5th May – raffle tickets for painting being sold in Gostrey meadows at the Duck Race.
12th May – coffee and cake morning at Farnham Methodist church 10am -12noon
13th May – Speaker at 10am at St George’s Church, Badshot Lea
13th May CAW service 5pm at St Andrews
14-18th May collection in morning rush hour at Farnham station- volunteers needed 6.15am- 9.15am,
19th May – CAW Big Brunch at URC Farnham from 10-2pm Bacon rolls,sausage in a roll, assorted soups , cakes and hot drinks.
19th May -street collection in Farnham town centre all day – volunteers needed across the day- hourly slots.
20th May – Speaker at 9:30am at St John’s Church, Hale and 11:00am at St Mark’s Church, Upper Hale
20th May – Circle the City of London sponsored walk. Fun day out for the family.
23rd June Concert at St Martins in aid of CA. Anemos Wind Ensemble and Andrew Harrap (organ) will be performing on the evening. The concert begins at 7.30pm and will be followed by refreshments.
This year we are celebrating St George’s Day at St George’s on 22nd April at the 10am and 11:30am services and St Mark’s Day on 29th April at St Mark’s at the 11:00am service, followed by a bring and share meal and then a congregational meeting. Please come and join the celebrations…
There will be a service of healing and wholeness at St John’s on 26 April at 19:30 Please come along, there will be the opportunity to receive prayer and anointing with oil.
Come and explore faith through art at St Mark’s on 10, 17 and 24 April between 19:30 and 21:00. We will be exploring the ‘Stations of the Resurrection’ – the events that occurred after Jesus’s resurrection.
Sunday 15th April at St Mark’s we have the Annual Meetings. Please try and attend to hear about how much our Parish has achieved over the last year. All may attend the Annual meeting of parishioners, but only those on the electoral roll may attend the APCM. This year we will be introducing material from a course “Leading your Church into growth”.
Please find below the annual report on church activities.
We urgently need information regarding the paintings at St. Marks.
These were painted by Kitty (Eleanor Catherine Wallace) Milroy, the daughter of the Vicar of Carisbrooke when the family relocated to The Oast House in Hale in the early 1900s.
Did you know that the figures in the murals were all local people from Hale? But who are they?
Is this Percy Hook?
We have found out that ‘the third cherub from the right’ is Percy Hook.
Even this is a bit vague as it depends which way you happen to be looking as to which is right.
Hilda Mary Butler was a figure ‘dressed in blue’.
Can you remember anything that your Gran or Grandad said about the paintings or whether they were one of the figures or if they mentioned who was?
Anything at all will help us build up a picture so we can have the information when we apply for grants to stabilize the wall paintings.
Percy Hook recalled in the Farnham Herald (publ. Nov 30th 1990)
‘it was done by Miss Milroy, who lived at a big house on the corner of what they call Boxalls Hill. I remember sitting in a hut behind her house while she painted it, but not how it came about’
The paintings themselves are painted directly onto the wall so he must have been referring to her preliminary sketches and paintings not of which seem to have survived. The church paintings were painted with a modified version of the technique known as spirit fresco. It is recorded during the major restoration carried out by Evelyn Caesar in 1946, that she used Kitty Milroy’s technique employing a walnut of beeswax.
Indeed the two figures of Moon and Cloud are part of this restoration. But did you know that the small face above the window was also part of this restoration? Evelyn used her niece for this portrait, Josephine Jones (nee Caesar).
Apparently a Violet Common assisted Kitty with the paintings. Does anyone know if this is this true?
Unfortunately all the parish magazines from 1900-1983 are missing. If you know any that still exist before you dump them please hand them on as they provide a great insight as to what was going on and they may even mention the paintings.
These paintings are a unique part of our heritage and represent an important piece of the history of the short lived church decoration at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th Century.
Are you fed up with the impact of plastic on our planet but don’t know how to fix it? Here is a Lenten discipline that helps – it can be found on the Shrinking The Footprint website here.
Religion poses many questions that have troubled theologians through the ages. “Is there a God?” “What is the nature of God?” “What is the Trinity all about?” “Why is there a sheep on a skateboard at the front of St Marks?” [1]
A partial answer to this last imponderable was that we had a well-attended talk last night (4th Feb.) from Dave Tomlinson, promoting his latest book, “Black Sheep and Prodigals”. As for the others, and similar questions, Dave’s main theme was concerned with avoiding black and white answers. Most of us do not experience the blinding light of revelation on the road to Damascus. At best we may experience an unreliable, intermittently flickering bulb, more often off than on. Indeed, it’s a good idea to be wary of those who purport to have all the answers. This instantly creates a divide: you can’t belong to our club unless you believe what we do.
Dave was at pains to stress that none of us have exclusive access to “The Truth”. We should encourage doubts and tolerate dissention, for that is how new insights may emerge.
We had forty minutes or so of these and many other thought provoking ideas, followed by an extensive question and answer session. I’m not going to deal with all the ideas here – buy the book, it’s the one we will be using for Lent discussions anyway!
Dave finished his talk by quoting my other favourite writer on religious topics, Karen Armstrong, “Jesus did not spend a great deal of time discoursing about the Trinity, or original sin…. He went around doing good and being compassionate.”
Or, to paraphrase Dave:- there is little point in asking what Jesus would do if he was around today – discover Jesus within yourself and act on it!
“Live passionately, believe sceptically, Love extravagantly”
Bob Shatwell 5th Feb 2018
[1] It’s to look as equally cool as the sheep with sunglasses, grazing nearby.
A huge thank-you to The Farnham Institute who have given us £500 to improve our Sumner Room at St John’s for greater community use. This work has now been completed and it looks great! Please take a look and spread the word – we would love to have more people making use of this facility.
The Parish of Badshot Lea and Hale 