The Bradwell Pilgrimage

The annual Bradwell Pilgrimage to the Chapel of St Peter-on-the-Wall, Bradwell-on-Sea, Essex, takes place on the first Saturday of July every year. The official website is at http://www.bradwellchapel.org/

From St Columba's monastery at Iona, Aidan was sent at the invitation of King Oswald of Northumbria to set up a monastery at Lindisfarne on the north-east coast of England. It was also to be a school where Anglo-Saxon boys could be trained to become priests and missionaries. It was in this school that St Cedd learnt to read and write in Latin, and learnt to teach the Christian faith.

When King Sigbert of the East Saxons (Essex) asked for a mission, it was Cedd who was sent.

So in AD653 Cedd sailed down the east coast from Lindisfarne and landed at Bradwell. Here he found the ruins of an old deserted Roman fort. He probably first built a small wooden church but as there was so much stone from the fort he began to build the chapel we see today! It was built where the gatehouse of the fort had been - so it was built on the wall of the fort - hence the name - Saint Peter-on-the-Wall. Cedd modelled his church on the style of churches in Egypt and Syria. The Celtic Christians were greatly influenced by the churches in that part of the world and we know that St Antony of Egypt had built his church from the ruins of a fort on the banks of a river, just as Cedd did on the banks of the River Blackwater in Essex.