest thanks. It is again with Kevin’s
help that we are returning to Kew in October.
Whalley Abbey
In 2021, as some of you will know, many of the books from the Bedford Place library and all
the nearly-new mattresses from the bedrooms were donated to Whalley Abbey, an Anglican
retreat house in Lancashire with which St Katharine’s has links. The Abbey provides
excellent hospitality, comfortable accommodation and good food and is situated in the lovely grounds of the ruined Cistercian foundation in the Ribble valley. It offers a varied
programme of retreats under the auspices of the Diocese of Blackburn.
We think that Whalley Abbey might make an interesting one or two-day visit for Penn Club
members next year, possibly combining it with participation in one of their Quiet Days. If
you are interested, please do let us know.
Whalley Abbey
En route to Whalley, we hope to call in at Blackburn Cathedral to see A Table for the
Nation. Remarkably, this 13m table, described as a masterpiece of craftsmanship, has
been created from a 5,000 year-old Fenland black oak. It has just arrived in Blackburn and
will be on display for a year.
In Memoriam
Revd Ian MacRae Michael died this spring at the age of 85 and was given an uplifting
funeral requiem at All Saints’ Episcopal Church, St Andrews, on 10 April. Mathematician,
priest and pastor, friend to many around the country, he was a long-standing Penn Club
member and we are privileged to have known him.
An afternoon in May
Group picture
At St Katherine's on 18 May with Michaela Vencalkova and Robin and Diana Jakeways.
We thanked Michaela for all her work in support of the Penn Club at RFSK over the past
four years and wished her bon voyage to India; and we wished Robin, one of our very loyal
members, a very happy 90th birthday.
Thank you
We thank you for your continuing membership of the Penn Club at St Katharine’s and look
forward to seeing you at one or more of the forthcoming events.
Margaret Burtt and Ken Robbie
