Thirteen is a good number for St Sampson’s Church. All our thirteen windows have been restored with the help of thirteen grant funders and three individuals. A grand total of £53,000 was raised. Thank you to you all.Our funding research took us in all directions and we made some fascinating discoveries. Many pleasant hours were spent wading through family trees and church records. We discovered connections all around the world, as well as a short distance down the road. We discovered a link to William Wilberforce and the campaign for the abolition of slavery - the east window above the altar is dedicated to Admiral Samuel Thornton who died in 1859. Samuel Thornton was the brother of Emily Rice, wife of the then Rector, Revd. HM (Horace) Rice. Samuel Thornton and his sister Emily were the children of Samuel Thornton, MP for Surrey, a campaigner with his more famous nephew and friend, William Wilberforce MP, for the abolition of slavery. Both men were part of the so-called Clapham SectThe chancel (south) window is dedicated to Major Percy John Rice (1810-1850) and Lucy Maria Elton (nee Rice) (1814- 1846), brother and sister of the then Rector of South Hill, Revd. Horace Rice. The inscription contains the words “Ah my brother! Ah my sister!” Lucy Maria was the great, great, Grandmother of Julia Rice Elton, who we traced. She was unaware of her family window but delighted to discover it.Other windows are connected to Victorian Curates of South Hill - Mary Fookes (south aisle west window) was the mother of Curate William Fookes and the tower west window is dedicated to John Sergeant, Curate for sixty years.Other windows are dedicated to local families, descendants of some of whom still live in the parish. Full details of our research so far are in a folder in the church.The work to repair the windows started in November 2021 . What a wonderful moment in January when the first three restored windows were replaced. No-one realised exactly how much difference it would make. No more rusty bars, no more wobbly glass panes - simply beautiful windows letting in the light and allowing us to see the trees outside. Five more windows were taken out in the intense heatwave of August 2022 and put back in December, amid freezing temperatures. The inscriptions can all now be easily read, the colours of the stained glass vibrant and fulsome. It feels like a true honouring of the local families Trehane, Body, Dunston and Hitchens.The final five windows were removed in May 2023, including the East window, which was a sad sight to see boarded up, but glorious when replaced in August. By the end of September 2023 all our windows were back.How wonderful that all the windows are now fully restored. Watching the skilled heritage craftsmen of Dan Humphries Stained glass Ltd and C.F. Piper & son at work has been amazing. Their knowledge is immense, and we are very grateful to them for the sensitive restoration that they completed. And it came in under budget!
Wow, what an amazing evening we had at St Sampson’s Church last night. Fabulous acoustics, so no amplification needed, and a really lovely and appreciative audience, which was pretty much a 50/50 mix of loyal followers (thanks guys!) and people who had never seen the band before and were experiencing something new, so that was a lovely mix. Thanks so much to everyone who came along . . . your generosity on the night produced a stunning total of nearly £1,000 (TBC), all of which will go to the St Sampsons Unlocked Project for much-needed repairs and improvements to this beautiful old church. Well done to Judith & Mark and everyone involved in organising and putting on such a great evening, and to absolutely everyone who supported this fundraising event - thank you!A huge thank you to Barretts Privateers and many thanks to our generous sponsors: Cornish Orchards, Keltek Cornish Brewery, Rowe’s Cornish Bakery, Tesco Callington, Spar Callington, Coop Gunnislake
Many thanks to Dave Groves & the Cornwall mammal group and to Tony Atkinson of the Bat Group for a fascinating evening and morning in the churchyard on 28th/29th September. Our 'Bio Blitz' in partnership with Cornish mammals recorded common shrews, bank voles & wood mice along with a surprising number of spider species! Our survey is helping to establish base lines for mammal habitats across Cornwall in order to monitor species in future. We now have base line lists of mammals, insects, flowers and lichens in the churchyard. These are recorded and available to view at the church and uploaded to the Environmental Records Centre for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly (ERCCIS) via their Online Recording Kernow and Scilly website (ORKS). Go to <a href="https://www.cornwallmammalgroup.org/">https://www.cornwallmammalgroup.org/</a> for more information and to access the system. If anyone would like to compile a list of birds let us know. We have ten bird boxes made from recycled wood to go up soon, made by wild Bytes. <a href="https://www.facebook.com/wildbytesTV">https://www.facebook.com/wildbytesTV</a><br>
On Monday 14th August, we ran a Nature Detectives Day as a free holiday activity for local families. The event <a></a>attracted 48 children to make nature masks and crowns, to enjoy the fun of face-painting and even to go on a hunt for bugs. Participants could also discover the abundance of nature to be seen in South Hill’s churchyard, with the help of their St Sampson’s Explorers packs, which offer ideas for fruitful family fun for all visitors to the church and include a guide to activities, a certificate, wooden medal, magnifying glass, pencil, paper and QR codes linking to further information about the living churchyard on the Benefice’s website.The initiative was supported by the National Grid’s Community Matters Fund, and was led by Katie Stevenson, the Callington Cluster’s Pioneer Family worker, and Judith Ayers, Reader in the Callington Cluster Benefice.“We woke up to torrential rain and so based ourselves in church rather than the planned outside,” Judith says. “However the rain stopped and we were able to have a bug hunt, cardboard bugs to find and also real ones – a spider, butterfly and worm were amongst the finds! The children were keen to explore and asked many questions. If we didn’t know the answer, we looked it up!”Judith stresses the importance of such activities in the life of the parish.“These sorts of events are great for engaging families and children with church,” she says. “Children are very eco-minded and this is a fantastic way to introduce the God of Creation into their lives engaging them with their natural curiosity and care for nature. It is a fantastic way of building relationships with families and creates many opportunities for conversations. It shows the church as relevant and active in its care of the planet.”
