{"id":5982,"date":"2005-06-30T13:41:33","date_gmt":"2005-06-30T13:41:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/06\/when-jesus-came-to-surrey.html"},"modified":"2005-06-30T13:41:33","modified_gmt":"2005-06-30T13:41:33","slug":"when-jesus-came-to-surrey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/06\/when-jesus-came-to-surrey.html","title":{"rendered":"When Jesus Came To Surrey"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fascinating article about a British millionaire who has turned his estate into a venue for religiously-themed theater<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

The son of a market gardener, Hutley amassed a \u00a3110m fortune in property development, and bought Wintershall in the early 1960s. At the time, his wife, Ann, was suffering from depression. When she heard about sightings of the Virgin Mary at Medjugorje in Bosnia, she went on pilgrimage to the site, converted to Catholicism and was "cured". Her husband followed suit, and decided to dedicate his life to God. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

He started writing plays for the Nativity and the Passion at Wintershall, but was inspired to write something much bigger after Pope John Paul II declared 1999 the year of preparation for the millennium. "Everyone was talking about parties and the Dome," says Hutley. "But there wouldn’t be a millennium without Jesus." <\/p>\n

It took him 14 months to write The Life of Christ; the response was astounding, and the play has run every year since. It regularly attracts audiences of 3,000, from all over the UK, Europe and even Australia. Hutley now employs a director, three assistant directors, nine stage managers and teams for sound production, props and wardrobe. "And, of course," he adds, "my own staff are trained in what has to be done and when." <\/p>\n

Hutley is honest about his motives for The Life of Christ: "I’m not into theatre – I just wanted to reach as many people as possible. We all need Christianity to help us grow up. We’re all babies. We need a daddy." <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

The estate’s website<\/a><\/p>\n

(They also produce organically produced beef)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fascinating article about a British millionaire who has turned his estate into a venue for religiously-themed theater The son of a market gardener, Hutley amassed a \u00a3110m fortune in property development, and bought Wintershall in the early 1960s. At the time, his wife, Ann, was suffering from depression. When she heard about sightings of the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nWhen Jesus Came To Surrey - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/06\/when-jesus-came-to-surrey.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"When Jesus Came To Surrey - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Fascinating article about a British millionaire who has turned his estate into a venue for religiously-themed theater The son of a market gardener, Hutley amassed a \u00a3110m fortune in property development, and bought Wintershall in the early 1960s. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. 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