Who's Wilfrid?
You may be curious as to why we are called 'Wilfrid's Café'. Who was this Wilfrid, anyway?
We like Wilfrid because he came to this area and was instrumental in providing food and sustenance to those who needed it.
We offer our hospitality to you in the spirit of Wilfrid.
Wilfrid was born in Northumberland in 634 into a wealthy Christian family. Following his mother’s early death, he chose a religious career and was sent to Rome to continue his education.
He lived at an extraordinary time for the church, with power struggles between those who favoured the new Roman practices and those who held to the older Celtic traditions. He encountered great controversy, befriended kings and rulers across Europe, travelled back and forth to Rome three times, he suffered shipwreck and was nearly murdered several times.
He came to the Meon valley in 681AD, which was one of the last places in England to hear about Christianity. Just before his arrival there had been the most terrible famine and the distress was so acute, according to the writings of the Venerable Bede, that "forty or fifty being spent with want, would go together to some cliff and there, hand in hand, miserably perish by the fall or be swallowed by the waves".
Although there were fish enough to eat in the rivers and sea, the poor country folk didn't know how to catch them and could only fish for eels. Wilfrid borrowed their nets and cast them into the sea. He gathered hundreds of fish in the nets and encouraged the country folk to give some to the poor, some to those who had lent the nets and keep some for their own use.
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The churches that Wilfrid subsequently founded remain alongside the Meon and a 'Pilgrimage Trail, In the steps of Saint Wilfrid' has been designed to allow walkers to discover these churches for themselves and to learn something of the faith which motivated Wilfrid to leave his palaces & live very humbly amongst the people of the Meon valley until 686AD.
Wilfrid was a Bishop for forty-five years and a pillar of the church during one of the most turbulent times in its history as it sought to establish itself in a pagan land.
He died in 709 at the Minster church of St Andrew's, Oundle and is also remembered in a stained-glass window at the Church of St. Mary and All Saints, Droxford.