Benhall, St Mary

St. Mary's Benhall is open and everyone is welcome. For information on our upcoming services https://alderiverchurch.org/church-services/

Farnham & Stratford St Andrew, St Mary

Thank you for taking time to find a church near you. Farnham is apart of the Alde River Benefice. We rotate around our seven church buildings as a worshipping community, please do join in with us, you will be made so welcome. You can find information of where our next service will be at https://alderiverchurch.org/church-services/

We look forward to meeting you.

Gt Glemham, All Saints

Welcome to All Saints’ Church Gt Glemham

We are sited in a small parish of 220 people in a particularly delightful piece of gently undulating Suffolk countryside and are one of seven churches in the surrounding benefice.

The church is open during daylight hours.

There is storage for the village archive within the church and the parish registers and census returns are on permanent display with easy access.

As you approach our main door you will see a one-handed clock on the church tower that dates from 1770 and is still in use today. The earliest features are the chancel windows which date to the 13th century and our most recent addition was that of the bell ringing platform completed with the Queen Elizabeth II coat of arms to celebrate her majesty’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012. This was the last of the work that included converting part of the vestry into a disabled toilet (accessed from the outside through the West door) and a kitchenette housed in what looks like a vestry chest.

The greatest treasure of All Saints’ is the octagonal seven sacrament font and is a masterpiece of 15th century stonemasons’ art; sadly defaced in parts during the reformation – but still beautiful. It also has a ‘crucifix lily’ among the trefoil-headed lilies in pots on panels around the stem.

The roof shows the original 15th century timber framework with angels looking down, and 24 lovely carved bosses including a ‘green man’ and ‘pie crust’ designs.

All Saints is not a museum, but a building with a purpose, and as such, it is cherished and cared for by the people of this small community who meet regularly for Christian worship, as they have done for hundreds of years and look forward to greeting new people to both our church and services.

Sternfield, St Mary Magdalene

The parish church of Sternfield is part of the Alde River Benefice. If you are looking for a morning service please check out our Benefice website:

https://benhallstmaryschurch.co.uk/

You will find where the services in our Benefice will be held there.

Lt. Glemham, St Andrew

Welcome to St. Andrews Church, Little Glemham. For information about our services at Little Glemham please visit https://alderiverchurch.org/church-services/

Blaxhall, St Peter

St Peter's Blaxhall is a typical rural country Church, surrounded by its hedged churchyard and farmland in east Suffolk. Whilst not an architectural gem, St Peter's has a number of interesting features and a simple charm. The many visitors often remark on a sense of peace and an obviously very active and well-loved Church. These pages attempt to convey some of these characteristics and a synopsis of future events.

Snape, St John The Baptist

To see our pages on the Snape village website, please visit ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​snapevillage.info/what/church/ for various subject-links, including 'History' that contains the text below (with its supporting images).

Snape's Grade II❋-listed Church is in the north of the village, at the A1094 crossroads.

The earliest recorded incumbent of Snape was Sir William de Rurcham whose appointment was in 1240. There have been many internal as well as external alterations and restorations since then. The most recent of significance have been the rebuilding of the East Wall in 1920 (when a stained-glass window was installed by Mary Lowndes), and the installation of a new organ together with improvements to the balcony and vestry at the millennium.

The treasure of the Church, despite some mutilation in the past, is undoubtedly the font, made c.1500 and once gilded. In his "Buildings of England: Suffolk", Nikolaus Pevsner describes "on the base a quatrefoil frieze, and inscription referring to Richard Mey and his family as donors; on the foot of the stem, small beasts crawling; against the stem, four signs of the Evangelists set diagonally, and kings and bishops placed frontally; against the bowl seven figures all holding one long scroll [and] in the eighth field the Trinity with the two donors". The font remains one of the most beautiful in the county.

Visitors are also attracted by the East Window, designed and made in 1920 by Mary Lowndes — it carries, in its lower middle panel, a representation of Snape Bridge, as it then was, with a Thames barge in the foreground.

"Mary Lowndes (1857–1929) was ... an influential leader in the Arts & Crafts movement, not only for her stained-glass work and successful studio-workshop, but also for opening doors for other women stained-glass artists. She was an active participant in the suffragette movement, acting as Chair of the Artists' Suffrage League, and creating poster art to assist the movement." — ©Wikipedia

There are not Services every Sunday at Snape, but Holy Communion is celebrated somewhere within the Benefice. They are also listed in the Benefice's "Ebb & Flow" monthly magazine, and on the noticeboard outside all our Benefice's Churches. Morning Prayer is said in Snape Church each Friday at 9:00 am.

Visitors from all over the world come to Snape Church, as the visitors’ book indicates. They and those who follow them, whether local residents or holidaymakers, are most welcome to Services, private prayer or merely to enjoy the calm and peace of their surroundings, as people have for eight centuries. We hope that you feel refreshed by the serenity it offers. It is open every day during daylight hours.

To see "What's on" (and HAS been on) offered by The Friends of Snape Church, please visit

https://snapevillage.info/news-blog/?Search=FoSC