NEWS
On Sunday 19 September we celebrated Harvest Festival a lovely sunny morning for our Sung Eucharist and the church looked wonderful. The flower arrangers had filled it with beautiful harvest-themed flowers: the reds, oranges and yellows glowed in the bright sunlight. The squashes, gourds and vegetables complemented the arrangements. Evensong, led by Josh, with Bishop Norman preaching, was a beautiful service. After the service a Harvest Supper was held in the village hall and was enjoyed by just under 50 diners. The food was superb despite the lack of a serviceable kitchen. Special thanks to all the flower arrangers, food providers and waitresses! The raffle was highly successful and amongst the prizes was a jar of Barsham churchyard lime honey.
For the first time in some years there were perfect conditions for the ‘light show’ at the Barsham Equinox Event on all three evenings, 21, 22 and 23 September. 82 people attended over the three evenings.
Members of the Round Tower Churches Society visited on Saturday 25 September.
A large congregation filled the church for Nony Ollerenshaw’s Memorial Service and Interment on the afternoon of 25 September.
On Thursday 14 October the PCC held its annual Clergy Lunch, this year at White House Barn, Barsham, to thank our visiting clergy for their much-valued service throughout the year.
Amy reports that 200 items were donated to the Food Bank in September, including the 70 items contributed at Harvest Festival.
Sunday collections in September amounted to £1,418 and the proceeds of the Harvest Supper amounted to a further £651. The Ride and Stride event raised £1,085, which is shared equally between the Suffolk Historic Churches Trust and our own church. Warmest thanks to all who made these sums possible.
Thank you for your support of the Love Boxes. Please bring your filled boxes to the church any time between Sunday 17 October and Sunday 24 October, or on the 24th itself when they will be blessed by Rev Canon John Fellows. We hope to welcome some friends from Beccles Lions at the service: they are once again generously funding the cost of the boxes’ carriage.
FORWARD PLANNING
Thursday 4 November: The PCC will be holding its next routine meeting.
Thursday 11 November: Remembrance Day Memorial Service at Barsham and Shipmeadow Village Hall, conducted by Rev Canon John Fellows. Please arrive at 10.30am for a 10.50am service and wreath-laying. Parking is available on the village hall paddock (entrance gate to the right of the telephone box). Refreshments will be available afterwards. All welcome.
Friday 12 & Saturday 13 November, 5.30-8.00pm: Barsham Church Light Show -an installation exhibition by artist William Lindley. This is a repeating display of digital projections inside the church celebrating through photographic images various parts of the village of Barsham and the history of some of its principal buildings, including the church. Do drop in for 20 minutes or so at any time between 5.30 and 8.00pm. All ages, no charge & no tickets required, refreshments available.
Sunday 28 November: the Sales Table will be open after the service.
SNIPPETS – Remembrance and church war memorials
Our church is relatively unusual in possessing no war memorials other than for the First World War, and these are less than typical. The parish war memorial on the south wall of the nave goes further than the conventional memorial to ‘the Fallen’: it is a Roll of Honour recording the names of all the men of the parish who enlisted and their years of enlistment, along with colour-coding to identify those who lost their lives and those who were wounded.
A more personal plaque hangs on the south wall of the nave just west of the door and is a rare example of a thanksgiving for safe deliverance. Recycling the lines of a 15th century song celebrating Henry V’s victory and safe return after Agincourt in 1415 (Our God for him wrought marvellously… Deo Gratis), it is the thanksgiving of Harry Stebbings, a Beccles bank clerk and regular communicant at Barsham who married in the church in 1914. He enlisted in 1916 and served in France and Italy with the Bedfordshire Regiment, taking part in continuous heavy fighting before being discharged in April 1918, having been gassed. After the war he and his wife moved to Devon and Harry lived on there until 1971.
Another singular memorial, an image of Our Lady of Sorrows, hangs high on the south wall of the north chapel. It is said to have been recovered from a shelled church on a Belgian battlefield by a nurse, the wife of a Barsham churchwarden and choir member. She brought it home to Barsham and the Rector had it reframed and inscribed with the names of all the members of the church choir who had fought in the war, all of whom survived.
Perhaps more poignantly, one might consider the larger of the two lecterns in the north chapel to be an unwitting memorial to its maker, the Shipmeadow carpenter Frederick Henry (‘Harry’) Shulver, of Hill Cottage, Shipmeadow. When he volunteered in December 1915, his Army attestation papers recorded a missing little finger on his left hand: a carpenter’s injury perhaps. He served on the Western Front in the North Staffordshire Regiment and was posted ‘missing’ near Arras on 21 March 1918 when his battalion was overwhelmed during the German Spring Offensive. With no known grave, he is commemorated on the Arras Memorial. Tragically, he left three young daughters and a widow.
Finally, in Charles George Napier Trollope (1854-1948) there is a Barsham church connection with the Beccles War Memorial Hospital. Napier Trollope, a regular communicant at Barsham (who commissioned in 1935 the beautiful stained-glass window on the south side of the sanctuary), was the Chairman of the Construction Committee for the War Memorial Hospital and for many years its Treasurer, as well as being three times Mayor of Beccles.