This year, St Mary's Church Cable Street will be one of the stops on a guided walk during London Open House 2024.The walk, which takes place on Saturday 21 September, is one of an extensive series of events taking place during the two weeks of London Open House.The other sites visited as part of the walk are the Chapel at the Royal Foundation of St Katharine, St Paul's Shadwell, St George-in-the-East and St Peter's London Docks.You can find out more about the walk and book a place here https://hotmail.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a13cdd9d733ba6ee42ca8698&id=b8b9f16859&e=f3e3e86731
With assistance from other local churches including St Barnabas Bethnal Green, St Paul's Bow Common, St Paul's Shadwell and St George-in-the-East, St Mary's ran a School Uniform Bank from our Church Hall in early August, providing good quality, second-hand school uniform.The event was attended by a number of families, a number of whom are in the asylum system, who were able to find school uniform items for their children.It is hoped that this event both provided a service to the local community and also recycled clothes that still had plenty of wear left in them.
Toilets play a surprisingly essential role in the life of St Mary's. One of our biggest events each year happens when we open up our church hall to host supporters of London Marathon. There is always much gratitude for the refreshments and a warm place to sit and rest for a while, but the lions share of gratitude is directed towards our provision of toilet facilities, which provide great relief!However, as with many an older building, it can be a struggle to keep the toilets fully functioning, and it is a lesser known part of our incumbent's duties to be ready with a plunger or to lever up the manhole covers outside the hall to remove blockages.Bearing all of this in mind, we are still immensely grateful that we are fortunate enough to live in a country with a (generally) excellent sanitation system. In the knowledge that many others are not so lucky, this year we set out with our Lent appeal to raise money to twin the toilets in our church hall with a toilet in the developing world. We were able to raise enough to twin all of our toilets and to make a donation on top of that, donating £500 to Tearfund. The certificate confirming that our toilets are now twinned with a toilet in Cote d'Ivoire has been hung proudly on the wall beside the toilets for all to see.
May is traditionally said to be Mary's month, and at St Mary's Cable St, our statue of the Madonna and Child is crowned with a veil during May.There are differences of opinion about this tradition within the congregation, where some members love the tradition, some disapprove of it, but the majority are probably just slightly bemused by it.Of course, we honour Mary all year round as the mother of Christ, but the tradition that May is Mary's month apparently dates back to the 13th Century, although it gained in popularity in the 18th Century. It is probably related to the idea of spring as a time of fertility, and in some churches Mary is given a crown of flowers on May Day.
