Church of St. Andrew & St. Mary, Grantchester

 Grantchester Church

• About the church
• Parish Priest
• Church Building
• Church news
• Pattern of Services
• Diary for this month

About the church

St Andrew and St Mary is the parish church of Grantchester. We are part of Cambridge South Deanery, in the Diocese of Ely.

Among our regular worshipers, we have Christians from almost all the main-stream denominations, from Quakers to Roman Catholics. We consider this to be source of strength, not least because our many visitors and tourists can feel more at home in such an eclectic assembly.

Parish Priest

Click here for his Christmas letter "Christmas Comes But Once A Year".

Church Building

The oldest part of the church - the chancel - dates from the 14^th century, the nave and tower are 15^th century, whilst the south aisle was added in the 1870s. The font is believed to be Norman, and the 17^th century pulpit probably came from the chapel of Corpus Christi College.

 Church of St. Andrew & St. Mary, Grantchester

Church News

The annual Carols by Candlelight Service again attracted a large congregation. The choir, conducted by Rachel Walters, was augmented by a number of visiting music therapists.  The collection on this occasion also went to Music as Therapy International, a London-based group that aims to use music therapy ‘as a means to relieve those living in conditions of need, hardship or distress, suffering from mental or physical disability and the effects of poverty or sickness'. The group runs a variety of small, intensive projects in this country and overseas. You can find out more about their work by visiting www.musicastherapy.org.

The Family Gift Service

The service held on December 12 this year centred on the Open Hands Community School just outside Lusaka, housed in a former piggery. The generous congregation donated bagfuls of writing materials & paper, books, children's clothes & shoes, eating utensils and cash which will buy further locally-sourced items. I'm hoping to send the items out by air with a colleague on January 3^rd and I know the recipients will be truly overwhelmed with people's generosity; thank you so much to everyone who supported this cause. One shipment of three large boxes of donated goods already went out last week, courtesy of British Airways, and the Sunday School Fund which very kindly covered the transport to Heathrow. The school was absolutely thrilled to receive the boxes! At the Gift Service an astonishing £267 was raised and along with other recent donations including one extraordinarily large one from a most benevolent parishioner, I now have a really substantial sum of £800 ready to send them. All of this will go direct to the school which we have a personal connection with and will have a major impact on its poor rural community. Our previous donations, raised through the village apple pressing, have already been used to put in 3 windows and a door so as to keep the elements out during the current rainy season. Kutemba, the school's director, sent a lovely email today asking me to convey their most heartfelt appreciation to our Church and all the donors. She will send pictures of the progress of the school early next year.

There was an excellent turnout at the service where the children proficiently acted out a little play telling the story of how we came to support the school (complete with a marvelous large pigsty backdrop ingeniously constructed out of a futon box!). The play illustrated the power of support from our community to theirs in terms of improving children's life chances in a context where education makes a huge difference. Photographs of the school were on display. A big thank you to Margaret Barwise and Mary Shaw for yet again organizing everything so smoothly, to Stuart and his inspiring guest Patrick from Ghana who was drafted in specially for the occasion and told us about African Christmas traditions, to all the children who performed wonderfully in the presentation, and to everyone in the church community and the WI for their fantastic support over recent months. I'm especially grateful to Liz Neville who first set the ball rolling after hearing my enthusiastic reports of visiting the school during a chance meeting in the pub back in August, and who is keen to keep up the momentum. If anyone else missed the service and would like to make a financial donation, it's never too late! Just drop it in to me at 5 Stulp Field Road please and I'll make sure they get it. A little goes a long way in Africa so donations of any size are most welcome.

Sara Hennessy

Church Cleaner Needed

A Church Cleaner is needed for a few hours a week. For more details please contact the Grantchester PCC Secretary Liz Neville or Hazel Offord

Pattern of Services

• Services (readers, lessons and sidesmen)
• Church and Churchyard Rotas
• Diary for the month