Friends of St Mary's Eaton Bray

Posted on November 1, 2007

The monthly Coffee Mornings continue to prove popular and the October event raised a further £116 towards the cost of preserving our 13th century Church. This brings the total to date to over £350 and our thanks go to all of you for your support.

We hope you agree that the preservation of the St Mary's building is important to the village community, so please do come along to one of our Coffee Mornings (the next is on November 3rd between 10.30 and noon) or to one of our major events whilch will be advertised in future editions of Focus.

-- Your Friends Committee

Friends of St Mary's - Why Another Charity?

What does St Mary's Church, Eaton Bray mean to you? Maybe services on Sunday morning, "churchy people", singing hymns, saying prayers. Nothing to do with you perhaps?.

But wait a minute - there's a wealth of history waiting to be discovered - for example, two large oak and iron thatching hooks, to drag burning thatch from cottages in the days before the Fire Service, a font as old as the church itself, and even, strangely, non-matching pillars!

St Mary's Church, Eaton Bray was built in the early 13th century. Over the years, it's needed some help to stay standing - when it was about 250 years old, it was practically rebuilt - and that was 600 YEARS AGO! The church is built of local stone from Totternhoe. It is a chalk-like stone, which is easy to carve, but when it rains, or is very windy, the stone wears away quite easily.

So what we, the Friends of St Mary's, want to do is encourage people like you to help us make sure it stays standing for many more years - which of course is going to cost money. There are already several charities fund-raising for the church, but most of them involve people who go to church regularly. We are trying to involve people who may rarely visit church, but who like the fact that it's "just there" - which it won't be if we don't look after it.

We're not asking you to give money for nothing - we are organizing a series of events, which we hope will be fun, so you'll really want to come! The first one is going to be a Family Christmas Sing-A-Long at 6.30pm on Friday 21st December - plenty of us love singing Christmas Carols, but not everyone is sure they want to go to a church service too. So here's an alternative - singing and no service - and we'll even throw in a drink and a mince pie!

Look out for posters and ads around the village - you can get tickets from Mrs Stilliard (01525 222283), from Edlesborough Post Office, or on the door as long as there's room! Happy singing!

And for more information about the history of the church, check out the Virtual Tour on this fantastic website! www.stmaryseatonbray.org.uk/About-Our-Church

Source: Focus, November 2007