美国国家公共电台 NPR My Night Camping In An 18th Century Church In England

 

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

We know about RV camping, and you may have heard of glamping, glamorous¹ camping. Now we're going to hear about champing. That's camping inside churches no longer in use, and it's big in England. NPR's London correspondent, Frank Langfitt, took his family champing in an 18th-century church outside of Oxford².

(SOUNDBITE OF PUB AMBIENCE)

FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE³: Our night at St. Katherine's church begins at the Coach and Horses Inn, a nearby pub.

Hi. Yeah. I'm here to get the key to the church.

GEORGIA ROSE: Yeah.

LANGFITT: The bartender, Georgia Rose, hands me a heavy key the size of an eyeglass case.

ROSE: It goes in upside down.

LANGFITT: It goes in upside down. I would not have guessed that.

ROSE: (Laughter).

LANGFITT: Do you get many people coming to the church?

ROSE: Yeah, we do, actually. It's quite a popular destination for people to just come and stay randomly⁴. Sometimes, you get families wanting to spook their kids out...

LANGFITT: We pull up to St. Katherine’s, a tiny church with ochre-colored walls, blue doors and a clock tower. Daughter Katie, 16, is not sold.

It's a cute, little church.

KATIE: I thought this would be bigger.

LANGFITT: You wanted a cathedral?

KATIE: I was hoping for a cathedral.

LANGFITT: I think a cathedral costs more.

(SOUNDBITE OF KEY OPENING DOOR)

LANGFITT: A night at St. Katherine’s isn't cheap. The Churches Conservation Trust, a charity which oversees⁵ more than 350 empty churches, charges over $200 a night for the four of us. The money helps fund maintenance for these historic properties, which have gone vacant over the decades as churchgoing has declined in England.

(SOUNDBITE OF PUMP ORGAN)

LANGFITT: Our son Christopher, who's 13, discovers a pump organ next to the wooden box pews.

CHRISTOPHER: There's, like, four pedals. And the four pedals - you actually pump air. So when you press a key...

(SOUNDBITE OF PUMP ORGAN)

CHRISTOPHER: ...It comes out.

LANGFITT: On the wall above hangs a plaque⁶, listing members of the family that built the church.

KATIE: Sacred to the memory of Charles Peers, son and heir of Sir Charles Peers, who died August 7, 1781. His remains⁷ are deposited in the vault⁸ of this holy edifice⁹.

LANGFITT: One of the Peers descendants, a farmer also named Charles Peers, lives nearby. Churches Trust gave me his number, so I asked him to come around.

Hi, Mr. Peers. I'm Frank. I'm with NPR. Nice to meet you.

He explains the church's history. Sir Charles Peers, the former lord mayor of London, made a fortune with the British East India Company. And his son, also Charles, built St. Katherine's in the early 1760s. The family fortune passed on to descendants who became vicars.

CHARLES PEERS: And all they did is spent the money building churches and vicarages and schools for other villages. So that's where the family fortunes went.

LANGFITT: St. Katherine's never had a big congregation and became unsustainable in the 1970s.

PEERS: With a small parish and all the costs involved in running a church like this, we couldn't see any other way of keeping the church going and preserved other than hand it over to redundant¹⁰ churches fund.

LANGFITT: But how to make sure that churches like this get some public use and don't just fall apart? Peter Aiers, chief executive of The Churches Conservation Trust, got an idea.

PETER AIERS: Why not wake up with this amazing building rising above you? Then I simply combined the name camping with churches and came up with champing. Give it a name, and suddenly, you've got a product.

LANGFITT: The trust provides water, cots and a composting toilet where needed but no showers.

AIERS: This year, we have had over 1,600 people stay. And we pretty much tripled our figures from last year.

(SOUNDBITE OF PLAYING BACKGAMMON)

LANGFITT: One, two, three.

Back at St. Katherine's, my wife, Julie, and Christopher are playing backgammon on a cot by the light of a camping lamp and a smartphone.

(SOUNDBITE OF CLOCK CHIMING)

LANGFITT: As the clock strikes 11, we climb into our sleeping bags. The church now feels familiar, not spooky. The only thing that keeps me up...

(SOUNDBITE OF CLOCK CHIMING)

LANGFITT: ...The bells which chime every hour.

(SOUNDBITE OF STEPPING ON GRAVEL)

LANGFITT: Next morning, we pack up the car. Katie says her favorite part was meeting Charles Peers and learning about the church's history.

KATIE: This was fun. I actually enjoyed this, except I'm hungry now.

LANGFITT: So off we drive to breakfast and then home.

Frank Langfitt, NPR News, Oxford, England.

1 glamorous   

adj.富有魅力的；美丽动人的；令人向往的

参考例句：

• The south coast is less glamorous but full of clean and attractive hotels.南海岸魅力稍逊，但却有很多干净漂亮的宾馆。
• It is hard work and not a glamorous job as portrayed by the media.这是份苦差，并非像媒体描绘的那般令人向往。

2 Oxford   

n.牛津（英国城市）

参考例句：

• At present he has become a Professor of Chemistry at Oxford.他现在已是牛津大学的化学教授了。
• This is where the road to Oxford joins the road to London.这是去牛津的路与去伦敦的路的汇合处。

3 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

4 randomly   

adv.随便地，未加计划地

参考例句：

• Within the hot gas chamber, molecules are moving randomly in all directions. 在灼热的气体燃烧室内，分子在各个方向上作无规运动。 来自辞典例句
• Transformed cells are loosely attached, rounded and randomly oriented. 转化细胞则不大贴壁、圆缩并呈杂乱分布。 来自辞典例句

5 oversees   

v.监督，监视( oversee的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• She oversees both the research and the manufacturing departments. 她既监督研究部门又监督生产部门。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The Department of Education oversees the federal programs dealing with education. 教育部监管处理教育的联邦程序。 来自互联网

6 plaque   

n.饰板，匾，(医)血小板

参考例句：

• There is a commemorative plaque to the artist in the village hall.村公所里有一块纪念该艺术家的牌匾。
• Some Latin words were engraved on the plaque. 牌匾上刻着些拉丁文。

7 remains   

n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹

参考例句：

• He ate the remains of food hungrily.他狼吞虎咽地吃剩余的食物。
• The remains of the meal were fed to the dog.残羹剩饭喂狗了。

8 vault   

n.拱形圆顶，地窖，地下室

参考例句：

• The vault of this cathedral is very high.这座天主教堂的拱顶非常高。
• The old patrician was buried in the family vault.这位老贵族埋在家族的墓地里。

9 edifice   

n.宏伟的建筑物(如宫殿，教室)

参考例句：

• The American consulate was a magnificent edifice in the centre of Bordeaux.美国领事馆是位于波尔多市中心的一座宏伟的大厦。
• There is a huge Victorian edifice in the area.该地区有一幢维多利亚式的庞大建筑物。

10 redundant   

adj.多余的，过剩的；(食物)丰富的；被解雇的

参考例句：

• There are too many redundant words in this book.这本书里多余的词太多。
• Nearly all the redundant worker have been absorbed into other departments.几乎所有冗员，都已调往其他部门任职。