… but one more resident to arrive. Expected around 11.30 tonight. See you for Midnight Mass.

Our Candlelit Nine Lessons and Carols takes place on Sunday @ 4 pm. Details of this magical and popular service are here.

The Crib Service, for children and young families is on Christmas Eve @ 4 pm

Midnight Mass starts @ 11.30 pm

The main service on Christmas morning (Sung Eucharist) is @ 9.30

Details of all Christmas services are here

We look forward to seeing you.

We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about our priorities and therefore the skills set we feel we need. We’ve spent a lot of time creating our information pack which is now live and can be seen at https://rawchurch.org.uk/vacancies/

St Mary’s was privileged to host the first Ross and Archenfield Deanery’s youth event last night, The Greatest Gift. Nearly 20 young people came along to hear April Shipton perform and talk about her faith.

It was great to see some of the reordered space in St Mary’s being used so imaginatively.

We very much hope this will be the first of many similar events. Thanks to all those who came along to, or helped with this enjoyable event.

St Mary’s has always been proud to be the home of the Churches Together in Ross and District Community Larder (food bank) and today was a landmark occasion in its seven year history.

The Larder has moved from it’s rather inaccessible base on the fist floor on St Mary’s Hall to the basement. This means it’s now accessible all on the level. The move is largely thanks to the labours of Bryan Jones who has spent the last three months converting the disused space into a purpose built larder.

We were delighted to welcome The Revd Prebendary Jill Talbot-Ponsonby (the key mover behind the establishment of the Larder in 2011) to open the new facility.

The Larder continues to be open every Tuesday morning from 10.00 – 12.00 and is always grateful for donations of food.

We had a great meeting this morning with representatives from the three parishes to begin the process of selecting a new Rector. Everyone left feeling what a great offering we have at Ross, Walford and Brampton Abbotts churches. Thanks to John Daniels from Hereford Diocese for leading the meeting.

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.