Immortalised in verse by T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding in Cambridgeshire is being developed as a centre for the study of Anglican spirituality. But just what lies at the heart of Anglicanism?

There is a hyacinth blooming in my hallway that smells of Easter. Its scent speaks to me of resurrection and the promise of new life. This season of new beginnings feels particularly fitting for me this year, as I have recently been appointed to a new job – dean of Little Gidding.

This post has been created by the Little Gidding Trust Ltd. in order to realise a new vision for the remote and ancient hamlet that T.S. Eliot (inset right) once visited, which led to his writing of the Four Quartets, the fourth of which he called “Little Gidding”.

His profound experience of the interplay between time and timelessness, knowing and unknowing, endings and beginnings became one of his most loved poems. It also put Little Gidding on the map in a way it had not been before, although its history stretches back many hundreds of years. The first known settlement on the site was in Roman times. Fragments of Roman pottery have been found by the tracks leading to the neighbouring village of Steeple Gidding. Little Gidding’s church, St John’s, is an exquisite small wood-panelled chapel built on a much earlier medieval foundation.