Great day in Sonning & Pleased to Meet You Saint Sarik

Team Urban Fantasist had a great day out on Saturday at the Reading Writers one-day conference in Sonning, where I gave a talk/workshop on how to create A Credible World in fiction. Many thanks to Julia Bohanna and her committee colleagues for inviting me and as she said in the notes enclosed in the party bags "May there be many more days of laughter, joy and words. It's always about the words." (Actually I thought it was always about The Red Wheelbarrow!)

Seriously now... and it was hard to be serious when the event had a steady stream of guests from the wedding taking place in the nearby St Andrew's Church popping into the room on their way to the loo... I'm going to be posting a summary of my top tips on this site within the next week or so. But, in the meantime, what about the venue?

The location was Saint Sarik's Hall, just behind St Andrew's Church. But who was Saint Sarik? Variously written Sarik, Sarak, Sarac or Siric, for a time he was associated with the treatment of madness. He had a chapel on this site in Sonning and people would go on a pilgrimage there seeking a cure for their mental health problems. He may have been Sigeric (otherwise Seric or Sirik) who was Bishop of Ramsbury & Sonning from 985 to 995. He was not a recognized saint but two of his predecessors and one of his successors were canonized. In later life, Bishop Sigeric was made Archbishop of Canterbury and it was he who advised King Aethelred the Unready to pay the Danegeld to the viking Invaders. A more likely explanation is that Sigeric saw Saint Sarik as his patron saint. And if you are already confused, here the trail becomes even more muddied

There is a suggestion that Saint Sarik is a derivation of St Carroc, who was a Cornish saint (although there is a similar-sounding saint called Careuc in Brittany) but by around 1200 AD the Brittonic saint had become identified with the Roman Catholic Church's St Cyricus, a child martyr from Antioch (died circa 304 AD). This saint – not to be confused with St Cyriacus –  was very popular in France, where he was also known as St Cyr and had connections with lunacy. Personally, I like to think St Sarik is a derivation of our now lost-to-history Celtic-Cornish St Carroc.