Cross of Nails

News

14th November 2023

Today our governor and member of the PCC, Martin Grubb, came to share a special Collective Worship with our children all about the Cross of Nails. We recounted the events on that fateful night 83 years ago when Coventry was bombed during the Second World War. We recounted the impact on Coventry and on the cathedral itself. 

The idea for the cross came from Rev Arthur Philip Wales, who was then rector of St Mark's church in Coventry, which was also damaged in the bombing, and later rector at St Michael's church in Warmington, Warwickshire. He found several large hand-forged medieval carpenters nails as he walked through the ruins of the cathedral on the morning after the bombing. He used some wire to bind together three nails into the shape of a Latin cross, with one nail vertical and two head-to-tail as a cross-piece, and presented them to the Bishop of Coventry, Mervyn Haigh.

The children were particularly moved by the importance of the cathedral and how the ruined Cathedral now stands proudly as an international example peace and reconciliation. 

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