Northaw and Cuffley’s Annual Lectures

The parish of Northaw and Cuffley has been home to two historic charities: the Rachel Bradgate Charity (est. 1671) and the Richard Coulter Charity (est. 1620). As can be seen from the board in the porch of St Thomas, both of these charities included the requirement for a yearly sermon to be preached. However, no record of these sermons can be found in the church magazine, which goes back to 1882.

The requirement for these sermons was lost as part of the rolling up of a number of charities into the Northaw Charity during the 20th century. In 2022 The Parochial Church Council agreed to revive these sermons as an annual lecture, alternating between the Rachel Bradgate Lecture and the Richard Coulter Lecture.

All the lecture recordings are available in our SoundCloud playlist.

The 2024 Rachel Bradgate Lecture

Emily Lucas, tutor at Union School of Theology, giving the 2024 Rachel Bradgate lecture this year.

The 2023 Richard Coulter Lecture

Dr Eric Ortlund gave our second annual, and the first revived Richard Coulter, lecture: “Finding Joy: Life in Ecclesiastes”, at 7pm on Tuesday 21st February 2023 in St Thomas Becket, Northaw.

Eric teaches Hebrew and Old Testament at Oak Hill College, and is the author of, among others, Suffering Wisely and Well: The Grief of Job and the Grace of God.

The 2022 Rachel Bradgate Lecture

Dr Ros Clarke gave the first of these revived lectures: “Why Women Matter So Much To God”, at St Thomas Becket, Northaw at 7:00pm on Wednesday 23rd February 2022.

Ros is a Christian teacher, speaker and writer, and the author of the Lent devotional book Forty Women: unseen women of the Bible from Eden to Easter.