Category: Personal

Cockfield is a village with eight greens. There’s a lot going on – see the village website. There is a lane from the war memorial, past the school, and up to the church – with beautiful Suffolk houses on either side. It is a stunning church – there would have been a Saxon village and church, and the village is mentioned in Domesday, as a prosperous manor held by the Abbot of St Edmundsbury until the Dissolution. Since then land has changed hands,  but there is at least one family still farming where their ancestors farmed 400 years ago. The first Rector whose...

Felsham is a village with the church in the centre, opposite the Six Bells pub, next to the shop and post office, with the village hall next to that. It had, and still has, a good community – we all appeared on stage with Fagends (Felsham and Gedding Extremely Nervous Dramatic Society). So 12 years after I left I walked in through the stunning porch and recognised Lesley, sorting out the flowers. She has aged far better than me – I baptised her children. It is lovely seeing her involved in church, and she brought me up to date with...

I was Rector of Bradfield St Clare, Cockfield, Felsham and Gedding for four years from 1997. Gedding is a small village, the church and the phone box are the only public buildings in the village, and Felsham church is not much more than a mile away. We needed to raise tens of thousands to repair the church. I dared to point out that for that price we could afford a chauffeur-driven limousine every Sunday to take all the congregation to Felsham … . We held a Festival “Gedding Church – too good to loose?” and the money came in....

The Feast of St Thomas the Apostle, and 50 of us for a Eucharist – much appreciated. 20 years since Ordination, and none of us looked any older! I went back the following day for a look round – the church is open every day. When I was here as a Curate, a teenager and an older lady arrived on the doorstep one day. “Could they look round the church?” I told them it was open and we got chatting. It turned out the young lady was a school-refuser and the older lady her tutor. The young lady could...