NEWSThe Christmas Carol Service on the evening of 19 December attracted a congregation of nearly 50 people despite new public health concerns. Cheryl sang beautifully the opening verse of Once in Royal, the seven lessons were read by members of the congregation and Rev Josh led the service and preached. Thanks to the flower team, led by Diana, the church looked splendid and the candles on the windowsills and on the candelabra in front of the rood added much to the atmosphere. Regrettably, there could be no refreshments afterwards, but the raffle went ahead. Many thanks to all who donated towards the hampers, those who bought tickets, and to Jean Cooksley who made such a gorgeous-looking cake. Cheryl, who is the organiser of the Beccles area Suffolk Historic Churches Trust Ride and Stride, would like to thank everyone who contributed to the success of the event this year. The total raised in Suffolk was a record-breaking £160,678, of which Beccles area made a bumper £5,968 and Barsham alone totalled £1,085, half of which comes to Barsham Church funds. The remainder goes to the SHCT central fund, which is available to make valuable grants to small churches like ours.Cheryl would like to find a successor for her role as organiser but is happy to work alongside someone else in 2022. It is not a time-consuming role: the main effort is in July with the distribution of Ride and Stride packs to the local church organizers, a task that can be shared amongst several volunteers. Please do let Cheryl know if you might be willing to take over as area organiser. A tremendous 343 items were donated to the Food Bank, including Christmas food, surplus Love Box items such as knitted gloves and scarves, and some of the teddy bears that Sarah Jane has been curating. The last Sales Table of the year raised £160. Warmest thanks to everyone who has contributed financially and with gifts in kind.When he died two years ago, Mike Learner gifted to Barsham church through his will a large collection of teddy bears that had belonged to his wife Josie. Mike and Josie, of Grange Farm in Barsham, were generous supporters of the church and Mike’s signature honey tray bake was famous amongst the Barsham congregation! Mike was responsible for the electrical installations during the post-fire restoration work of 1979-1982, so it seems appropriate now that the proceeds from the sale of the bears should go towards modernising the lighting in the church. Sarah Jane has taken on the task of looking after more than 1,300 teddy bears, sorting them and identifying those with value, including one Stieff (see below) and three from Harrods, and finding opportunities to sell them or otherwise disperse them appropriately. Over 100 were sold at the switching on of the Beccles Christmas lights, more at events in Bungay and Ringsfield, and Durrants will include a batch in their February auction. Over £250 has been raised so far. FORWARD PLANNINGSuAnLo Concert in Barsham Church at 7pm on Friday 21 January. The trio, from San Sebastian in Spain, features an organist, flautist and soprano voice. They will play a programme of music from the classical repertoire, popular film music and a little taste of Spain. Tickets cost £10 each and will be on sale from Bridget and Diana from the first Sunday of the New Year - Covid regulations permitting. THIS CONCERT HAS NOW BEEN POSTPONED IN THE INTERESTS OF COVID SAFETY.
NEWSOn Sunday 19 September we celebrated Harvest Festival a lovely sunny morning for our Sung Eucharist and the church looked wonderful. The flower arrangers had filled it with beautiful harvest-themed flowers: the reds, oranges and yellows glowed in the bright sunlight. The squashes, gourds and vegetables complemented the arrangements. Evensong, led by Josh, with Bishop Norman preaching, was a beautiful service. After the service a Harvest Supper was held in the village hall and was enjoyed by just under 50 diners. The food was superb despite the lack of a serviceable kitchen. Special thanks to all the flower arrangers, food providers and waitresses! The raffle was highly successful and amongst the prizes was a jar of Barsham churchyard lime honey.For the first time in some years there were perfect conditions for the ‘light show’ at the Barsham Equinox Event on all three evenings, 21, 22 and 23 September. 82 people attended over the three evenings. Members of the Round Tower Churches Society visited on Saturday 25 September. A large congregation filled the church for Nony Ollerenshaw’s Memorial Service and Interment on the afternoon of 25 September.On Thursday 14 October the PCC held its annual Clergy Lunch, this year at White House Barn, Barsham, to thank our visiting clergy for their much-valued service throughout the year. Amy reports that 200 items were donated to the Food Bank in September, including the 70 items contributed at Harvest Festival. Sunday collections in September amounted to £1,418 and the proceeds of the Harvest Supper amounted to a further £651. The Ride and Stride event raised £1,085, which is shared equally between the Suffolk Historic Churches Trust and our own church. Warmest thanks to all who made these sums possible. Thank you for your support of the Love Boxes. Please bring your filled boxes to the church any time between Sunday 17 October and Sunday 24 October, or on the 24th itself when they will be blessed by Rev Canon John Fellows. We hope to welcome some friends from Beccles Lions at the service: they are once again generously funding the cost of the boxes’ carriage. FORWARD PLANNINGThursday 4 November: The PCC will be holding its next routine meeting.Thursday 11 November: Remembrance Day Memorial Service at Barsham and Shipmeadow Village Hall, conducted by Rev Canon John Fellows. Please arrive at 10.30am for a 10.50am service and wreath-laying. Parking is available on the village hall paddock (entrance gate to the right of the telephone box). Refreshments will be available afterwards. All welcome. Friday 12 & Saturday 13 November, 5.30-8.00pm: Barsham Church Light Show -an installation exhibition by artist William Lindley. This is a repeating display of digital projections inside the church celebrating through photographic images various parts of the village of Barsham and the history of some of its principal buildings, including the church. Do drop in for 20 minutes or so at any time between 5.30 and 8.00pm. All ages, no charge & no tickets required, refreshments available.Sunday 28 November: the Sales Table will be open after the service.SNIPPETS – Remembrance and church war memorialsOur church is relatively unusual in possessing no war memorials other than for the First World War, and these are less than typical. The parish war memorial on the south wall of the nave goes further than the conventional memorial to ‘the Fallen’: it is a Roll of Honour recording the names of all the men of the parish who enlisted and their years of enlistment, along with colour-coding to identify those who lost their lives and those who were wounded. A more personal plaque hangs on the south wall of the nave just west of the door and is a rare example of a thanksgiving for safe deliverance. Recycling the lines of a 15th century song celebrating Henry V’s victory and safe return after Agincourt in 1415 (Our God for him wrought marvellously… Deo Gratis), it is the thanksgiving of Harry Stebbings, a Beccles bank clerk and regular communicant at Barsham who married in the church in 1914. He enlisted in 1916 and served in France and Italy with the Bedfordshire Regiment, taking part in continuous heavy fighting before being discharged in April 1918, having been gassed. After the war he and his wife moved to Devon and Harry lived on there until 1971. Another singular memorial, an image of Our Lady of Sorrows, hangs high on the south wall of the north chapel. It is said to have been recovered from a shelled church on a Belgian battlefield by a nurse, the wife of a Barsham churchwarden and choir member. She brought it home to Barsham and the Rector had it reframed and inscribed with the names of all the members of the church choir who had fought in the war, all of whom survived. Perhaps more poignantly, one might consider the larger of the two lecterns in the north chapel to be an unwitting memorial to its maker, the Shipmeadow carpenter Frederick Henry (‘Harry’) Shulver, of Hill Cottage, Shipmeadow. When he volunteered in December 1915, his Army attestation papers recorded a missing little finger on his left hand: a carpenter’s injury perhaps. He served on the Western Front in the North Staffordshire Regiment and was posted ‘missing’ near Arras on 21 March 1918 when his battalion was overwhelmed during the German Spring Offensive. With no known grave, he is commemorated on the Arras Memorial. Tragically, he left three young daughters and a widow. Finally, in Charles George Napier Trollope (1854-1948) there is a Barsham church connection with the Beccles War Memorial Hospital. Napier Trollope, a regular communicant at Barsham (who commissioned in 1935 the beautiful stained-glass window on the south side of the sanctuary), was the Chairman of the Construction Committee for the War Memorial Hospital and for many years its Treasurer, as well as being three times Mayor of Beccles.
NEWSRev Canon John Fellows blessed a remarkable 112 Love Boxes for the Mustard Seed Relief Mission at Sunday service on 24 October. Thank you so much for the 75 boxes that were gifts from the congregation; the other 37 were from Beccles Lions and Beccles Red Hat Ladies. Margaret has done a fabulous job organising and supervising the Love Box programme for the last six years and has now ‘retired’ from the role. Since no individual has offered to take on this mission, it is suggested that a small team might now run the programme. Please talk to one of the Churchwardens if you can help. The three congregations made up a full church at the Benefice Service at All Saints, Mettingham on All Saints Sunday, 31October.At the PCC meeting on 4 November it was confirmed that our Sunday readings would henceforth be taken from the King James Version of the Bible.The Remembrance Service at the Village Hall on 11 November was attended by 20 people and led by Rev Canon John Fellows. The names were read of the 17 Barsham and 6 Shipmeadow men lost in the First World War, along with the names of the American airmen who perished when two aircraft crashed at Barsham and Shipmeadow during the Second World War. Two minutes silence was kept at 11am, the Last Post and Reveille was played by a student from the Sir John Leman High School, and wreaths were laid at the village war memorial. Many thanks to the team at the Village Hall for refreshments afterwards. The church was beautifully decorated with poppies for Remembrance Sunday, when the names of the Fallen were read by Neville Smith and a silence was kept before the start of the morning Eucharist service. On the evenings of Friday 12 and Saturday 13 November, 260 visitors to the church were enthralled by the remarkable spectacle of artist William Lindley’s Light Show. William created a wonderful, immersive sensory experience: visitors enjoyed a feast of visual delights in the spectacular moving digital projections, while ethereal choral music washed over them. The designs in the chancel projections were inspired by some of the architectural details of the church and were accompanied by a sequence of glorious anthems by Harris, Byrd and Philips. Meanwhile, in the north chapel there was much interest in the slide show of photos of Barsham past and present. It was a fabulous, memorable show and we are most grateful to William for creating it, and to David and Penny Lindley, William’s parents, for first suggesting the project and then supporting the show. Many thanks as well to all those who made the splendid refreshments and helped with the logistics. Donations at the door raised £545 and refreshments and greetings cards raised a further £481. Sunday collections in October totalled £852. 138 items were kindly donated to the Food Bank and Pam at Beccles Foodbank wrote to Amy to say, ‘Please thank your wonderful members at Barsham Holy Trinity for their help: you are amazing’. The October sales table raised £120, thanks to those who donated items for sale; and Sarah Jane’s Legacy Bear Sale on 6November raised £76.Our team of four (Bridget, Colin, Dominique and Robert) finished second of six teams at the annual Friends of All Saints, Mettingham Inter-Church Quiz. FORWARD PLANNINGThe Sales Table on Sunday 28 November will include hand-crafted Christmas cards (some Barsham-themed) and Barsham Christmas place settings by Chris Bardsley and more can be ordered from her for collection the following Sunday. There will be no sales table on the fourth Sunday in December.There is to be a concert in the church on Friday 21 January, featuring the trio SuAnLo: an organist, flautist and soprano voice, from San Sebastian in Spain. There will be refreshments at the interval. Further details to follow. SNIPPETS – a Christmas Ramble Much of the decorative detail in our church is the result of donation by late 19th century benefactors. The arch high over the rood screen, and the painting in the north chapel of The Madonna Sewing were both gifts of Christmases past. The painting was the gift of Colonel William Churchman of Ashman’s Hall on Christmas Day 1909 and the arch was given by the Rev Robert Alfred John Suckling (Rector 1868-1880 and Patron 1880-1917) at Christmas 1899. The arch, made locally in Ditchingham, was plain at first but was painted in 1919 in memory of its donor. It celebrates the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary and features the figures of the Archangel Gabriel and St Elizabeth on the left and St Mary and St Joseph on the right. The story of the Annunciation is told in Luke 1:26-38 – the announcement by Gabriel to Mary that she would conceive and bear a son by the power of the Holy Spirit, becoming the mother of the Son of God. Mary’s cousin Elizabeth, Gabriel revealed, was already miraculously on a shared experience of childbearing despite her old age. Matthew 1:18-22 tells us that Mary’s fiancé Joseph received a separate annunciation and because of this he did not abandon Mary on account of her condition in advance of their marriage. The Annunciation is celebrated exactly nine months before Christmas Day, on 25 March – Lady Day. Marking the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, it brings the promise of redemption and a new beginning; and so it was Lady Day that was traditionally New Year’s Day in England from the mid-12th century until 1752, when the Gregorian Calendar was adopted and 1 January became New Year’s Day. At Christmas time St Luke’s story of the Annunciation is told in the fifth lesson of the Service of Nine Lessons and Carols. This service was first introduced by Bishop Benson of Truro in 1880, allegedly to attract Cornishmen away from the pubs at Christmas time, and it grew in popularity after he became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1883. At Christmas 1918, responding to what he saw as a retreat from organised religion during the First World War, the Dean of King’s College, Cambridge introduced the Service to King’s College Chapel as a means of attracting people back to worship, and the tradition of the annual Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s was born. It was first broadcast by BBC radio in 1928 and then on television from 1954. During our own Carol Service at Barsham on 19 December, perhaps the arch over the rood may catch our eye as we contemplate the story of the Annunciation, which in our service will be read in the third lesson.
NEWSThe churchyard looks splendid following the annual Haymaking, which took place on Friday 20 and Saturday 21 August. Nearly 20 people were involved across the two days and worked hard to clear summer growth. The picture on the cover page shows some of the Friday haymakers. Several wasp spiders were discovered during the haymaking. Colin reports that this spider was first found in the south of England in 1922 and has been steadily advancing northwards, now being recorded in both Suffolk and Norfolk. They are apparently ‘all show and no venom’!Wrapped Love Boxes and starter contents will be available every Sunday (excluding Harvest) up until 17 October. Please return them filled by, or on, Sunday 24 October, when they will be blessed by Canon John Fellows at the commencement of the service. This is the final year Margaret will be the organiser of the Christmas Love Box Scheme. Please speak to her or one of the Church Wardens if you are interested in taking on this worthwhile job. The PCC met at the beginning of September to conduct routine business. At the meeting Malcolm (Fabrics Officer) was able to report that the lime mortar repointing repairs to the south wall and the porch are now complete. The church was full for the funeral of Alan Bartram on 23 August and he would certainly have appreciated the powerful singing. A congregation of more than 40 people was welcomed to Barsham for the Benefice Service on Sunday 30 August. Food Bank donations in August numbered 163 items. Grateful thanks to those who contribute.Sunday collections in August amounted to the fine sum of £1,504. Separately, thanks are also due to Doreen Springall, whose farmgate stall of garden produce has yielded a wonderful £165 so far this year. The visitors’ guidebook to Barsham Church, written by the Rev John Buchanan in 2005 and revised by him in 2016, is currently under a new revision and is being updated with additional information prior to reprinting later this year. FORWARD PLANNINGMonday 25 September at 3pm: Memorial Service for Nony Ollerenshaw.Sunday 26 September and Sunday 24 October: returning to pre-pandemic routine, the Sales Table will be open after the service every fourth Sunday of the month for the sale of second-hand books, plants and produce. Please do bring – and buy!Friday 22 October: The annual Friends of All Saints, Mettingham Inter-Church Quiz will take place at 7pm on Friday 22 October at Mettingham Village Hall. Teams of four people are welcome to enter at £10 per team. If you would like to enter a ready-made team, please contact one of the church wardens (contact details on front cover), or if you would like to take part but don’t already have a team, please contact one of the church wardens, who will do their best to make up some teams.
