A Message from the Master
A Message from the Master
Reflections on Candles
It’s hardly surprising that we all love candles! Who would have thought that despite the wonders of the electricity industry, we still enjoy the light that they give us, gentle and romantic as it is, after our 650+ years of being associated with trading beeswax (which gives the purest and brightest light). Candles are still very much associated with celebration and religious devotion. We give candles to St Paul’s Cathedral every year (in September) and gave candles for use in the Coronation last year.
Goldsmith’s Hall
Instead of celebrating in our own Hall last Christmas, we went next door to Goldsmiths’ Hall with the Worshipful Company of Gardeners (my husband is the Master Gardener) and enjoyed a wonderful dinner under two enormous chandeliers, not powered by electricity but by real candlelight, for which the Hall is famous! We were enormously grateful to the Goldsmiths’ Company for letting us use it. They are great neighbours to have – they regularly let us use their garden opposite our Hall which is a lovely way to start a summer evening listening to the honeybees and watching the other pollinators.
Candlemas
We celebrate Candlemas every year with a church service in early February, where we light candles for each other. It was known as the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus Christ or the Feast of the Purification of the Blessing Virgin Mary. It has become known as a festival of lights, and we celebrate it with the Worshipful Company of Tallow Chandlers. Each year we take it in turns to organise the church service (and the candles) and then we visit each other’s Halls for dinner. We have a pleasant, close relationship with the Tallow Chandlers. In the Order of Precedence, set by the Court of Aldermen in 1515, we are at number 20, and they are at number 21. This is supposed to be an expression of the Court of Aldermen’s assessment of the “economic power and influence” of the oldest of the livery companies. It begs a question as to why we are so high up and why trading beeswax had greater “economic power and influence” than trading in tallow which must have been in much greater volume. We don’t have an answer to that question, and you would have expected us to have had some disagreements or conflicts over the centuries, but there is no evidence of that having happened. We continue to enjoy each other’s company. I now know the Master Tallow Chandler well enough to take his arm when we are processing! When you are disabled like me, it is a real blessing!
BBKA Spring Convention
I was offered a lot of arms by very kind members of the British Beekeepers Association at their Spring Convention at Harper Adams University in Shropshire. This was a beautifully organised gathering with a great deal of content for the BBKA’s 27,000 members to choose from. The Association is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year and is fulfilling an important function in educating beekeepers in England. My mother was a beekeeper and I know how much knowledge, skill and time you need to ensure that the bees remain healthy and productive. As Patron for the year in my role as Master, I was honoured to be able to speak to 200 delegates after dinner and then to introduce one of the lecturers the next morning. The Wax Chandlers sponsor a lecturer and pay for recordings of three lectures. This year it was my pleasure to introduce Alexandra Sapoznik, a historian at King’s College London, who spoke about trading beeswax in mediaeval England. Pure beeswax was incredibly valuable! The lecture was all the more fascinating because, in many ways, it was about our own history as a guild on its way to becoming a livery company with its own Royal Charter. I could not have enjoyed it more!
As usual, we had the great pleasure in hosting a lunch earlier this year when the Lord Mayor presented the Wax Chandlers’ Award for the beekeeper attaining the highest marks in their Master Beekeeping exams. I gather that there are only 193 Master Beekeepers out of a BBKA membership of around 27,000, which shows how special this qualification is!
“Beyond the Flickering Candle” – a summer evening on 2nd July in the garden and the Hall
Talking of candles and how much we still love them, our young members, ably led by Tim Evans have organised a fun evening with the Guild of Young Freemen – a posh getting to know you event. In addition to the familiar ingredients, there will be a couple of thought-provoking, short talks (on what young people care about), one on “Breaking the bronze ceiling – how we raised a memorial to an amazing woman and went viral in the process”. The other is “Bringing human rights into young people’s lives – What Mary Wollstonecraft achieved in her short life and why it is so important right now”. Please put 2nd July in your diary. Tickets will go on sale shortly.
Protecting the environment: myths & facts – a Zoom talk by Professor Averil Macdonald: Wednesday 22nd May 2024
This Zoom talk plays to the Wax Chandlers’ increasing interests in developments in the modern wax industry (we have “Wax” in our title) and in biodiversity in its many forms, particularly natural habitats for bees and pollinators. Professor Averil Macdonald OBE will provide a very entertaining and gripping account of unknown facts and myths that need to be exploded. Book here.
Dame Fiona Woolf DBE, DL
