Wellesley Tudor Pole 1884 – 1968

Sir George Trevelyan called Tudor Pole ‘undoubtedly one of the great seers and adepts of this epoch.’ WTP, as he is known, first visited Glastonbury in 1902 and felt an affinity with the Chalice Well, an ancient red spring situated at the foot of Glastonbury Tor. In 1906, aged 23, he was to find a sapphire blue bowl buried in the ground at Glastonbury that led him on a life-long quest in search of evidence for the original teachings of Jesus.

WTP (Wellesley Tudor Pole) believed Glastonbury to be an important spiritual centre for Britain and worked from as early as 1903 to link Avalon (Glastonbury), Iona and ‘an Irish point’ as three special linking sites. It wasn’t until later that he settled on Devenish Island in Northern Ireland as the third point. His work consisted of awakening these three sites (in England, Scotland and Ireland) in preparation for the new era (in the Age of Aquarius). He had concluded that Glastonbury would not have awakened without Chalice Well being brought back to life and that the restoration of Iona, linked to Glastonbury, was important for the future destiny of Britain.

In the early 1960’s WTP wrote to his friend, the writer Rosamond Lehmann, ‘There are certain geographical spots or centres where, for reasons too complex to explain, the veil is ‘thinner’ than elsewhere. There may be historical, occult or even astrological reasons that have supervened over the centuries to bring about this thinning of the veils, through which Light can pass down into our human atmosphere more easily than is the case elsewhere. With the world in turmoil, the careful preservation of such dedicated centres becomes important for the welfare of the whole community.’

During the First World War, while waiting to go into battle on a hill overlooking Jerusalem the idea for the future Silent Minute observance was seeded. In 1940 WTP acted on this idea working with the Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the Government to instigate the Big Ben Silent Minute at 9p.m. each evening on the BBC. Within a year 10 million people were observing the minute silence worldwide. When the BBC dropped the observance in 1964 WTP worked closely with Sir George Trevelyan to launch the Lamplighter Movement. In 1959 he secured the Well, gardens and surrounding land of the Chalice Well in a Trust for perpetuity as a sanctuary and place of peace and healing.

In 2015 the Chalice Well Press published ‘The Light upon the Path’, selected unpublished writings of WTP. In the early 1960’s, among a flurry of publishing, he produced a booklet called ‘God is Love’ (co-sponsored by the Big Ben Silent Minute and the Chalice Well Trust) in which he wrote: ‘The more love we reflect and share with one another, the greater will be the supply available to us: a supply that is infinite, boundless, never failing and eternal. When the truth of this realisation is recognised and utilised we shall be on the first lap of the road leading to the arrival of “Heaven on Earth.”’

Further Reading:

The Silent Road (Neville Spearman 1960)
A Man Seen Afar (Neville Spearman 1965)
Writing On The Ground (Neville Spearman 1968)
Dear Alexias – Letters to Rosamond Lehmann (Neville Spearman 1979)
Private Dowding (White Crow Books 2012)
The Two Worlds of Wellesley Tudor Pole by Gerry Fenge (Starseed Publications)
Light Upon the Path – The Unpublished Writings of Wellesley Tudor Pole by Paul Fletcher (Chalice Well Press 2015)