Our Rector, The Rev’d Sarah Jones has been appointed to the post of Priest in Charge of The City Parish of St John The Baptist, Cardiff. St John’s is at the heart of Cardiff City Centre. This is a significant post in the Diocese of Llandaff.

Sarah joined us as Assistant Curate in July 2004 and became Rector in December 2007. She has been with us for fourteen years and has been Rector for ten and a half years.

Sarah’s last service in the benefice will be at Michaelmas on Sunday 30th September. She will be licensed to her new post on Thursday 18th October.

In the weeks ahead, we will be making arrangements to say farewell to Sarah and we are hoping to organise a visit to St John’s in Cardiff to be present at her licensing on 18th October.

We will let you know the details as soon as things progress.

Thanks to all who came along this afternoon to make our Open Garden such a success. Special thanks though to  Leah, Margaret, Margaret and Tina who served all the tea and cake. Thank you, too, to all who provided the yummy cake.

Together we raised £550 for St Mary’s.

St Mary’s History – The church history in the white folder at the back of St Mary’s, offered as a consultative guide for visitors, has been updated to reflect recent changes in the building. This document was originally put together by John Tarrant in the 1990s drawing on material from a variety of sources. You may like to know that you can find this on the website on the St Mary’s Church page. It remains a “work in progress” and will continue to be updated.

It’s great news that our new nave altar has arrived in time for Christmas and at the same time as phase one of the reordering is complete.

This is a specially commissioned piece of furniture, crafted by Timothy Hawkins (Fine Furniture Ltd in Hereford. It has been given by two generous members of our congregation.

The new altar replaces a temporary one from the 1980s! It has been made in light oak and therefore matches the new flooring, chairs, screens and oak panelling of the new building work elsewhere in the church. It has a completely open design so that now it is possible to see beyond it to the chancel.

St Mary’s is deeply grateful for this wonderful gift. Another step in the regeneration of our building and community.

A number of people have mentioned that their copy of this Christmas CD, recorded by St Mary’s choir in 2002, is no longer working. We’re flattered you’re still listening!

We’ve made some replacement copies that you’ll find at the back of St Mary’s; please help yourself.

If you weren’t around then and would like a copy, again please help yourself. If you feel able to make a donation via the donations safe by the north door that would be lovely.

Alternatively you’ll find many of the tracks on our music website

The final counting is done and we can confirm that the Christmas Tree Festival has raised just over £3000.

Thanks to everyone who entered a tree, we had 50 in the end. Thanks to those who gave financial donations and to all who came along to see the trees.

Here’s to Christmas Tree Festival 2019!

Thanks to the the excellent Ross Garden Store for the mention in this week’s newsletter.

You can pop along there and get your tree and then enter it here.

St Mary’s Choir has just returned from singing six services in Chester Cathedral. It was an excellent weekend.

There are plenty of posts on the choir Facebook page.

If you’d like to hear what we sounded like you can do so here.

St Mary’s Ross is undertaking a major reordering of the interior of the building. About half of the existing pine pews (installed in 1862) are to be removed. Several members of the community have expressed interest in one so here are the arrangements for purchasing. All money raised from the sale of the pews will be used in the building project. All the complete pews have been reserved in less than a week – an amazing response!

The pews that remain are all missing an end, and all around 2.5 – 3 metres in length . However, it’s likely that many people will be shortening them anyway so if two pews, with matching ends, will work for you they are available for £100 for the pair. If you have some other plan which only requires one end then £75 for a single incomplete pew. The Ross charity, Enviroability, is available to do any work on shortening, creating corner seats, re-fixing ends etc if required (see below).

If you’d like to come into church to take a look please do; the church is open each day from about 09:00 – 16:00. Pews are all clearly numbered and you can reserve them by writing your details on the label on the pew. Alternatively, please contact John or Mark (details below) to reserve pews.

Pews are sold on a buyer collects basis and collection can happen shortly after the work begins on Monday 4^th September. We will let you know.

If a complete pew is really what you need, and you can wait, then phase two of this project will be happening – we hope in 12 – 24 months time – and there will be a very similar quantity of pews available then. Please contact us and we’ll keep you informed.

CONTACTS

Church contacts (for purchasing):

Mark Sanderson – 01989 565386 –  (up to 21^st August)

John Setchfield – 01989 564535      (from 24^th August)

Enviroability can be contacted by email or on 01989 763388 should you want them to do any work on your behalf, Paula Evans is the contact. They will quote you for that work.

We are delighted to report that a grant of £213, 500 from the Heritage Lottery Fund has been secured. Furthermore, that the grant has been match funded by grants from the Hereford Historic Churches Trust and the Allchurches Trust.

Thanks to National Lottery players, we are now able to turn our vision into a reality.

In the meantime services are thriving twice a month at the village hall and at Brampton Abbotts School.

Various organisations in Ross-on-Wye worked together to put on a day of celebrations for the 380th birthday of their most famous “all round good egg” John Kyrle.

As a part of this event Brampton Abbotts, Bridstow and Walford Primary Schools came to St Mary’s Church for a workshop day where the task was to create 5 films about the great man that would then be on display for visitors to the Sunday event. You can view these at https://mrkyrle.wordpress.com or by visiting St Mary’s Church and scanning the QR codes that will remain in the building for some while.

The children were assisted by a number of adults from St Mary’s congregation (who had their own workshop afternoon prior to develop their film making skills) and by local historian Jon Hurley who’s book “In Search of John Kyrle: The Man of Ross” was invaluable for the historical background to the project.

We heard on 27th January that the Chancellor has granted us the faculty to begin work on phase one of the reordering. This is great news and brings to a close the planning stage of this phase of work. We will now be approaching building contractors for quotes and once we’ve decided who will carry out the work we can begin.

We had hoped to be at this point by Easter so we are well ahead of schedule. You can learn all about the reordering plans for St Mary’s at http://www.reordering.wordpress.com

This took place on Thursday 5th January when we welcomed ‘Mary and Joseph’ (and their diary!) back after their journey around the parish. Soup, cheese and wine was provided. We are able to send £87 to Christian Aid for their Christmas appeal to help refugees fleeing from conflict.

Have you seen the new website for the reordering scheme at St Mary’s yet? The latest news and updates are there for the reordering which it is hoped will be happening by the middle of 2017.

Go to http://www.reordering.wordpress.com to see the latest.

If you’re feeling in need of a little winter cheer you’ll find some pictures of this year’s St Mary’s Flower Festival here