Heritage Morning & 'Gift Day'

There has been a hive of activity over the last few weeks, with ideas and contributions for the Heritage Morning displays coming in on an almost daily basis, and right up until Friday afternoon when we started to set up ready for Saturday, we were busy making finishing touches.

Saturday dawned bright and sunny, and we were delighted when visitors started arriving on the dot of 9.30am when we opened the doors. We knew that the main draws for people coming along to the Heritage Morning would be the tours with Canon Roy Tricker BEM, and a trip up to the bell ringing chamber, and we weren't disappointed! All three of Roy's tours attracted a good crowd, and he was hugely informative, interesting, and colourful. He is well known in the area, and we were very lucky to have him here.

Roy Tricker addressing the 'crowd' as he begins one of his tours

You can't see him here, but this is one of the tour groups listening attentively to Roy

A queue formed for the ringing chamber, as we could only take up to eight people at a time, because it's quite a small area, and the bells rang out several times over during the morning as our ringers demonstrated their art. Look at the beautiful colours shining on the queue as the sun shone through the stained glass windows.

People were queuing all morning for their chance to climb the steps to the ringing chamber

We are hugely grateful to everyone who helped with the Heritage Morning, visitors, volunteers, and organisations such as Woodbridge Museum who provided lots of interesting information that was displayed along the north wall, and the Church Recording Society who showed off the 5-volume record of everything within the church that they worked hard to document over a long period of time. It was definitely a team effort.

Two of the Church Recorders with just a small part of the 5-volume record of St Mary's Church

Our Church Shop manager, Jackie, and team were doing an excellent trade, selling a selection of items from the Shop, including our 'hot off the press' Christmas cards (sold in aid of our Building Project Appeal). If you haven't been in to the Shop lately there is a huge array of cards and gifts, bibles and books...so please pop in!

Shop Manager, Jackie, with Spencer, Shop Volunteer

Andrew Stevens, Organ Builder, donated a wonderful array of fascinating objects, some of which even our Director of Music, James Davy, hadn't come across before, such as the variety of different leather samples, from very fine to much thicker examples. James had a 'mystery item' he encouraged people to come and look at to see if they could work out what it was...do you know?

James was intrigued about this 'mystery item' himself!

Part way through the morning we were delighted to receive a donation of freshly baked bread from Janet Moore, which sold...well, like 'hot bread'...and was soon gone! Our volunteers served tea, coffee, and cake almost non-stop, as we invited people to partake of the mouth-watering creations donated by members of the congregation.

There were interesting and detailed displays from families with local connections, and the Friends of St Mary's spoke to many of the visitors about our beautiful church. They 'recruited' a number of new 'Friends' who chose to support us financially and will (hopefully) get involved with or come along to many of the activities that the Friends organise throughout the year. All proceeds from Friends' subscriptions and events go towards the 'fabric' of the church, to continue to maintain it for generations to come.

During the past year volunteers have been researching and photographing churchyard memorials and where possible matching the numbers and details of inscriptions from Charles Partridge’s 1927 record. We are also creating a churchyard plan showing the location number of each identifiable grave which will be made available for those wishing to research their ancestry.

As you will have read, our heating broke down last winter, and so the primary focus of our Building Project Appeal at the moment is to raise money towards the cost of replacement heating, and donations made on the day will boost our 'Heating Appeal.' We are extremely grateful for all the generous donations we received, and were delighted that these amounted to over £4,000 on the day, with more coming in over the following days. If you weren't able to come along to the Heritage Morning, but would like to donate towards our 'Heating Appeal' please scan the QR code below, or click here to go to our GiveALittle page. All donations are gratefully received. Thank you.