Our Parish Profile

St Etheldreda’s Church, Hyssington

St Etheldreda’s Church has been a focus of Christian worship in the Onny Camlad valley for nearly 900 years. We are one of the Welsh parishes of the Diocese of Hereford.

We have 31 names on our parish electoral roll and between 8 and 12 people regularly worship at our services. Every month we have one service of Holy Communion and a Morning Praise service. This is occasionally lay led.

In addition to our regular monthly services, we celebrate most major festivals; Christmas Eve, Easter Vigil, Ascension Day, and a traditional Harvest Festival. Recently, we have celebrated St Etheldreda’s Day. Again, these services are often lay led. In July, we hold an Open Churchyard Service followed by a tea party. We have music at all our services and enjoy singing new and more traditional hymns.

These Festival Services and events are popular with our community and often provide an opportunity for mission. This year we have had two adult confirmations.

We respond with enthusiasm to new worship initiatives. We have just set up a ‘Prayer Pool’ which is being regularly used by our visitors and we include Prayer requests in our services.

We have strong links with our small, scattered rural community. There are few facilities in the Parish. There are no pubs, schools or shops. We have one village hall which we are able to use for Church activities and a Church member sits on the management committee.

The Onny Camlad valley is an area of growing tourism with campsites, holiday lets and many walkers. St Etheldreda’s is famous in folk lore circles for the legend of the Bagbury Bull. Our Church is open daily with drinks and biscuits for visitors and comments in our Visitors Book show how much this appreciated.

Our Benefice is important to us and we try to worship and work together whenever we can. We play a full part in Benefice and Deanery meetings.

Our Church building and Churchyard are in good order and we work hard to meet our financial obligations. Looking to the future, we have just installed a bank card reader in the Church and we are encouraging visitors and regular worshippers to use it.

We have flowers and floral displays throughout the year and our Churchyard is maintained in line with ‘Caring for God’s Acre’.

We look back with gratitude over our long history of serving Christ in this place and look forward to the future of our Church with confidence and Faith. We are not complacent, however, and know that, in the future we may need to face difficult challenges and changes.

We place mission above all other considerations.